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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44632 ***
+
+                             HELL'S HATCHES
+
+
+
+
+                              NEW FICTION
+
+
+    THE CURTAIN
+        _By Alexander Macfarlan_
+
+    THE SYRENS
+        _By Dot Allan_
+
+    OLD MAN'S YOUTH
+        _By William de Morgan_
+
+    THE PURPLE HEIGHTS
+        _By M. C. Oemler_
+
+    HAGAR'S HOARD
+        _By George Kibbe Turner_
+
+    THE VILLA OF THE PEACOCK
+        _By Richard Dehan_
+
+    IN CHANCERY
+        _By John Galsworthy_
+
+    SNOW OVER ELDEN
+        _By Thomas Moult_
+
+    EUDOCIA
+        _By Eden Phillpotts_
+
+                        LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+                        21, Bedford Street, W.C. 2
+
+
+
+
+                             HELL'S HATCHES
+
+
+                                   BY
+                            LEWIS R. FREEMAN
+             Author of "In the Tracks of the Trades," etc.
+
+
+                          [Illustration: 1921]
+
+                       LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+    CHAPTER                                                     PAGE
+
+          I A REPUTATION QUESTIONED                                1
+
+         II HARD-BIT DERELICTS                                    10
+
+        III THE GIRL HERSELF                                      25
+
+         IV "SLANT" ALLEN RETIRES AGAIN                           38
+
+          V A SHIP OF DEATH                                       50
+
+         VI COMPULSORY VOLUNTEERING                               65
+
+        VII RONA COMES ABOARD                                     80
+
+       VIII I LEAVE THE ISLAND                                    93
+
+         IX A GRIM TALE OF THE SEA                               106
+
+          X ART AND SUSPENSE                                     124
+
+         XI A HERO'S HOMECOMING                                  142
+
+        XII A BAD MAN'S PLEA                                     180
+
+       XIII THE SCENE OF THE FINAL DRAMA                         193
+
+        XIV HELL'S HATCHES OFF                                   206
+
+         XV THE FACE                                             220
+
+        XVI A SUDDEN VISITOR                                     231
+
+       XVII DOWN THE FLUME                                       255
+
+      XVIII THE MASTERPIECE                                      268
+
+        XIX AFTER ALL                                            282
+
+
+
+
+                             HELL'S HATCHES
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+
+                        A REPUTATION QUESTIONED
+
+
+"Slant" Allen and I, between us, had been monopolizing a good share of
+the feature space in the Queensland and New South Wales papers for a
+week or more--he as "the Hero-Ticket-of-Leave-Man" and I as "the gifted
+Franco-American painter whose brilliant South Sea marines have taken the
+Australian art world by storm"--and now that it was definitely reported
+that he had left Brisbane on his way to connect with the reception the
+boyhood home from which he had been shipped in disgrace five years
+before had prepared for him, I knew it was but a matter of hours before
+he would be doing me the honour of a call.
+
+He simply _had_ to see me, I figured; that was all there was to it: for
+with Bell and the girl dead (that much seemed certain, both from the
+newspaper accounts of the affair and from what I had been able to pick
+up in the few minutes I had been ashore during the stop of my southbound
+packet at Townsville) I was the only living person who knew _he_ was not
+the hero of the astonishing _Cora Andrews_ affair, the audacious daring
+and almost sublime courage characterizing which had touched the
+imagination of the whole world; that, far from having _volunteered_ to
+navigate a shipload of plague-stricken blacks through some hundreds of
+miles of the worst reef-beset--and likewise the most ill-charted--waters
+of the Seven Seas on the off chance of saving the lives of perhaps one
+in ten of them, he had been brought off and forced to mount the gangway
+of that ill-fated schooner at the point of a knife in the hands of a
+slender slip of a Kanaka girl.
+
+To be sure, two or three of the blacks who were hanging over the rail at
+the end of that accursed afternoon may have been among the survivors
+(for it could have been only the strongest of them that had been able to
+fight their way up to the air when Bell chopped open the hatches they
+had been battened under ever since the _Cora's_ officers had succumbed
+who knows how many hours before); but, even so, their rolling, bloodshot
+eyes could have fixed on nothing to have led them to believe that the
+greasy shawl of Chinese embroidery the girl appeared to have thrown
+affectionately over the shoulder of the belated passenger in the leaking
+outrigger concealed the diminutive Malay _kris_ whose point she was
+pressing into the fleshy part of his neck above the jugular.
+
+No, there could be no doubt that I was all that stood between "Slant"
+Allen, "Ticket-of-Leavester," beachcomber, black-birder, pearl-pirate
+and (more or less incidentally to all of the foregoing) murderer, and
+the Hon. Hartley Allen, second son of the late James Allen, Bart.,
+racing man, polo player and once the greatest gentleman jockey on the
+Australian turf. Pardon for the comparative peccadilloes--a "pulled"
+horse or two, a money fraud in connection with a "sweep," and the rather
+rough treatment of a chorus girl, who had foolishly asked for "time to
+consider" his proposal that she come to him _at once_ from the
+Queensland stockman who was only just finishing refurnishing her George
+Street flat--which, cumulatively, had been responsible for his being
+packed off to "The Islands," was already assured, and it looked as
+though more was to come--that his "spectacular and self-sacrificing
+heroism" was going to wipe out the unpleasant memories that had barred
+him from sporting and social circles even before the law stepped in. A
+sporting writer in that morning's _Herald_ had speculated as to whether
+or not he would be seen again riding "Number 1" for the unbeaten
+"Boomerang" Four, with whom he had qualified for his handicap of "8,"
+still standing as the highest ever given an Australian polo player; and
+the racing column of the latest _Bulletin_ had devoted a good part of
+its restricted space to a discussion of the possibility that the weight
+he had put on in his years of "easy life in 'The Islands'" might force
+him to confine his riding to steeplechases. Of the record which had made
+the name of "Slant" Allen a byword for all that was desperate and
+devilish from Port Moresby to Papeete, from Yap to Suva, little seemed
+to be known and nothing at all was said. But then, that old
+beach-combers' maxim to the effect that "What a man does in 'The
+Islands' don't figure in St. Peter's 'dope sheet,'" was one from which
+even I myself had been wont to extract no little solace.
+
+With nothing but my fever-wracked and absinthe-soaked (I may as well
+confess at the outset that I was "in the grip of the green" at this
+time) anatomy standing between, on the one hand, and Allen more
+despicable than even I, who was fairly familiar with the lurid swath he
+had cut across Polynesia, had ever dreamed he could be, and, on the
+other hand, an Allen who might easily become more the idol of sporting
+(which is, of course, the real) Australia than he had ever been at the
+zenith of his meteoric career as a turfman and athlete, it was plain
+enough that he would not--nay, could not--ignore for long my presence in
+a city that was standing on tiptoe to acclaim him as a native son whose
+deed had done it honour in the eyes of the world. It was something like
+that the _Telegraph_ had it, I believe.
+
+Where a word from me (and Allen would know that my friendship for Bell,
+to say nothing of the girl, would impel me to speak it in my own good
+time) would dash him from the heights to depths which even he had not
+yet sounded--there were degrees of treachery which "The Islands"
+themselves would not stand for--it was only to be expected that a man of
+his stamp would make some well-thought-out move calculated to impose
+both immediate and eventual silence upon me. If we were still "north of
+twenty-two" I would have had no doubt what form that "move" would take,
+and even here in the heart of the Antipodean metropolis--well, that I
+was leaving no unnecessary loop-holes of attack open was attested by the
+fact that I was awaiting his coming wearing a roomy old shooting jacket,
+in the wide pockets of which a man's fingers could work both freely and
+unobtrusively. I had shot away a good half-dozen patch pockets from that
+old jacket in practising "unostentatious self-defence," and when a man
+gets to a point where he can spatter a sea-slug at five paces from his
+hip he really hasn't a great deal to fear from the frontal attack of
+anyone--or anything--that hunts by daylight.
+
+Yes, though I hardly expected to have to shoot Allen, at least on this
+first showdown, I was quite prepared to do so if he gave me any excuse
+at all for it; indeed, I may as well admit that I was going to be
+disappointed if he did not furnish me such an excuse. There need be
+nothing on my conscience, that was sure, for, if the fellow had had his
+deserts according to civilized law, he would have been put out of the
+way something like twenty times already. I had heard him make that boast
+himself one night in Kai, just before he went under Jackson's table as a
+consequence of trying to toss off three-fingers of "Three Star" for
+every man he claimed to have killed. Moreover, I had a sort of a feeling
+that old Bell would have liked to have seen his score evened up that
+way, for he, more than almost anyone I could recall, had marvelled at
+what he called the tricks I had tucked away in my "starboard trigger
+pocket." But--I may as well own it--my principal reason for hoping for a
+decisive showdown straightaway was that I felt sure I could see my way
+through an affair of that kind, even with so cool and resourceful a hand
+as I knew Allen to be. As an absinthe drinker, what I dreaded was to
+have the crisis postponed, knowing all the while that during only about
+from four to six hours of the twenty-four would I be fit in mind or body
+to oppose a child, let alone a man who, for five years and among as
+desperate a lot of cut-throats as the South Pacific had ever known, had
+lived up to his boast that he drew the line at no act under heaven to
+gain his end.
+
+It had struck me as just a bit providential that Allen almost certainly
+would be coming to see me in the early afternoon--the very time at
+which, physically and mentally, I would be best prepared for him. It
+varies somewhat with different addicts of the drug, but with me the
+"hour of strength"--the interval of the swinging back of the pendulum,
+when all the faculties are as much above normal as they have been below
+it during the preceding interval of depression--was mid-afternoon. From
+about ten in the morning I was just about my natural self--just about at
+the turn of the tide between weakness and strength--for three or four
+hours; but from about three to five, when the renewed cravings began to
+stir and it had long been my custom to pour my first thin trickle of
+green into the cracked ice, I was preternaturally alive in hand and
+brain. The rigorous restriction of my painting to these brief hours of
+physical and spiritual exaltation must share with my colours the credit
+for the fact that I had already done work that was to win me a niche
+distinctively my own as a painter of tropical marines. How much
+absinthe--or the reaction from absinthe--had to do with my earlier
+successes was conclusively proven by the way my work at first fell off
+when those colourful years I was later to spend with the incomparable
+Huntley Rivers in the Samoas and Marquesas began to bring me back
+manhood of mind and body and to rid me--I trust for good and all--of the
+curse saddled upon me in my student days in Paris. But that is neither
+here nor there as regards the present story.
+
+I had ascertained that Allen's train was to arrive from Brisbane at ten
+in the morning, and that he was to be taken directly from the station to
+the Town Hall to receive the "Freedom of the City." Then, out of
+consideration for the fact "that the hero" (as the _Herald_ had it) was
+"still far from recovered from the terrible hardships he had endured as
+a consequence of his unparalleled self-sacrifice," the remainder of the
+day was to be left at his disposal to rest in. The further program--in
+which His Excellency the Governor-General himself was to take
+part--would be arranged only after the personal desires of the "modest
+hero" had been consulted.
+
+A 'phone to the gallery where my Exhibition was on--or an inquiry of
+almost anyone connected with the show at the Town Hall, for that
+matter--would apprise Allen that I was staying at the _Australia_, and
+there I knew he would come direct the moment he could shake himself free
+from his entertainers. Someone was to take him off to lunch, to be sure,
+but--especially as it was reported that he was already dieting to get
+back to riding weight--I felt sure this would not detain him long. "It
+will be about three," I told myself, and left word at the office that
+any man asking for me around that hour should be brought straight to my
+rooms without further question. I also 'phoned Lady X---- and begged off
+from showing her and a party of friends from Government House my
+pictures at four, as I had promised a couple of days previously. Being
+borne off to the inevitable and interminable Australian afternoon
+teas--or to anything else I could not easily shake myself free from very
+shortly after five--was one of the worst ordeals incident to the spell
+of lionizing that had set in for me from the day of my arrival in
+Sydney. What did I care for Sydney, anyhow? Paris was my goal--gay,
+cynical, heartless Paris, who took or rejected what her lovers laid at
+her feet only as it stirred, or failed to stir, her jaded pulses, asking
+not how it was made or what it had cost. Paris! To bring that languid
+beauty fawning to my own feet for a day--even for an hour, my
+hour--_that_ would be something worth living--or dying--for. For many
+years I had been telling myself that (between three and five in the
+afternoon, of course) and now--quite aside from my nocturnal flights
+there on the wings of the "Green Lady"--it seemed that the end so long
+striven for was almost in sight.
+
+I lunched lightly--a planked red snapper and a couple of alligator
+pears--in my room, and toward two o'clock (to be well on the safe side)
+slipped into the old hunting jacket I have mentioned, and was ready;
+just that--ready. My nerves were absolutely steady. The hand holding the
+palette knife with which (to kill the passing minutes) I began daubing
+pigments upon a rough rectangle of blotched canvas on an easel in the
+embrasure of the windows, might have adjusted the hair-spring of my
+wrist-watch, and the beat of my heart was slow and strong and steady
+like the throb of the engines of a liner in mid-ocean. If either hand or
+nerve inclined more one way than the other, it was toward relaxation
+rather than tenseness. Tenseness--with a man who has himself in hand--is
+for the moment of action, not for the interval of waiting which precedes
+it. My whole feeling was that of complete _adequacy;_ but then, the
+sensation was no new one to me--at that time of day.
+
+Exhausting the gobs of variegated colour on my palette, I went to a
+table in the bathroom and started chipping the delicately tinted linings
+from the contents of a packing case of assorted sea shells, confining my
+attentions for the moment to a species of bivalve whose refulgent inner
+surface had caught and held the lambent liquid gold of sunshine that had
+filtered through five fathoms of limpid sea-water to reach the coral
+caverns where it had grown. Powdering the coruscant scalings in a
+mortar, I screened them from time to time, carefully noting the
+gradations of colour--ranging from soft fawn to scintillant saffron--as
+the more indurated particles stood out the longer against the friction
+of the pestle. At this time, I might explain, I was in the tentative
+stage of my experimentation to evolve and perfect a greater variety of
+media than had hitherto been available with which to express in colour
+the interminable moods of sea and sky and sunshine. The value of my
+contribution to art--not yet complete after five years--will have to be
+judged when I pass it on to my contemporaries and posterity. Of the part
+these colours played in my later and more permanent success (to
+differentiate it from the spectacular but transient spell of fame upon
+the threshold of which I stood at the moment of which I write), I can
+only say that had I been confined to the pigments with which my
+predecessors had been forced to express themselves, I should never have
+risen above the rating of a second or third class dauber of sea-scapes.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+
+                           HARD-BIT DERELICTS
+
+
+With Allen and his coming in the back of my brain, it was only natural
+that my thoughts, as I ground and sifted and sorted the golden powders,
+should turn to Kai and the train of events leading up to the ghastly
+tragedy of the _Cora Andrews_, so distorted a version of which had gone
+abroad as a consequence of the fact that Allen was alive and Bell was
+dead, and that I, so far, had not told what I knew of the circumstances
+under which the one and the other had been induced to board the stricken
+"black-birder."
+
+It must have been, I reflected, its comparative remoteness from all of
+even the least-sailed of the South Pacific trade routes that was
+responsible for making Kai Atoll, a barely perceptible smudge on the
+chart of the Louisiades, the unofficial rendezvous for the most
+picturesque lot of cut-throats, blackguards and beachcombers that "The
+Islands" had known since the days of "Bully" Hayes and his care-free
+contemporaries. Like had attracted like after the original nucleus
+gathered, safety had come with numbers, and at the time of my arrival no
+man whose misdeeds had not made him important enough to send a gunboat
+after needed to depart from that secure haven except of his own free
+will.
+
+Among a score of hard-bit derelicts whose grinning or scowling phizzes
+flashed up in memory at the thought of that sun-baked loop of coral,
+with its rag-tag of wind-whipped coco palms and its crescent of zinc and
+thatch-roofed shacks, only three--or four including myself--occupied my
+mind for the moment. Allen--reckless daredevil that he was--had come to
+Kai from somewhere in the Solomons for the very good and sufficient
+reason that it was the only island south of the Line at the time where
+his welcome would not have been either too hot or too cold to suit his
+fastidious taste. Bell had come, in a stove-in whaleboat, because Kai
+was the nearest settlement to the point where he put the _Flying
+Scud_--the trading schooner that was his last command, if we except the
+_Cora Andrews_--aground on Tuka-tuva Reef. The girl, who arrived with
+Bell in the whaleboat, came because he brought her. The tide-rips of Kai
+passage and the Devil's own toboggan were all the same to Rona--at this
+stage of the game, at least--so long as the big, quiet, masterful Yankee
+was bumping-the-bumps with her. And even afterwards--but let that
+transpire.
+
+I, Roger Whitney, artist, formerly of New York and Paris, and, latterly,
+man-about-the French-colonies, with no fixed abode, had been landed at
+Kai by a French gunboat from the Noumea station. I packed myself off
+from that accursed hole because the suicide of a couple of officers in
+whose company I had been drinking absinthe at the _Cercle Militaire_ for
+some weeks had reminded me altogether too poignantly of what I might, in
+the ordinary course of things, expect to be doing myself before long. A
+change of scene and, if possible, a modification of habits was the only
+hope. I would never have had the initiative to tackle even the first had
+not the feeling persisted that I was on the verge of doing something
+worth while with my painting. I went to Kai because the archipelago
+thereabouts was reputed to have the most gorgeous sky and water
+colouring in Polynesia.
+
+Neither the promised beauties nor the reputed badness of Kai stirred me
+greatly in anticipation. With a bitter smile I told myself that every
+night I was seeing sights more lovely than anything my eyes were likely
+to rest on short of Paradise, while the Chamber of Horrors in which I
+awoke every morning was a veritable annex to the Inferno itself. No, it
+was out of the question that Kai could unfold in realities, whether to
+delight or shock, things to outdo those that were already mine in dreams
+that had themselves become more real than realities. Well, it turned out
+that I was only half right, or wrong, whichever way you want to put it.
+While, on the one hand, I found the bluff, open badness of Kai rather
+more refreshing than shocking; on the other hand, it was hardly more
+than a week before I was ready to swear that not the most ethereal houri
+that ever laid her cool green hand upon my fevered brow was of a class
+to run one-two-three with a flame-quivering slip of a nymph whom I had
+surprised at her bath in a beryline pool inside the windward reef. I
+began to pull myself together from that hour. Rona, the very sight of
+whom threw most men out of hand, had quite the opposite effect upon me.
+I knew she was not for me, and the thought that the world actually held
+such loveliness in the form of flesh and blood had a sort of reassurance
+about it, like the knowledge that one has an ample income from
+government bonds.
+
+Because I had landed from the _Zelee_, and also, perhaps on account of
+my rig-out (especially the brimless Algerian sun-helmet), the "beach" of
+Kai put me down at once as a "We-we," and, therefore, a creature quite
+apart. The only Frenchmen on the island were a couple of escapes from
+the convict settlement of New Caledonia, and because neither of them
+could ride or shoot or fight with their fists, they had no standing with
+the predominant Australian "push," most of whom were more or less handy
+at all three. It was, indeed, the fact that, in spite of all my years in
+Paris and the French colonies had done to make a physical wreck of me, I
+still retained something of the quickness of eye and hand and foot which
+had conspired to make my Harvard record as an all-round-athlete one that
+only two or three men have equalled even down to the present day, that
+gave me such easy sledding in making my way with the "best people" of
+Kai.
+
+It took just three minutes--the length of the first round of the
+"friendly bout" I fought with "Heifer" Halligan, ex-welter-weight
+champion of Victoria, at Jackson's pub one afternoon--to change Kai's
+openly expressed contempt for me to something very near respect. I
+thoroughly appreciated the attitude of that breezy lot of sport-loving
+rascals toward a Frenchified Yankee artist, especially one that did not
+appear to be a fugitive from justice, and so took the first opportunity
+to win a standing with them which would at least incline them to let me
+go my own way when I wanted to. Notwithstanding my wretched condition, I
+outpointed my chunky opponent a good three to one in that opening round;
+indeed, the "Heifer's" excuse for the foul which put me to sleep in the
+Second was that both his "bloomin' peepers" were so nearly swelled shut
+he couldn't see "stryght." But it was my swelling groin and battered
+hands, rather than "Heifer's" bruised optics, that came in for first
+attention from deft-fingered Doc Wyndham--once of Guy's, on his own
+admission. The next day I was waited upon by a delegation sent from
+"Jackson's Sporting Club" to urge me to put myself in training for a
+go-to-the-finish with "Shark-mouth" Kelly of Suva, the Fiji open champ.
+My speed would dazzle a cow-footed dolt like "Shark-mouth" was, they
+said, and he would be easy picking for me. They further urged that we
+could clean up all the loose money west of the "Hundred and
+Eightieth"--what odds would Fiji not give in backing a fourteen-stone
+stoker against an artist that only weighed ten stone and looked half
+dished with the "green" besides? Moreover, I could keep the whole purse
+for myself; all they wanted out of it was the sport. God bless the
+scalawags, it was more than half true, that last.
+
+The funny thing about it was that the project actually tempted me at the
+time, principally, I think, because there seemed a chance that the hard
+exercise of training--the very thing, indeed, that helped work the
+miracle a few years later--might effect me at least a temporary
+separation, if not a permanent divorce, from the "Green Lady." I was
+still temporizing with "delegations" when the _Cora Andrews_ dropped her
+hook in Kai Lagoon and gave us something else to think about.
+
+If the little cunning I had left with my fists won me the respect of the
+"beach," it remained for my proficiency with the revolver--something
+which I had never allowed myself to grow rusty in--to give me real
+prestige. My father had been only less famous as a pistol shot than as a
+builder of steel bridges, and from my birth it had been his dream that I
+should carry on the tradition in both lines. If it had broken the old
+boy's heart when I turned my back on engineering for art--insisting on
+going from Harvard to Beaux Arts instead of to Boston "Tec" as he had
+planned--he at least had nothing to complain of on the score of my
+aptitude for the revolver. He admitted that I had bred true in hand and
+eye, even on the day that he called my "art tomfoolery" a throwback from
+my French grandmother. I have always thought that the one circumstance
+which prevented the Governor from cutting me off in his will when he
+finally had definite proofs of the depths to which I had sunk in Paris,
+was the fact that, on my last visit to the old home on the Hudson, I had
+beaten him, shot for shot, with his own pistols, and at his favourite
+distance.
+
+They were rather free with their gun play during my first fortnight at
+Kai, each little affair having been followed by one or two more or less
+ceremonious burials in the coral-walled cemetery on the south lip of the
+windward passage. It was merely as a precautionary measure--on the off
+chance that they should be tempted to draw me into something of the kind
+at a time when I might not be quite on edge for it--that I took early
+opportunity to uncover a trifle of what I had crooked in my
+trigger-finger. A casually winged gull or two, and a few plugged pennies
+(not a miss at the latter, luckily, even when they tried to spin them
+edge on to my line of fire) effected all that was necessary. After that,
+though they were continually sending for me to come down to Jackson's
+and shoot the wire off champagne corks (fizz, loot of some kind, was the
+freest flowing drink on the island at the time), or perform some other
+equally useful and spectacular gun stunt, not the roughest of the gang
+but took the most meticulous care not to press his invitation the
+instant it sank home to him that my mood of the moment wasn't of a kind
+calculated to blend smoothly with the free and easy spirit of a
+beach-combers' carousal.
+
+It was hardly to be expected that they would ever quite understand why a
+man who could "blot out a cove's blinker as easy wiv his fist as wiv his
+gun" (as I was told that "Reefer" Ogiston, penal absentee and pearler,
+put it one day) and who "'peared mo' than comfitabl' heeled fo' coin,"
+should be "light an' looney enuf tu go roun' smearin' smashed barnculs
+on sail cloth"; and yet it was on that very score--or at least to their
+quick comprehension of what I was driving at in my pictures--that the
+"beach" of Kai rendered me a priceless service. Almost from the outset
+they began to "twig" my marines, to feel the living atmosphere I was
+striving to paint into them. They were all men who had lived by the sea,
+on the sea; yes, and not a few of them had worked under the sea. Well,
+when I began to see those deep-set, wrinkle-clutched eyes squint to a
+focus of concentration, and, presently, the quick heave of a hairy chest
+as the message of the canvas flashed home, I knew that I was on the
+right track. Nothing less than that would have given me the courage to
+go on working, as I had set myself to do, on a steadily decreasing
+allowance of absinthe, a certain supply of which, of course, I had
+brought with me from Noumea.
+
+So much for me and my relations to Kai at the time of which I am
+writing. Now as to Bell....
+
+"Who is that tall, square-jawed chap who looks as though he was not
+quite sober?" I had asked a day or two after I landed.
+
+"Yank--calls himself Bell," Jackson replied laconically; adding that he
+was "not quite sober" when he tried to take a cross-cut over Tuka-tuva
+Reef with the _Flying Scud_, that he was "not quite sober" when he hit
+the beach in a busted whaleboat, that he had been "not quite sober" all
+the time since, and that there was no doubt that he would still be "not
+quite sober" when the time came for him to leave the island, whether he
+went out with the tide in an outrigger canoe or shuffled off up the
+Golden Stairs. "Allus been pickled and allus goin' to be pickled,"
+Jackson continued; then, qualifyingly: "Course I don't know he was
+pickled when he kum int' the world, but I'm willin' to lay any odds that
+he'll be pickled when he shuffles out of it."
+
+Just about all of which was, or proved to be, "stryght dope."
+
+After quoting this terse summing of Jackson's, it may sound a little
+strange when I say that Bell was a gentleman--not _had been_, understand
+(that could have been said with some truth about a dozen or more of us
+at Kai), but _was_ a gentleman. Though undeniably never "quite sober,"
+the fact remained that no one on the island had ever seen him "quite
+drunk." And no matter how much liquor he had stowed "under hatches," no
+one could say that it interfered either with his trim or his navigation.
+His even rolling gait was always the same, whether it was the glow of
+his eye-opening plunge at dawn that lighted his face, or the flush of
+twelve hours of steady tippling that darkened it at twilight. Nor was he
+ever known to omit that gravely courteous, almost "old-fashioned," bow
+which, with the flicker of smile that was more of his eyes than his
+mouth, was the invariable greeting he bestowed upon friend and stranger
+alike. The mellow drawl of his "It's suah goin' to be a fine mawnin',"
+had made it easier for me to weather dawns that--in my inflamed
+imagination--menaced monstrously in jagged lines like a cubist's
+nightmare. If drink had any effect on his speech, it was to incline him
+to reserve rather than garrulity. His temper appeared to be under quite
+as perfect control as his legs. Even when he broke "Red" Logan's jaw
+with a swift short-arm jolt the time that sanguine Lochinvar tried to
+nip Rona off his arm as they passed on the beach in the twilight, they
+said that Bell hardly raised his voice as he "guessed that'd hold the
+varmit fo' a while." And when, a few days later, Doc Wyndham told him
+with a grin that "Red" wouldn't be screwing a diving helmet on his block
+for some weeks to come, it was said there was real regret in the
+Yankee's voice as he hoped that the injury wouldn't be "pumanant."
+
+Yes, before I had been a week at Kai I felt that there was a little
+addition I could safely make to Jackson's comprehensive estimate. I knew
+that Bell had been born a gentleman, and--whatever lapses there may have
+been, or might be--I knew he was going to die a gentleman. And that also
+(had I put it on record) would have proved pretty nearly "stryght dope."
+
+What stumped me at first was trying to reconcile the remarkable control
+Bell maintained over all his faculties in spite of his hard drinking
+with the fact (apparently fully authenticated) that he had run
+aground--through drunkenness--every ship he had ever commanded,
+beginning with a U. S. gunboat. He cleared up that matter for me himself
+one afternoon, however, by casually observing--at the moment he chanced
+to be watching me trying to transfer to canvas the riot of opalescence
+between the _lapis lazuli_ of the barely submerged reef and the deep
+indigo where a hundred fathoms of brine threw back the reflection of the
+sinister core of cumulo-nimbus in the heart of a menacing squall--that
+the sea had always acted as a tremendous stimulant to him, especially
+when he trod a deck.
+
+"If I could just have managed to cut out the whisky at sea, all would
+have been smooth sailin'," he said in his deep rich Southern drawl. "On
+land--heah ... anywheah--kawn jooce is lak food to me; mah body convuts
+it into ene'gy just lak an engine does coal. But with a schoonah kickin'
+undah me--we'ell, I guess theah's just one kick too many, something lak
+mixin' drinks p'raps. It suah elevates me good an' plenty ... and when I
+come down theah's natchaly some crash. My ship an' I gen'aly strike
+bottom at about the same time. But, s'elp me Gawd" (a tensing _timbre_
+in his voice) "on mah next command--"
+
+It was the one sure sign that Bell was beginning to feel the kick of his
+"kawn jooce" when he spoke of his "next command." Unless that kick was
+beginning to carry a pretty weighty jolt behind it he knew just as well
+as everyone else on the beach did that he would never get his Master's
+Certificate back again, and that even if he did there was no house from
+Honolulu to Hobart that would trust a ship to a man who had already
+beached a half-dozen.
+
+Kai was glib to the last detail--rig, tonnage, cargo, insurance, owner
+and the like--respecting the several merchant craft Bell had piled up in
+the course of his downward career; but the extent of local "dope" in the
+matter of the gunboat episode was to the effect that it happened "up
+Manila-way," and that "that was the bally smash that started him goin'."
+
+Personally, I took little stock in the naval part of the yarn--that is,
+at first. Then, one morning--it was the day after the tail of a typhoon
+had sucked up the end of Ah Yung's laundry shack and left everyone on
+the beach short of clothes--Bell came out in a suit of immaculate
+_starched_ whites. It was the cut of the jacket and the way he wore it
+that drew and held my puzzled gaze; that its shoulders were "drilled"
+for epaulettes and that its thin pearl buttons barely held in
+buttonholes that had been worked for something thicker and wider I did
+not notice till later. Steady-eyed, lean-jawed, square-shouldered,
+ready-poised--not even a flapping Payta _sombrero_ could quite disguise,
+nor five years of heavy tippling quite obliterate, the marks of type.
+Then I understood why it was that Bell, all but down and out though he
+might be, was, and would remain to the last, a gentleman. There are
+things the Navy puts into a man that not even a court-martial can take
+away.
+
+The only allusion Bell ever made to his remoter past was drawn from him
+a few days later, when--he was watching me paint again--I chanced to
+mention that I had spent a fortnight in the Philippines on my way south
+from Saigon to Australia. Glancing up at the sound of his sharp intake
+of breath, I saw his jaw set over the questions that leapt to the tip of
+his tongue, to relax gradually as a faraway look came into his wide-set
+grey eyes and a wistful smile of reminiscence parted his lips.
+
+"Did you heah the band play on the Luneta in the evenin'?" he asked
+eagerly, "while the _spiggoties_ in their _calesas_ wuh racin' round the
+circle, an' the kiddies an' theyah nusses wuh rompin' on the grass, an'
+the big red sun was goin' down behind Mariveles beyond the bay? An' did
+you know the Ahmy an' Navy Club--not the new one ... the ol' one ovah
+cross the moat inside the wall?"
+
+"Put up there all my time in Manila," I replied. "A very comfy old
+hangout, especially considering what the hotels were."
+
+"An'--did you--" (he gulped once or twice as though the question came
+hard) "did you evah heah them speak at the Club of a chap called Blake
+... Lootenant-Commandah Blake? He was a son of Captain Blake, who helped
+Sampson polish off Cervera, an' a gran'son of Adm'al Blake. Ol' naval
+fam'ly."
+
+"You mean the man who pulled off that coup when Wood was cleaning up the
+crater of Bud Dajo? Some kind of a bluff on his own with one of the
+little old gunboats Dewey captured after the Battle of Manila Bay,
+wasn't it? Scared some Jolo Dato into giving up a bunch of our men he
+already had lined up against a wall to _bolo_, didn't he? Of course, I
+remember perfectly now. General X----" (mentioning the Military Governor
+of Mindanao by name) "told me the yarn himself the night I dined with
+him in Zamboanga. He said no one but an old poker shark would ever have
+thought of the stunt, much less had the nerve to bluff it out.
+Incidentally he mentioned that the chap was the best poker player in the
+Navy, as he was also the speediest baseball pitcher ever graduated from
+Annapolis; that he had been missed almost as much for the one as the
+other since he dropped out of sight several years before. Some
+difficulty about--"
+
+"Tryin' to push Corregidor out of the entrance to Manila Bay with the
+nose of his gunboat," Bell cut in harshly, the hell in his soul glowing
+through his eyes as the glare of the coal-bed welters beyond a stoker's
+lifted furnace flap. That, and a single sob sucked through his
+contracted throat as the vacuum in his chest called for air, were the
+only outward signs of the intensest spasm of throttled emotion I ever
+saw assail a human being. Then the square jaw tightened, the cords of
+the muscular neck drew taut, and what would have been another body and
+soul racking sob was noiselessly absorbed in the buffer of a flexed
+diaphragm. The fires of agony behind the eyes paled and died down like
+an expiring coal. The corrugations of the brow smoothed out as a
+smile--half amused, half wistful--relaxed the set lips. The old
+controlled Bell (I shall continue to call him so) was in the saddle
+again.
+
+"So they still remembah mah ball-playin'," he drawled musingly, his left
+hand digits gently massaging the bulbous swelling remaining after some
+red-hot drive had telescoped the middle finger of his right. "Ye'es, of
+co'se they'd miss mah wing in the Ahmy-Navy game at Ca'nival time. But
+mah pokah--we'ell I reckon a few of 'em did find mah pokah hand about as
+bafflin' as mah baseball ahm. But it was straight deliv'ry, tho'--both
+of 'em. An' they wouldn't be callin' me a fo'-flushah, etha. No, you
+didn't heah any of 'em say that, I'm right suah."
+
+A smile more whimsical than bitter twitched his lips twice or thrice in
+the minute or two he stood alone with his thoughts. "So I've sort o'
+dropped out o' sight to 'em?" he said finally. "We'ell, I guess that was
+about the best thing to happen for all consuned. But, just the same, if
+you evah go back Manila-way I won't be mindin' it if you tell 'em that,
+tho' the ol' wing's tuhn'd to glass from long lack o' limberin', an'
+tho' I don't play pokah down heah fo' feah o' bein' knifed fo' mah luck,
+I'm still hittin' true to fohm in mah own lil' game of alterin' the sea
+map with the noses of ships. I reckon they'll know the reason why."
+
+There was another interval of silence, but, unlike the other, not
+charged, electric. Bell's blow-off through the safety-valve of frank
+speech had taken the peak off the pent-up pressure within, and when he
+spoke again it was merely to quote what the Governor of North Carolina
+had said about its having been a long time between drinks. "Great thust
+aggravateh, the Sou'east Trade." Would I mind--ahem--hiking home with
+him and lubricating my tonsils with a drop of "J. Walkah"? That was
+simply his delicate way of pretending to ignore my slavery to absinthe,
+a habit which not even the most whisky-saturated sot of an Anglo-Saxon
+can ever quite forgive one of his race for falling a victim to. I
+wouldn't? "We'ell, _hasta manyanah_."
+
+With a crunch of coral clinkers under his feet and a stave of "Carry Me
+Back to Ol' Virginny" on his lips, Bell, disdaining the smooth path by
+the beach, swung off through the pandanus scrub on what he called a
+"bee-line for home"! He had a weakness for taking "short-cuts" on land
+as well as at sea. Never again--not even in the moment of his great
+decision--did he lift for me or any other man the "furnace flap" of iron
+reserve that masked the fires of his innermost soul.
+
+Their saving "sense of sport," which was the golden vein in the rough
+iron of the "beach push" of Kai, made it inevitable that they should
+have a substantial sense of respect for a man of Bell's stamp, and this
+might easily have ripened to an active popularity had not the American's
+quiet but inflexible reserve prevented their knowing him better. They
+suspected that he was no novice in handling the big Colt's that was
+flopping on his hip when he landed, they knew that there was a weighty
+punch behind his long arm, and they were frankly outspoken in their
+admiration of the manner in which he stowed and carried his booze. But
+what had impressed them more than anything else was the way in which he
+had taken the devil out of a vicious imp of a Solomon Island pony on the
+beach one morning. "Hellish hard-handed," "Slant" Allen had said, as his
+steel-blue eyes narrowed down to slits in the intensity of his interest
+and admiration; "but a seat like he was screwed to the brute's backbone.
+Old cross-country rider--hundred to one on it. Man in a million in a
+steeplechase on a horse strong enough to carry the weight. Gawd, what a
+seat!"
+
+All in all, indeed, there was only one thing the "beach" held against
+Bell, and that was Rona, or rather his possession of her. There was
+nothing personal in this, of course. They merely regarded the big
+American in the same light they had always regarded a man with a chest
+of pearls or anything else of value that their simple, direct natures
+made them yearn for the possession of. There was this difference,
+however. Where the "push" of Kai would have combined to a man to get
+away with a box of pearls or a cargo of shell, the annexing of a woman
+was essentially a lone-hand game, and--well, Bell was hardly the kind of
+a "one-man job" any of them cared to tackle. I feel practically certain
+that, but for the disturbance of the even tenor of Kai's way incident to
+the _Cora Andrews_ affair, his "rights" in Rona would never have been
+challenged.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+
+                            THE GIRL HERSELF
+
+
+As for the girl herself, words fail me in trying to picture her, just as
+my brush and pencil (save perhaps for that one rough memory sketch, done
+at white heat while still gripped in the exaltation that first glimpse
+of her splashing inside the reef had thrown me into) have always failed.
+This is, I fancy, because, unbelievably beautiful though she was, there
+was still so much of her appeal that was of the spirit rather than the
+flesh--something intangible which had to be sensed rather than seen. She
+was compact of contradictions, physical as well as mental. So slender as
+almost to suggest fragility at a first glance, there was still not a
+straight line, nor an angle, nor a hint of boniness, from the arch of
+her instep to the tips of her ears. Again, pixie-like as she was in the
+dainty perfection of her modelling, there was yet a fairly feral
+suggestion of suppleness and strength underrunning the soft fluency of
+contour. The strength was there, too, held in reserve in the flexible
+frame like the power of a coiled spring. I saw her unleash it one
+morning when, impatient of the slowness of a clumsy Fijian who was
+launching a very sizable dugout for her, she yanked him aside by the
+hair of his fuzzy head and did the job herself. I can still see the run
+of muscles under the olive-silk skin of arm and ankle, and the bent-bow
+arch of her slender back, as she gave a last push to the cranky
+outrigger. Indeed, my mind is full of pictures like that--paddling,
+swimming, leaning hard against the buffets of a passing squall, with a
+lock of wet hair streaking across her glowing face and her drenched
+garments clinging to her lithe limbs; and yet, as I have said, the
+buoyant, flaming spirit of her always escaped my brush and pencil as it
+now eludes portrayal by my pen.
+
+But the most baffling, as it was also the most fascinating, of Rona's
+contradictions was the combination she presented of inward intensity and
+outward calm. The fire of her was, perhaps, the first thing one was
+conscious of. Even I, with my blood thinned and cooled with the ice of
+absinthe, could never watch her movements without a quickening of my
+jaded pulses; to the sanguine combers of Kai the sight of her (whether
+the rippling undulations of arms and shoulders as she drove a canoe
+through the water, or the hawk-like immobility of her as she poised on a
+pinnacle of reef waiting for a chance to cast her little Dyak purse-net)
+was palpably maddening.
+
+So much for the flaming appeal of the girl in action, or suspended
+action, which was, of course, about the only way in which she was ever
+revealed to the "beach." Now picture the same creature (as Bell--and
+occasionally myself, his only intimate friend on the island--so often
+saw her) seated cross-legged on a mat, her sloe-eyes, set slightly
+slant, fixed dreamily on nothingness, like a sort of reincarnated
+girl-Buddha. The sight of her thus never failed to awaken in my nostrils
+the smell of smouldering _yakka_ sticks, and to set my ears ringing with
+the throb of temple bells.
+
+To my hyper-sophisticated (I will not say degenerate) senses this
+Oriental side of the girl made a subtle appeal that was like an
+enchantment. The passion to paint her--always burning within me when I
+saw her in action--never assailed me when she fell into one of those
+contemplative calms. Rather the peace of her soothed me like an opiate
+and made me content to sit and dream myself. It was the one thing (until
+I got the habit by the throat years afterward) that ever held my nerves
+steady when the "absinthe hour" drew near at the end of the afternoon.
+As long as Rona would continue to "sit Buddha" I had myself completely
+in hand, even till well on after sunset. But if she moved, or spoke, or
+even showed by her eyes that she was following Bell's words (it was
+he--less sensitive to this phase of her than I--who did most of the
+talking at these times), the spell was broken. The haste of my bolt for
+home was almost indecent. I have sometimes thought that a few months
+alone with Rona at this time might have effected very near to a complete
+cure in me--by a sort of involuntary mental therapeutic treatment on her
+part, I mean. But perhaps the other side of her--the "unreposeful"
+one--might have complicated the case.
+
+Both the fire and the repose of Rona--the passion and the peace of
+her--were reflected in the olive oval of her face, the one by the full,
+sensuous lips and the sensitive nostrils, and the other by the smooth,
+low brow. The low-lidded blue-black eyes were "debatable territory," now
+in the hands of one, now the other. So, too, that infallible "gauge of
+temperament," whose dial is the pucker between the eyebrows. With Rona,
+this "passion-pressure index" was a corrugated knot of intensity or an
+olive blank according as to whether her inner fires were flaming or
+banked.
+
+Bell knew little of the girl's origin and said less. "Rona's _trousseau_
+consisted of huh peacock sca'f an' this heah baby _bolo_," he said in
+his slow drawl one afternoon when he had borrowed the exquisite little
+dagger to show me how the Jolo _juramentado_ executed his favourite
+belly-ripping stroke; "an' I reckon they'll comprise 'bout the sum total
+of huh mo'nin' at mah fun'ral." That, and "I guess Rona knows no mo'
+'bout mah past reco'd than I do 'bout huhs," was all I recollect his
+ever having said on the subject. He was content to let it rest at that.
+
+It was old Jackson who told me that he had seen the girl at
+Ponape, where she had been brought by an "owl-eyed" (referring to
+horn-spectacles rather than to the almond orbs themselves, I took it)
+"chink" when he came back to the Carolines after buying bird-of-paradise
+skins down New Guinea-way. She was dressed "Java-style" at the time, and
+was said to have been picked up at Ternate or Ambon in the Moluccas.
+Although the wily old Celestial kept the girl practically under lock and
+key from the first, customers of his shop occasionally glimpsed her, and
+she them, it would seem. Among these was the Yankee skipper of the
+trading schooner, _Flying Scud_. The coming together of those two must
+have been like the touching off of a _ku-kui_-nut torch, Jackson opined,
+adding that he supposed I "twigged that thar was no snuffin' uv
+_ku-kui_, onst aflar."
+
+Just how the sequel eventuated no one in Ponape save the old Chinaman
+knew, and he never told. With only half her copra discharged, the _Scud_
+was heard getting under way at midnight, shortly after which the
+silhouette of her, close-reefed, was observed to blot out the moon three
+or four times as she beat out of that "hell's craw" of a passage in the
+teeth of a rising sou'wester. The girl was never seen in the Carolines
+again. Neither was Bell nor the _Scud_, for that matter, as it was but a
+few days later that he attempted his disastrous short-cut across
+Tuka-tuva Reef.
+
+The next morning the Chinaman waited on his customers with his neck
+heavily, obscuringly swathed in bandages. He kept these on for a
+fortnight or more, and when they were finally dispensed with replaced
+his loose shirt with a close-buttoned jacket having an unusually
+high-cut neck. Even the latter, however, could not entirely conceal a
+number of parallel red cicatrices which, beginning on his fat jowls, ran
+down, slightly converging, onto his puffy yellow throat. Jackson felt
+sure that the point where those red furrows came to a focus must have
+been "fairish messed up."
+
+On the beach of Ponape opinion was fairly divided as to whether the big,
+close-mouthed Yank had "strong-armed" the Chinaman and carried off the
+girl bodily, perhaps against her will, or whether she had made the
+get-away unaided, going off to the _Scud_ on her own. In Jackson's mind
+there were no doubts.
+
+"I see them welts wi' my own peepers," he said, "an' they wan't the
+marks uv a man. They wuz _scratches_. That lanky Yank don't scratch ...
+'e _wallops_. But that gal--s'y, did y'u ever tyke a squint at 'er
+taloons? Them's the ans'er. She kum to 'im; an' she's stickin' lika
+oktypus."
+
+Again I must credit old "Jack" with handing me pretty near to the
+"stryght dope."
+
+Yes, I had indeed noticed Rona's wonderful fingernails; likewise the
+astonishing amount of care she lavished on them. One could not have
+helped noticing them. A quarter to half an inch long, meticulously
+manicured, and stained a maroon-brown (rather darker than the rich _sang
+du boeuf_ of _henna_), she was always polishing them--those of one hand
+on the palm of the other--even when "sitting Buddha" with dreaming
+half-closed eyes. I inferred the habit of letting them grow was acquired
+in the course of her association with the Chinese. She cut them just
+short of where they would begin to curl and be a nuisance. A fraction of
+an inch longer, and they would have been as useless as the tusks of an
+old boar that had curved back more than a half circle. As they were....
+
+One man's guess was as good as another's in the matter of Rona's racial
+origin. Kai, though agreeing that she came from "somewhere Java-side,"
+always spoke of her as a Kanaka, just as they did of all the rest of the
+"beach" women who were not palpably Jap, Chinese or white. I doubt very
+much, however, that she had a drop of real Polynesian blood in her
+veins. Flaring with temperament though she was, there was still nothing
+about her of the happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care sensuousness of the
+Caroline or Samoan, the only women of the Islands to whom she bore even
+the faintest resemblance in face or figure. If she had come from
+Marquesas-way--but no, not even an admixture of old Spanish pirate blood
+would have accounted for either the spirit or the body of Rona.
+
+The girl's practice of wearing her _sulu_ (Kai used the Fijian name for
+the inevitable South Sea waist-cloth which the Samoans call _lava-lava_
+and the Tahitians _pareo_) Malay-fashion--looped over the breasts and
+secured by a hitch under the left arm--indicated that her outdoor life
+at least had been spent somewhere in the Insulinde Archipelago. Her very
+considerable English vocabulary, however, and especially her fluency in
+"pidgin," could hardly have been acquired save through some years of
+residence in the Straits Settlements or the Federated Malay States. I
+was inclined to favour Singapore, especially as she had once let slip
+something about a fling at _fan-tan_ at Johore. But even had she been
+born in that amazing island melting pot, her unmistakably Hindu cast of
+features and mould of figure were hardly accounted for. The Madrassi
+Tamils of the Straits were coolies, and Rona radiated _caste_ from her
+slender pink-tipped toes to her crown of indigo-black hair coils.
+
+In my own mind I harboured the theory that the girl was a "by-product"
+of the harem of one of the innumerable petty Sultanates of Malaysia,
+among which I knew were to be found girls of all the tribes and races of
+the Moslem world. In no other way could I account for the flaming spirit
+and the physical perfection of her. Not even descent from that strange
+Hindu remnant of the lovely island of Lombok, just east of Java (a
+theory which I had also turned over in my mind), quite satisfied on both
+these scores. As to what sort of a centrifugal impulse might have
+operated to spin her forth to the clutches of the currents of the
+outside world, I had not speculated very deeply. But--well, I knew
+something of the strange currencies in which Malaysian potentates paid
+their debts to Singapore rug and jewel merchants!
+
+In spite of the increasing warmth of Bell's friendship for me, my way to
+Rona's confidence proved far from easy sledding. This was partly because
+I had got in bad at the outset by starting to sketch that capricious
+lady at her reef-side bath in the face of her very outspoken disapproval
+of anything so unseemly, and partly because she was slow in making up
+her mind that I did not necessarily classify with the predatory males
+against whom her whole life had unquestionably been an unrelieved
+defence. Obsessed by the desire to paint her, I had not improved my
+standing with the girl by asking Bell (after she had refused me
+pointblank) to intercede to get her to sit for me. Indeed, that _faux
+pas_ on my part seemed to have put an end for good to any chance I might
+have had of getting her to pose. Rona was openly indignant that I should
+have presumed to regard her own decision as other than final in the
+matter, while Bell, though perfectly good-natured about it, was no less
+decided in his disapproval.
+
+"No, sah, I'm not fo' it in the least, ol' man," he drawled decisively.
+"Lil' Rona's 'bout the neahest thing to a true, lovin' an' lawful wife I
+evah had, awh evah will have, fo' that mattah. So you must see that it
+doan quite jibe with mah sense o' what is right an' propah unda the
+ci'cumstances fo' me to aid an' abet a proceduah that might culminate in
+huh appeahin' on the wall o' somun's bathroom as a spo'tin nymph awh a
+wallowin' mumaid. Nothin' doin', ol' man; not with mah blessin'."
+
+That ended it, of course. From then on I had to content myself with the
+hopeless "sketches from memory," in not the best of which was I able to
+catch more than a suggestion of what I sought. I could not have failed
+more utterly had I set myself to do a "character portrait" of the "Green
+Lady" herself.
+
+But on the personal side it was not long before I began to make an
+appreciable gain of ground with Rona. First she ceased avoiding me when
+I dropped in for a mid-afternoon yarn with Bell; then she began to
+assume a sort of "benevolent tolerance" by coming and sitting on the mat
+as we talked; finally she started taking an active interest in the
+conversation, coming out of her Buddha-like trances every now and then
+to cut in with some trenchant comment in fluent _bêche-de-mer_ jargon,
+or perhaps a shrewd question phrased in carefully chosen and enunciated
+English.
+
+At last, one memorable afternoon, she came (quite on her own initiative,
+he assured me) with Bell to call at the little thatch-roofed,
+woven-walled hut I was calling home at the time, wearing in honour of
+the occasion her most treasured possession, the "peacock" shawl. It was
+this astonishingly fine piece of Cantonese embroidery which Bell had
+mentioned as having made up, with the little Malay _kris_, the sum total
+of the dower Rona had brought him. It was the first time I had had a
+chance to examine it at close quarters and I saw at a glance that,
+however it had come into her possession, it had once been a priceless
+thing, a real work of art, a treasure fit for the _trousseau_ of a
+princess.
+
+The body of the shawl was amber-coloured silk of so close a weave that
+it would have shed water as it stopped light. A rubber blanket would not
+have thrown a blacker shadow when held against the sun. Yet so sheer and
+fine was the fabric that a twist of it streamed from one hand to the
+other as brandy pours out of a flask. The peacock itself, done in a
+thousand tints and shades of delicate floss, was all of life-size in
+body and something more than that in tail. Stitching and matching,
+stitching and matching--you could almost _see_ the artist growing old
+before your eyes as you thought of the years he must have bent above his
+glacially-growing masterpiece.
+
+With this rainbow-bright rectangle of shimmering silks worn folded over
+the shoulders in the ordinary way the peacock must have been
+considerably telescoped and distorted. It was doubtless for this reason
+that Rona always wore it Malay-fashion, as the Javanese women wear their
+_sarongs_. This displayed the jewel-gay bird in all his pride, the
+bright breast swelling over Rona's own and the coruscant cascade of tail
+(you could almost hear the rustle of it) falling about her limbs like
+the feather mantle of an early Hawaiian queen.
+
+I have said that this shawl _had been_ a priceless thing. As a matter of
+fact it still was such. So lovingly had it been cared for, not only by
+Rona but by the many owners it may well have had before her (for Canton
+had done no such work as this for half a century at least), that not a
+corner was frayed, not a one of its countless thousands of stitches
+started. In texture it was scarcely less perfect than the day it was
+finished. The only thing wrong with it was that the colours were a good
+deal dulled, not by age (for the old Cantonese dyes are as deathless of
+hue as ancient Phoenician glass), but by grease. This had happened, I
+suspected, largely during Rona's stewardship, for the _tiare_-scented
+coco oil she used so freely as a hair-perfume often found its way to her
+arms and shoulders--and so to the shawl. All the latter needed to
+restore it to its pristine freshness and refulgency was a good
+"dry-cleaning."
+
+"Even Rona does not dream of the brilliance of colour under that
+grease," I said to myself. "Oh, for a can of naphtha!" Then the fact
+that my benzine would do the same trick flashed into my mind. I was all
+but out of it, I reflected, with replenishment uncertain; but I could at
+least contrive to spare enough to make a start with. Pouring a teacupful
+of the pungent solvent out of the scant pint I found still on hand, I
+saturated a clean rag with it and, without a word of explanation to the
+girl, walked up to her and started washing the bird's face and hackle.
+For an instant she stiffened angrily, evidently under the impression
+that my solicitude for the embroidery was only a thinly veiled excuse
+for chucking her under the chin. (Indeed, she confessed to me later
+that "gentlemen" could always be counted on to employ such indirect
+methods of approach, and that she found them rather more difficult to
+combat than the straight cave-man stuff of the less sophisticated
+beach-comber). But as the first glad flash of brightening colour caught
+the corner of a suspiciously-lowered eye, the innocence--even the
+laudability--of my purpose shot home to her quick mind. With a twirl of
+thumbs and a twist of shoulders, she came out of the shawl as a golden
+moth spurns its cocoon, and, leaving it in my hand, darted over to a peg
+and purloined an old smoking-jacket to take its place.
+
+"Bath heem good, Whitnee," she chirruped, giving her slipping _sulu_ a
+hitch with one hand as she thrust the other into an arm of the jacket.
+"Makee heem first-chop clean. He too much dirtee long time."
+
+That she lapsed thus into "pidgin" was a sure sign of the girl's
+ecstatic excitement. Usually her English--especially when she had time
+to ponder and polish it in advance, as when she put questions--was much
+better than that.
+
+Sopping gently to avoid pulling the delicate stitches, I managed to
+"bath heem good" from his saucy crest, down over the royal purple
+hackle, and well out upon his comparatively sober-coloured breast before
+my benzine came to an end. A slightly more vigorous dabbing beyond the
+embroidery line "alchemized" a patch of clouded amber to a halo of
+lucent gold, against which the bird's haughtily-held head stood out like
+the profile of a martyred saint on an old stained-glass window. Thus far
+would the precious contents of that teacup go, and no farther.
+
+Rona was in raptures. What though there was a blotchy high- (or rather
+low-) water mark where the dabbing had ceased near the base of the
+erupting splash of tail-feathers, what though the magic liquid had come
+off second best in its bout with an indurated gob of egg-yolk drooling
+across one wing, what though the worst of our Augean labours--the
+cleansing of the mighty green tail--had yet to be tackled--just look at
+the glory already wrought!
+
+Crooning with pleasure, the girl stroked and petted the renovated
+iridescence of the lordly neck--until I called her attention to the fact
+that the still unevaporated benzine was dissolving her finger-nail
+stain. It was an ill-advised remark on my part, for it turned her
+attention to the still unreclaimed tail and set her begging for "just
+nuff fo' one-piecee featha, Whitnee; he need it vehry ba-ad."
+
+She had her way, of course, and would have finished my benzine then and
+there had not Bell come to my rescue. Laughing and muttering something
+about "thustiness" (not drinking whisky myself, I had none in stock), he
+took Rona by the arm and started off on the homeward path. Strutting and
+preening she went, the very reincarnation of the royal bird upon her
+bosom, the very living, breathing spirit of "peacock-iness."
+
+She might just as well have finished the job--or rather the benzine--at
+once, though, for she got it all in the end. Every day or two--sometimes
+with Bell, sometimes alone--she began paying calls. Always she was in
+gala dress and always, after more or less "finessive" preliminaries, she
+made the same plea.
+
+"Just one mo' featha, Whitnee," she would coo ingratiatingly, putting a
+long-nailed finger-tip on the "eye" of the particular quill next in line
+for renovation. "Ple-ese, Whitnee.... 'Peakie' has been one veh-ry good
+fella bird too-dayee. Pu-retty ple'ese, Whitnee."
+
+Of course that always got me, and incidentally the benzine--as long as
+it lasted. I had remarked to Bell once or twice how his soft Southern
+drawl was beginning to creep into Rona's English, and how fetching a
+combination it made with her "pidgin-_bêche-de-mer_" blend. Getting wind
+of this, the sly minx played the card to the limit. That "one mo' fetha,
+Whitnee," had me fated, and she knew it. I was completely out of benzine
+for three weeks, and at a time when I was in especial need of it in
+connection with my experiments in colour-mixing; but Rona's friendship
+was cheap at the price. When I finally got hold of a five-gallon can of
+naphtha from Suva (sent up to Bougainville by Burns, Phillip packet,
+where one of Jackson's cutters picked it up), the dry-cleaning the two
+of us gave old "Peakie" was the best fun I'd had since I used to scrub
+my Newfoundland pup as a kid.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+
+                      "SLANT" ALLEN RETIRES AGAIN
+
+
+Although "Slant" Allen had "retired" to Kai on three or four occasions
+previous to my arrival, his latest sojourn--the one which ended with his
+enforced departure on the _Cora Andrews_--began about a month after I
+took up my residence there. Two questions which Jackson asked of the man
+who told him "Slant" had landed on the beach the night before have
+always struck me as especially illuminative. One was: "Did 'e fetch a
+'awse?" and the other--even more laconic--was: "Gin, Kanak, Jap or
+Chinee this croose?"
+
+And equally illuminative was his comment when told that Allen had come
+across in a catamaran, bringing neither girl nor horse. "Then 'e musta
+sloped in a 'ell uv a rush," said the old trader with finality.
+
+Kai was frankly disappointed that "Slant" had come without his "stable,"
+for the "beach race meets" which had made his name a byword throughout
+the Islands were always productive (it was universally agreed) of no end
+of sport and excitement. Allen, it was claimed, had transported ponies
+about the South Seas by every known craft that plied their waters, from
+a steam packet to a Papuan head-hunting canoe. Once, in Fiji, he had
+even swum a horse across the flooded Rewa in order to get it to Suva in
+time to run for the "Roku's Cup." Of course he won out. "Slant" always
+did that--by hook or by crook--whether with a horse or a woman. Thus
+Kai, in discussing Allen's advent.
+
+It was characteristic of that hard-hit bunch of "gentlemen and
+sportsmen" (a phrase often on the lips of the post-prandial speakers at
+their "race-banquets") that they should hasten to tell me that Allen had
+once owned a Melbourne Cup winner--"came jolly near riding the gelding
+himself, too"--while the fact that he had killed more of his
+fellow-creatures than any man of twice his age in the South Seas was
+only a matter of casual mention. You had to credit the frank minded and
+mouthed rascals for running true to form in that touch of naïveté,
+though. To them the Melbourne Cup was the greatest thing in the world
+beyond any possible comparison: a human life was just about the least.
+But they were quite as careless about their own lives as of those of
+others, and that alone always raised them in my eyes far above the
+pettiness of lesser if more conventionally moral men.
+
+Although there was not a horse on the island at the time of Allen's
+arrival, within a week he had wangled it somehow to have a bunch of
+Solomon ponies brought over from Malaite, and at the end of a fortnight
+had pulled off the first Kai "Grand National." "Slant" called it that,
+he said, because, like the great Liverpool classic from which he
+borrowed the name, it was to be a steeplechase. The half-wild little
+beasts were brought over on the deck of a trading schooner, travelling
+in such restricted quarters in the waist that they had to be thrown and
+held down to let the foreboom go over every time she was put about.
+
+A bit stiff in the knees but uncurbed of spirit, the vicious quartette
+clambered out on the beach, shook off the water soaked up during their
+swim from the schooner, laid back their ears and stood ready to fight
+all-comers with tooth and hoof. As a consequence, naturally, the
+preliminaries of the "Grand National" were more in the character of
+broncho-busting contests than speed trials, and it was in one of these
+that the mighty Bell had won the plaudits and the respect of the "beach"
+by breaking the spirit of a wild-eyed lump of a cayuse which had just
+managed to give the momentarily overconfident "Slant" a nasty spill.
+
+The "Grand National" was run round the curve of the beach, with two
+"water-jumps," the "stonewall" of the quay, and three hurdles in the
+form of old dugout canoes to be negotiated. Bell declined to accept a
+mount, and, in any event, his weight would have told prohibitively
+against him in competition with any one of at least a dozen lighter men,
+all of whom had had more or less actual racing experience.
+
+Allen was the only one to go the full route at the first running of the
+"National," all three of his rivals falling out at the water-jumps. When
+one of the defeated riders limped in and started to attribute "Slant's"
+win to the fact that he had picked the best-broken if not the speediest
+mount, that imperturbable sportsman cheerfully agreed to ride the race
+over mounted on any one of the ponies the judges cared to designate.
+Again he had a walkaway. It was all a matter of sheer horse-mastership;
+the speed of the beast had little to do with it.
+
+Finally, just to prove that the running was all on the square, "Slant"
+rode the race on each of the two remaining ponies, one of which had
+strained a tendon and rasped most of the hide off one side of him in
+trying to jump _through_ the coral blocks of the quay instead of over
+them. We gave the laughing centaur a great ovation when he brought even
+the cripple--dripping blood and sweat it was, but still responsive to
+the magic of the hand that imposed its will at the pressure of a bridle
+rein--under the wire a half-breach-length winner.
+
+And still more wildly we cheered him when "Quill" Partington--a
+broken-down and broken-out (from jail, I mean) newspaper writer, late of
+Melbourne and formerly of Calcutta and London--chivvied up an ancient
+tortoise that Jackson used to keep around his shop as a pet, and,
+mounting "Slant" on the ridge of its shell, offered to back the pair at
+catch-weights against anything on the island. "Quill," a most engaging
+character, was the poet and minstrel of Kai. He did not, however, figure
+in the _Cora Andrews_ affair, save that he later wrote some rather
+spirited verses in celebration of it, or rather of what little he knew
+of it.
+
+If the feeling in Kai had been one of disappointment when it was first
+reported Allen had landed without a horse, that awakened by the still
+more astonishing intelligence that he did not have a girl with him was
+somewhat different--rather more akin to apprehension, it seemed to me.
+"Slant" was no more of a laggard on the love-path than the race-track,
+and the gay gossip of his amazing _amours_ was sipped with the tea of
+effete Apia and Papeete with scarcely less gusto than when it sauced the
+salt-horse of the pearling fleets of Port Darwin and Thursday Island.
+The lightning of his love was likely to strike anywhere, you were told,
+sometimes in the most unexpected places. There was that vixen of a
+_gin_--a straight Australian aboriginal black--whom he had risked his
+life for in cutting across a corner of the "Never-Never" when he ran
+away with her, only to have her turn and knife him later in Deli out of
+jealousy of a half-caste Portugee Timorese who had caught his fickle
+fancy. And--to take the other extreme--there was that little
+golden-haired doll of a niece of the Governor of Fiji, who fell heels
+over head in love with "Slant" after seeing him play polo in Suva, and
+who, when they packed her off for home to break up the disgraceful
+affair, made what was described as a really sincere attempt to go over
+the rail of the Auckland-bound Union packet. Then there was "Slant's"
+affair with that notorious pearl-pirate "Squid" Saunders' girl--the one
+the missionaries adopted and tried to reclaim, and who promised for a
+while to be such a credit to their teaching--with its ghastly sequel.
+And so it went.
+
+It was said that "Slant" boasted of having a son (he never kept track of
+girls, he said) and a saddle in every group west of the "hundred and
+eightieth." I daresay this was true, though those who put it _island_
+instead of group doubtless exaggerated. I had landed at several islands
+myself where I had been unable to borrow a saddle.
+
+Most of the little unpleasantnesses that disturbed the _dolce far
+niente_ atmosphere of Kai had their roots in the fact that the male
+population of the island was always a good jump ahead of the female,
+that there were not, in short, enough girls to go round. Under these
+conditions the advent of so notorious a "feminist" as Allen could not
+but be provocative of a certain anxiety, especially on the part of those
+who were (to use Jackson's terse if inelegant expression) "'arborin'
+'igh-class 'ens."
+
+"Don't you coves make no mistake," Jackson was quoted as saying;
+"'Slant' 'll be tykin' a myte stryght aw'y. Only question is 'oo's myte
+'e's goin' to tyke. If it was any bloke but that squar'-jawed Yank w'at
+'ad 'is grapplin' 'ooks slung into the plumage uv that perky peacock
+pullet, I'd 'ave no doubt w'at bird 'Slant' ud be baggin' an' draggin'
+'ome to broil. But--layin' low as 'e is fer a bit--I'm thinkin' it ain't
+_that_ presarve 'e'll be gunnin' in just yet aw'ile."
+
+"Stryght dope" again from old "Jack." Allen had his own reasons for not
+wishing his presence in Kai to be called too forcibly to the attention
+of the authorities in the British Solomons, where his latest escapade
+(something to do with the forcible recruiting of blacks) came pretty
+near the line where they were likely to ask for a gunboat from the
+Sydney station to aid in bringing him to book. Allen was by no means
+inadept of his fellow men, and he must have known that a showdown with a
+man of Bell's stamp--even though he had the best of it and copped the
+most desirable thing he ever set eyes on for his very own--could hardly
+fail to prove a clash that men would like to talk about, the inspiration
+of a tale that would shudder itself from Yap to Tasmania in delirious
+beach-comber jargon, setting tongues wagging about him at a time when
+publicity was quite the last thing that he wanted.
+
+Pipped as he was by the pullet's pulchritude (his own expression--he
+admitted as much to Jackson offhand) the cool-headed if hot-blooded
+Allen evidently decided to ride a waiting race for at least the first
+half or three-quarters, and so have something to draw on for the
+straightaway. "Easy starter but a hell of a finisher," was the popular
+appraisal of "Slant's" way of winning with a horse, and it was but
+natural that he should pin his faith to similar tactics where a woman
+was in the running. There's a lot in common between the two, and it is
+rarely indeed that a man who has a way with the one comes a cropper with
+the other.
+
+It has occurred to me, too, that a very wholesome respect for Bell as a
+man may have had a good deal to do with Allen's failure to force the
+running at the start in the matter of Rona. The steel of his own hard
+purposefulness could not have but struck sparks on the flint beneath the
+American's mask of suave reserve at their first meeting, and the
+Australian was far too intelligent not to sense that in Bell's Jovian
+spirit there was a force more compelling than anything in his own.
+Moreover, at riding, fighting and shooting--all that carried much weight
+when they judged a man in the Islands--Allen must have known that if the
+balance inclined either way, it was in the American's favour.
+
+It may well have been the sheer rugged, manly forcefulness of Bell that
+gave Allen pause, at least in those early weeks before the Australian's
+infatuation for the girl became an obsession in which his reason had no
+part. For years he had been taking life and property out of downright
+contempt for his victims. "I'm the better man, and therefore the more
+deserving," was sufficient excuse in his own mind for his most
+high-handed outrages. But in Bell--for almost the first time perhaps--he
+had met a man who had an "edge" on him--even his soaring ego could not
+prevent his recognizing that. This must have been plain to him even when
+he measured the Yankee with the yardstick of his own primitive code.
+Yes, I really think that Allen, in his innermost mind, rated Bell as a
+man who, like himself, had a "right" to the best of everything. I am
+even convinced that, for a while at least, he even tried to respect
+Bell's right to Rona.
+
+But do not let me leave the impression that there was one iota of
+physical fear of Bell in this attitude of Allen's. From what I had seen,
+and was to see, of the cool-eyed Antipodean that was unthinkable, even
+though he knew that the powerful ex-athlete could come pretty near to
+staving in his ribs with a single punch, and though he may have
+suspected that the Yankee was the deadlier man on the draw. I honestly
+believe that "Slant" Allen had no fear in his heart of anyone or
+anything under heaven. At that time, I mean; what came to him later is
+another matter.
+
+"Slant" ran true to Jackson's "dope sheet" in the matter of "tykin' a
+myte," though, but it was done quite decently and in order--that is, as
+such things go in the Islands. He put up with "Quill" Partington (an old
+pal) for a fortnight, and then, when "Quill's" lyric spirit led him to
+run over to Malaite in search of a queer native banjo that someone had
+told him the bush niggers of the interior of that island made, strings
+and all, from the wild boar, "Slant" simply stayed on to "look after the
+pigs and chickens" (as he told them at Jackson's) and, incidentally,
+Mary Regan. Mary came from Norfolk Island, and claimed lineal descent
+from the mutineers of the "Bounty." Certainly she looked the part--of a
+descendant of mutineers, I mean. She had specialized in unhappy love
+affairs, and showed it. She had a thin, bony, angular frame, a voice
+like the wail of a cracked fog-horn, and a temper "calid enough for
+cooking purposes," as "Quill" described it. "Quill," who had developed a
+taste for curries and hot seasonings while living in India, claimed that
+the reason he had put up with Mary for so long was because of the saving
+she enabled him to effect in _paprika_.
+
+How "Slant"--straight meat-eating and unpampered of palate as he
+was--hit it off with the mercurial Mary no one seemed to know. At any
+rate, I feel sure that he found her "condimental" disposition useful as
+a counter-irritant against the rising fever of his passion for Rona,
+something which, though he kept it under astonishingly good outward
+control, had been burning with increasing heat from the very first time
+he saw her. He confessed that to me later. Curbed passion, like wounded
+pride, if it cannot find outward expression, bites inward. With all his
+despicable record well in mind, I still cannot help thinking with a
+certain admiration of the game bluff the rascal put up during those six
+or eight weeks that the enchantment of Rona worked within him, of the
+gay, devil-may-care smile that so successfully masked the writhings of
+his racked spirit. First and last, there was something about the
+fellow--I think it must have been his flaming courage--that attracted me
+strongly in spite of all that I knew, and all that I came to hold,
+against him.
+
+Since Kai held no regular intercourse with any of the surrounding
+islands, the news that the plague--a pernicious form of bubonic--had
+broken out and was making terrible ravages among both the bush and
+saltwater niggers of the Solomons was received with no especial interest
+on the beach, save perhaps by those who were wont now and then to take a
+flyer in "black ivory." The labour-recruiting trade--itself almost the
+only medium through which the pest had been spread--was hard hit of
+course; indeed, had there been anything like adequate control of the
+pernicious traffic at this time, it would have been suspended entirely
+until all of the islands from which blacks were being taken, or to which
+they were being returned, were able to present something approximating
+clean bills of health.
+
+Since this was not done, however, the only check on the movement of
+blacks--infected or otherwise--was the possible reluctance of the
+masters of ships engaged in the trade to take the risk of carrying them.
+And since the average black-birding skipper lived as a matter of course
+with a gun in one hand, his life in the other, and the devil's tow-line
+between his teeth, it was hardly to be expected that a little thing like
+the spectre of the "Black Death" looming up on the windward horizon was
+going to make him reef much canvas. The "Black Death" in another form
+would ambush him sooner or later anyhow. With niggers waiting to settle
+accounts with him in every bay it was only a matter of time at the best.
+Why worry about a few cases of a disease that might not kill him even if
+he did get it? Heave in and get under way! That was about the way the
+black-birder looked at it, and he went right on scattering infected
+niggers around the South Seas like a cook stirring raisins into a
+pudding.
+
+But in the secluded and peaceful haven of Kai lagoon they reckoned that
+they had little to fear from the epidemic whatever happened elsewhere.
+Let the plague and the heathen rage for all they cared. They were their
+own quarantine officers, and, until the "Black Death" ceased to stalk in
+the neighbouring islands, "No Visitors" was the order of the day. All
+very simple and efficient--in theory. Covered every possible
+contingency--just about.
+
+I had spent several colourful days once--getting about from island to
+island in the New Hebrides--with red-haired old Mike Grogan on the _Cora
+Andrews_, and had heard from that hard-fisted giant's own lips something
+of the grim balances checked against his life in practically every
+black-birding island of Melanesia. A black's home bay holds a
+labour-recruiting skipper responsible for the man's safe return at the
+end of his contract time, and if he does not come back they figure that
+the only fair way to even up the score is by killing the captain of the
+ship which took him away. Grogan calculated that he would have to be
+killed something like one hundred and forty times to make a clean sheet
+of all the accounts thus reckoned against him. He took a sort of grim
+pleasure in running over the items of the various tallies, but always
+ended with: "B'gorra, the devils'll be gittin' me yit!" He was convinced
+that it would be a "cutting-out" party that would do for him in the end,
+and I have no doubt that he fought over in his mind that final bloody
+showdown every night he stood the "graveyard" watch alone. A sudden
+volley from the bush, his whaleboat caught in a swarming rush of blacks,
+his crew disabled or deserting, and himself alone battling it out
+single-handed with the niggers at the last.... It was something like
+that he expected for a grand finale, and all the "fighting Irish" in him
+yearned for it as a sunflower turns to the setting sun.
+
+"An' it ain't as if I won't be givin' the spalpeens a run for their
+money, me bhoy," he had cried one afternoon, clapping me on the shoulder
+where I swayed with him to the plungings of the _Cora_ in a nasty
+cross-swell. "An', b'gorra, it's a way to die after a man's own
+heart--shootin' an' clubbin' into a mob o' niggers out under God's own
+sky!"
+
+Full as my mind was of other things on that accursed day of which I am
+about to write, I could not help but think of these words when they told
+me at Jackson's that old Mike's fighting spirit had passed on a windless
+midnight, and while Mike himself was jack-knifed over the _Cora's_
+wheel, spitting blood and curses, and imploring the devil to quit tying
+knots in his tortured guts with a red-hot pitchfork.
+
+What little we heard of how things came to go wrong with the _Cora_ in
+the first place fell from the blackening lips of her "Agent" (as the
+recruiter is called), who managed to reach the beach of Kai in a
+whaleboat, and who did not go into a delirium until a half-hour before
+he died that evening. She was packed to the hatches with "return" boys
+from Samoa. Although the plague had been claiming a very heavy toll
+among the Melanesian blacks of the coco plantations of Upolou, Grogan
+decided to take a chance at making the Solomons with a load which, on
+account of the risk, was offered him at double rates. They would have
+made it all right, the Agent thought, had not the southerly gale which
+blew them a long way out of their course been followed by many days of
+calms and alternating winds. Grogan's softness in trying to doctor the
+first case of plague--instead of following the customary practice, cruel
+but effective, of shooting the infected black (doomed anyhow) and
+throwing the body to the sharks--was probably responsible for the
+ghastly sequel. The blacks fell sick by dozens, until at last the
+Skipper--doubtless already in the first throes of the disease
+himself--ordered every living man except the surviving members of the
+crew driven below and battened under hatch. Grogan died that night and
+the mate the following morning.
+
+The only white man remaining was the Agent, and he, obsessed with a
+life-long horror of being buried at sea, steered the best course he
+could for the nearest island. The _Cora_, luckily heading into the
+treacherous reef-beset passage at the turn of the tide, dropped her hook
+in Kai lagoon in the first flush of the dawning of the next day.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V
+
+                            A SHIP OF DEATH
+
+
+With a good many days of my life to which I cannot look back without
+a blush of shame, I write deliberately when I say that the one
+ushered in by the raucous grind of the _Cora Andrews'_ chain running
+through its hawse-pipe as she let go anchor a couple of cables'
+lengths off Kai beach, stands alone in the horror and the painfulness
+of its memories. It is characteristic of all but the most degraded of
+beach-combers--doubtless their general contempt of life has much to do
+with it--that "once in a while" they "can finish in style"; that, on a
+showdown, they are usually there with the goods. I had always felt sure
+that, in a pinch, I could force myself to come through in the same
+way--the thought had gilded many a slough of despond for me. Well, this
+day, I had my chance and funked it--funked it clean, as a yellow dog
+slinks from a fight with its tail between its legs, as an underbred
+hunter refuses a jump. Oh yes, I had an excuse. "Seeing green" is next
+thing to "seeing yellow." Almost anyone knows that. But I had thought
+that there was enough red blood left in me to make it possible for me to
+take the bit in my teeth and finish like a thoroughbred at the last. But
+there was not. That was the thought which had made the ghastly tragedy
+even more tragical to me, which made a mockery of the triumph which I
+might otherwise have felt when, first Australia and then Europe,
+acclaimed me as the greatest marine painter of the decade.
+
+For several days previous to the coming of the _Cora Andrews_ I had
+been slipping up pretty badly on my "absinthe reform" program. It was
+largely the fault, I think, of a positively infernal spell of weather.
+The ozone-laden trade winds, falling light after a spell of low
+barometer, had finally failed altogether. Kai was lapped in sluggish
+moisture-saturated airs that clung like a wet blanket. The Gargantuan
+popcorn-like piles of the trade clouds were replaced by strata of
+miasmic mists which awakened all the latent fevers in a man's body and
+mind. The sea, slatily slick of surface, heaved in oily, indolent
+smoothness, sliding over the reef without sound or foam. The brooding,
+ominous sullenness was all-pervading, oppressive with sinister
+suggestion.
+
+Everyone on the island was drinking heavily, and mostly alone. No tipsy
+choruses boomed out from under the sounding-board of Jackson's
+sheet-iron roof. Even "Slant" Allen failed to appear for his wild
+end-of-the-afternoon dashes up and down the beach. Rona dropped in
+languidly one afternoon to say that Bell was tilting the bottle more
+frequently than she had ever known him to do before, and that for three
+days he had missed his early morning plunge from the reef.
+
+"Too much walkee with Jo'nnee Walkah, Whitnee," she punned in a feeble
+flicker of pleasantry. "I veh-ry much worree along Bel-la."
+
+She needn't have worried, though. _He_, at least, had the stuff in him
+for a proper finish.
+
+It was only to be expected that I should seek solace in a time like this
+by snuggling closer than ever into the enfolding arms of the "Green
+Lady." That fickle jade was at her best--and her worst. Never had she
+winged me to loftier pinnacles of sensuous delight; never had she
+dropped me to profounder depths of horror and despond. The night before
+the _Cora_ came marked a new "high"; also a new "low." I dropped like a
+plummet straight from a pea-green grotto full of lilies of the valley,
+maiden's hair ferns and ambrosia-breathed houri to the fire-scorched
+cliffs ringing the mouth of the Bottomless Pit. I knew that Pit of old.
+Most of the early hours of my mornings for the last five years had been
+spent in trying to keep from being pushed into it.
+
+But this time, though, it looked as if they were going to get away with
+it. Failing to break my grip (I always managed to hang on somehow), they
+had tried new tactics. They were pushing in the side of the Pit itself
+so as to carry me with it. I felt the relentless creeping of the ledge
+on which I struggled to maintain precarious footing. If I could only
+push back into the rock ... through it ... out to the air! Nothing could
+stand against the mighty heave I gave with my shoulders. The cliff
+parted with a great rip-roar of rending, and I reeled back, back,
+straight through--the pandanus siding of my hut. An instant before a
+nigger had knocked off the shackle of the _Cora's_ anchor chain. The
+unchecked run of forty-odd fathoms of rusty iron links through a
+hawse-pipe is very like in sound to the rending of a rocky cliff--that
+is, to a man in an absinthe nightmare.
+
+That violent awakening did not bring me straight back to normal by any
+means. You never come out of the "green horrors" that way, unless, of
+course, you fall into water, or set fire to the house, or do something
+else that calls for instant action. You usually come out by gradual
+stages, each successive one marked by a shade more of the earth-earthy
+than the last.
+
+In this instance my fall only changed the spirit of my nightmare. I was
+by no means out of the woods, either. I had backed away from the Mouth
+of the Pit all right, but what brought that Ship of Death--black and
+sinister she was against the bloody redness of the infernal
+sunrise--unless it was to take me there again? I _knew_ that it was a
+real ship. I _knew_ those black things festooned along its rails were
+real dead men. I _knew_ that the horrible reek which presently came
+pouring in over the oily water to penetrate my contracted nostrils was
+the real smell of rotting flesh. I _knew_ that I was looking out at Kai
+lagoon, and from the door of my own hut. I _knew_ these things, just as
+I _knew_ it was real blood I saw and tasted when I bit my finger to
+prove that I knew them.
+
+But it was still as in a dream that I became aware of an erratically
+rowed whaleboat pulling away from the Death Ship and making for the
+beach. It was with an agreeable sense of relief that I noted that it was
+apparently heading for the quay rather than in my direction. Drawing
+near, it sheered away from the weed-slippery landing and went full-tilt
+for the beach. A man--a big man, bare of legs and of chest, wearing only
+a red _sulu_--ran down to meet it. It seemed no more than a perfectly
+natural development of the ghastly pantomime that the big man should
+raise a revolver and shoot one of the black rowers when the latter
+jumped over the gunwale of the whaleboat and started to bolt up the
+beach. I saw the flash from the revolver, saw the fugitive crumple and
+fall, and the sharp report, impacting on the side of my sheet-iron
+rain-water tank, slammed against my ear-drums with a shattering "whang."
+
+That close-at-hand shot had the effect of shocking me back a notch or
+two more nearer normal; but, nerve-shattered as I always was at the end
+of a night, it was something very akin to the abject terror that gripped
+me as I backed away from the Brink of the Pit which now impelled me to
+"back away" from the new menace. Seizing my painting things from sheer
+force of habit, I slunk off through the long early morning shadows of
+the coco palm boles, not to stop until I came out upon the broken coral
+of the steep-shelving leeward beach of the island. It was as far as I
+could go without swimming.
+
+Here Laku, my Tonga boy, found me toward noon. The coffee from the flask
+he brought was the first thing to pass my lips since I had poured my
+last drink the night before. It steadied me somewhat, but my nerves
+still refused to react. The shock of the morning had been too much for
+them. I realized that Kai had a mighty knotty problem on its hands with
+that shipload of dead and dying niggers in the lagoon (Laku had told me
+it was the _Cora_, and something of what the trouble was), and it took a
+lot of screwing before I got my courage up to a point where I could
+force my reluctant feet to carry me back to shoulder my share of the
+responsibilities.
+
+I was still streaking and dabbing at my canvas at three o'clock, and it
+must have been nearly an hour later before I packed up and started back
+toward the village. I burned that bizarre rectangle of colour-slashed
+canvas on the very first occasion (which was not until a day or two
+later) that I had a chance to stand off and look at it objectively.
+There was revealed in it too much of the utter unmanliness which marked
+my conduct on this most shameful day of my life to make it a pleasant
+thing to have around. For me to have kept it would have been like a
+man's framing and hanging the excoriation of the judge who had sentenced
+him for some despicable crime.
+
+What had transpired in the village up to the moment of my return at the
+end of the afternoon I must set down as I learned of it later.
+Everything considered, it seems to me that Kai--with one or two notable
+exceptions--behaved very creditably in an extremely trying emergency.
+Awakened when the _Cora's_ anchor was let go, a number of men had run
+out to the beach, from where their glasses quickly gave them a pretty
+good idea of the state of affairs aboard the luckless black-birder. Then
+they got together at Jackson's--the lot of them in their pajamas or
+_sulus_, just as they had tumbled out of their sleeping mats--to decide
+what was to be done. The majority at first seemed inclined to stand by
+their predetermined plan of shooting the first, and every man from a
+plague-infested ship that tried to land on the beach. But at this
+juncture Doc Wyndham, calling their attention to the fact that a
+whaleboat had already put away from the _Cora_, suggested that they wait
+and learn just how things stood before starting off gunning.
+
+"I'm with you as far as shooting any nigger that tries to break
+quarantine goes," he said, "but I'm dam'd if I'll stand by and see
+anyone take a pot shot at Mike Grogan, or any other sick white man, for
+that matter. Old Mike nursed me through a spell of 'black-water' once at
+Port Darwin, and if he is in that boat I dope it it's up to me to tote
+him home to my shack and do what I can for him. If he can't clamber out
+I'm going to wade in and carry him back to the beach, so you'll have to
+shoot the two of us if you shoot at all. But I don't think you will. I'm
+not asking any of you chaps to have anything to do with the stunt. You
+needn't touch him. I'll take him home and swear not to budge from there
+till the thing's over one way or the other. After that I'll put myself
+in a ten-day quarantine. Moreover, I won't be expecting attention from
+any white man or nigger on the island in case the luck goes against me
+and I catch the pest myself. It's my own little game and I won't stand
+for any interfering in it."
+
+That was the gist of Doc Wyndham's remarks as Jackson outlined them to
+me the next day. They met with hearty assent from all of the dozen or
+more present, except on the score of letting the Doc have the job all to
+himself. He turned down every one of the volunteer nurses, however,
+saying it was his own kettle of fish and that he'd have to stew it in
+his own way. He even insisted on meeting the boat alone, urging that
+there was no use in multiplying the points of possible "plague contact."
+
+So it must have been the distinguished surgeon from Guy's that I saw
+shoot the bolting black that morning. Had I continued to watch, instead
+of bolting myself at that juncture, I would have seen him wade out, lift
+a man tenderly from the stern-sheets of the whaleboat, and start
+carrying the limp body up the beach to where a spreading bread-fruit
+tree shaded the door of the sheet-iron shack which he was wont
+humorously to refer to as his "professional, social and domestic
+headquarters for Melanesia." Following that, I would have seen a bunch
+of motley-clad figures prance down and start menacing the irresolute
+boat-pullers with flourished revolvers, forcing the frightened blacks to
+back off and begin splashing their wobbly way out to the _Cora_.
+
+Wyndham's conduct all through struck me as rather fine, especially for a
+man who was a convict of three continents and two hemispheres.
+Disappointed in finding his friend Grogan in the whaleboat, on learning
+that the latter and his mate were already dead, Doc just as cheerfully
+set about paying to the Agent the debt he felt he owed to old Mike.
+Before entering his house, he called to his girl--a saucy little Samoan
+named Melita, who had gone right on sleeping through all the
+racket--ordering her to make a hurried departure by the back door and
+not to return until he sent for her. The Doc was never a man to let
+sentiment interfere with business, Jackson opined.
+
+Making the doomed man as comfortable as possible in his own canvas
+folding bed, Wyndham deferred giving an opiate until he had gained such
+information as he could of how things were on the _Cora_. Then, after
+communicating (from a safe distance) what he had learned to a delegation
+from executive headquarters at Jackson's, he nailed a red _sulu_ to his
+front door as a danger signal and disappeared behind the bars of his
+self-imposed quarantine.
+
+I may as well state here that Wyndham--thanks, doubtless, to the
+precautions which he, as a medical man, would have known how to
+take--side-stepped the plague completely, quite as completely, indeed,
+as he sidestepped the Thursday Island customs authorities a year or so
+later, when a half season's shipment of pearls from Makua Reef, Limited,
+disappeared as into thin air.
+
+Of the information Wyndham gleaned from the Agent before giving the
+latter a shot of morphine to relieve his agony and mercifully hasten the
+inevitable end, the most important as affecting Kai's action was that
+something over a hundred blacks had been battened down in the schooner's
+forecastle and 'midships hold for seventy-two hours, with nothing but a
+couple of stubby wind-sails feeding them air. The dead had all been
+cleared out before this was done, but there were a lot of bad cases
+among the living who were driven or thrown down the hatches. By the
+stench, the Agent knew that some of these had already died; but that
+many still had life in their bodies he judged by the unabated vigour of
+the howling.
+
+The most reassuring news passed on by the dying man was that Ranga-Ro,
+Grogan's gigantic Malay Bo'sun, had remained in charge of the _Cora_,
+and that he appeared to have the black crew (only three or four of them,
+luckily, had succumbed to the plague so far) well in hand. That
+brightened the outlook a good deal, for what Kai had feared above all
+else was a general breakout and stampede, which might inundate the
+island with plague-infected niggers, crazy beyond all possibility of
+control.
+
+Ranga, who claimed to have had at one time or another every tropical
+disease on record, was--or believed himself to be--a plague immune. He
+was not in the least worried over the responsibilities that had fallen
+on him, and could be counted upon, the Agent thought, to see the game
+through. The only trouble was that he couldn't navigate, so that if the
+_Cora_ was going to be taken to a port where any real relief could be
+obtained, she would have to have at least one competent white officer.
+Would Kai furnish that officer? was the question up before the meeting
+called at Jackson's to decide what should be done with the ill-fated
+black-birder.
+
+This was rather a larger assemblage than the one which had gathered at
+dawn, called up by the rattle of the _Cora's_ anchor-chain. The latter
+was mostly made up of the "inside push," "Jackson's Own," as they were
+sometimes alluded to, and that they were a dead game bunch of sports was
+attested by the way in which they had volunteered in a body to nurse for
+Doc Wyndham. The later and more representative meeting was hardly up to
+the earlier one on the score of quality. There were a few out-and-out
+rotters on the island, and about the worst of these was a typical
+Wooloofooloo larrikin from Sydney, whose name I have forgotten. As foul
+of tongue as of face, he was as sneaking and cowardly as a wild Malaite
+pup reared in a black-birder's galley. He it was who, with a smirk on
+his tattoo-defiled face, got up and suggested that the simplest way out
+of the difficulty was to "blow up an' burn the bloomin' 'ooker w'ere she
+lies. Cook the bloody niggers to a frizzle, pleg an' all." Give him a
+few sticks of dynamite and he'd pull off the bally job himself.
+
+The leering wretch, in his eagerness, pushed right out in front of
+gaunt-framed old Jackson, who was "presiding." "Wi'out battin' a
+blinker," as he told me later, that old Kalgoorlie outlaw took the
+proper and necessary action. His straight-from-the-hip kick doubled the
+miscreant up, breathless, speechless, upon the floor--the only floor of
+sawed boards in all Kai. He rather favoured that method when he had to
+throw a man out, Jackson explained, on account of the convenient parcel
+it made of him when lifted by the back of his belt.
+
+When Jackson called the meeting to order again and explained what word
+Wyndham had sent as to the lay of things on the _Cora_, "Froggy"
+Frontein, one of the escapes from Noumea, his Gallic soul aflame, popped
+up and volunteered to sail her to any non-French port in the Pacific.
+That brought a cheer for "Froggy," but the enthusiasm died down a bit
+when it transpired that the only ships the gallant ex-counterfeiter had
+ever boarded in his life were the steamer which deported him from
+Marseilles and the cutter in which he--buried under copra in its
+hold--had escaped from New Caledonia.
+
+More competent volunteers were not lacking, however, and several of
+these were trying to urge their respective claims at once when "Slant"
+Allen's magnetic glance drew the eye of the chairman and he was given
+the floor.
+
+Calling several of the more insistent of the volunteers by name, "Slant"
+asked if it had occurred to them that the nearest port which had
+quarantine facilities equal to handling more than a dozen cases of
+infectious disease was in Australia--probably Townsville, but possibly
+Brisbane. They admitted that they hadn't thought that far ahead.
+
+"In that case," Allen cut in with, "it may be in order for me to point
+out that there's not a one of the whole mob of you young hopefuls that
+wouldn't be pinched and clapped in the brig just as soon as they saw
+your face and recollected what it was you sloped for in the first
+place."
+
+That shot made some impression, though "Crimp" Hanley seemed to think he
+had countered not uneffectively when he asked: "Who in hell thinks he's
+going to last long enough to get her there?"
+
+What "Slant" had got up to say, he went on without deigning to engage
+the logical "Crimp" in argument, was that there was one first-class
+sailor in Kai against whom nothing was booked in Australia, a man,
+moreover, who had been known to be looking for a command for a number of
+months. He referred to Captain Bell, who, he regretted to say, had not
+been summoned to their meeting. If it was agreeable to those present, he
+would be glad to wait upon Captain Bell and acquaint him with the facts
+in connection with the emergency which confronted them all. In the event
+that Captain Bell should see fit to assert his claim to this place of
+honour, as he had no doubt would be the case, he--"Slant"--was in favour
+of giving that claim precedence over all others, both because of Captain
+Bell's well-known ability as a navigator (his late slip, they would all
+admit, was due to circumstances quite beyond his control), and because
+he was the only competent man available who would not have to step out
+of the frying pan into the fire on making port in Australia. What was
+more, in case Captain Bell felt that he needed a mate for a voyage which
+could not but be beset with much danger and many difficulties,
+he--"Slant"--wished to take the occasion to put in his claim for that
+berth. He had been in bad in Sydney, he had to admit, but it was nothing
+very serious, and he felt assured that, in a pinch, there were certain
+influences which could be counted upon to get him clear. No fear that he
+would not be seen in the Islands again in due course.
+
+Considering what "Slant" was really driving at, you'll have to admit
+that this was put with consummate adroitness. The meeting voted by
+acclamation to allow him to carry out his suggestion, adjourning in the
+meantime to await developments. It was significant, in the light of what
+transpired later, that Allen flatly refused the offer of Jackson and two
+or three others to go along to Bell's with him and "make a delegation of
+it."
+
+No suspicion was aroused by the fact that Allen, on the way to Bell's
+shack, stopped in at his own for five or ten minutes. Indeed, nothing
+that he did at any time awakened anybody's suspicions--among the beach
+push, I mean.
+
+When "Slant" came out of Bell's at the end of half an hour, he was
+accompanied by the American, the latter apparently leaning heavily on
+the Australian's shoulder. This occasioned little surprise, as Bell, who
+had hardly been seen for the last three days, was believed to have been
+drinking heavily. Instead of returning round the curve of the beach to
+report at Jackson's, as it had been assumed he would, "Slant" led the
+way to a little dugout canoe lying in the shade of the coco palms in
+front of Bell's and started pulling it down to the water's edge. When it
+was seen that the slender Australian was doing most of the tugging,
+while the big American seemed to be blundering about to small purpose,
+it was remarked at Jackson's that Bell, for the first time since he hit
+the beach of Kai, appeared to have stowed enough booze to submerge his
+"Plimsol" and affect his trim. At the same time it was admitted that the
+Yankee was a wonderful "weight-carrier"--nothing like him ever seen in
+the Islands. It was thus that they mixed nautical and racing idiom at
+Jackson's Sporting Club.
+
+When the little canoe was finally launched, Bell, helped by Allen,
+stumbled forward and slithered down in the bow. The Australian plied his
+paddle from the stern. It was remarked that the dugout's progress was
+very slow, but "Slant's" leisurely paddling was attributed to the care
+he had to take on account of the trim Bell's lopsided sprawl gave the
+cranky craft.
+
+By the time the canoe slid in alongside the _Cora_, Bell appeared to
+have collapsed completely. Lifting carefully by the shoulders, Allen was
+seen to raise the inert body in the bow enough for a hulking yellow
+giant--easily recognizable as the lusty Ranga-Ro--to throw a mighty arm
+around its waist. Then, with his other arm looped round a stanchion, he
+swung his burden high above the rail and into the arms of two of the
+black crew. Thereafter nothing was seen of the _Cora's_ new skipper for
+an hour or more.
+
+"Doosed smart loadin'," was Jackson's laconic comment on the teamwork
+Allen and Ranga had displayed in hoisting Bell's husky frame out of a
+wobbling canoe and up over the _Cora's_ four feet of freeboard topped by
+five strands of "nigger wire."
+
+Allen did not go aboard, but continued to lie alongside for ten or
+fifteen minutes, evidently giving extended orders to the Malay bos'n.
+Immediately the canoe pushed off, great activity was observable among
+the crew, who were evidently rushing preparations for getting under way
+before the ebb began to race through the passage.
+
+The rate at which Allen paddled back to the beach was in marked contrast
+to his leisurely progress on the way out. Grounding the canoe on the
+beach near where it had been launched, he made directly for the door of
+Bell's house and bolted inside. Reappearing almost immediately, he came
+on along the beach at a more deliberate gait.
+
+At Jackson's he told them that Bell had jumped at the chance of taking
+the _Cora_ to Townsville.... Said it might be the means of getting his
+master's certificate back in case he pulled it off all right. But
+he--"Slant"--couldn't allow a white man to tackle a job like that alone.
+He had only landed to pick up his kit and a few things Bell wanted. He
+was going to get back aboard the _Cora_ before they began to shorten in.
+It was going to be a ticklish job, fetching the passage from where she
+lay in those fluky airs.
+
+Leaving Jackson's, Allen went to his own (or rather "Quill"
+Partington's) house, where, according to what I heard from Mary Regan a
+couple of days later, he took several drinks but did not do anything
+toward throwing his things together. A half-hour later he was seen
+hurrying along the beach to Bell's again, and when he came out from
+there it was in the company of a girl--plainly the "Peacock." Paddled by
+a third party, who came upon the scene at this juncture, these two went
+off to the schooner, boarding her just as she filled away on the first
+tack of the almost dead beat to the entrance of the narrow seaward
+passage. For all they knew on the beach, Allen was carrying out his
+program (with the little incidental of Rona--doubtless taken along at
+the last moment by way of a surprise for Bell--thrown in), just as he
+had outlined it to them. They were not hurt by his failure to say
+good-bye. They were not strong for the gentler amenities in the Islands,
+anyhow.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VI
+
+                        COMPULSORY VOLUNTEERING
+
+
+As a matter of fact, however, there had been a very considerable slip-up
+in "Slant's" carefully doped slate. That was plain from a number of
+little things which sunk into even my absinthe-addled brain in the few
+minutes I spent in his and Rona's company while paddling them off to the
+_Cora_. How staggering a slip-up it must have been for him I was not
+able to figure until I got my nerves under control the following day.
+
+I was still far from pulled together when I came back to the village
+after my day of hiding (for that's what it amounted to) on the other
+side of the island. With my head twanging like an overstrung banjo, I
+was feverishly anxious to get home and seek relief in the only thing I
+knew would relax the tension of my breaking nerves. I had told Laku to
+"putem littl' fella pickaninny in rock-a-bye belonga him" just as soon
+as he got back to the shack. This was a long-standing joke between us,
+and I knew that he would interpret aright this _bêche-de-mer_ order to
+"put the baby in its cradle" as a strict injunction to lay a certain
+long green bottle in a little basket of porous coco husk, which,
+dampened and hung in a draught, answered the purpose of a crude
+refrigerator. The vision of the slender green trickle I should shortly
+pour from the dewy fresh lip of that bottle was drawing me on as the
+thought of the oasis with its fountain draws the thirsting desert
+traveller.
+
+Between horrors fancied and real--from my struggle at the mouth of the
+Bottomless Pit to the coming of the Ship of Death--my nerves had
+suffered a number of trying shocks since the dawning of that accursed
+day; but the one that came nearest to bowling me over I had still to
+receive. I had _known_ there was a Bottomless Pit; I had _known_ there
+was a Death Ship; I had _known_ they were shooting niggers on the beach.
+As each of these horrors was projected upon my vision in turn I had
+accepted their reality as a matter of course. Didn't I see them with my
+own eyes? Didn't I continue to see them after I had bitten my finger?
+But _Rona, with her arm and her peacock shawl thrown over "Slant"
+Allen's shoulder, coming out of Bell's house_.... No, that wouldn't
+do.... That was one thing they couldn't put over on me. My eyes must be
+playing tricks on my brain. I must be in even worse shape than I
+thought. Never before had my fancy conjured up a thing so utterly,
+impossibly absurd. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, I pulled up and started
+kicking the shin of one foot with the toe of the other. That was another
+little trick I had of proving whether or not I saw what I "saw."
+
+At the clink of the broken coral under my shuffling feet the girl turned
+her head in my direction, but, far from releasing "Slant's" neck from
+her embrace, she only drew the lanky Australian closer with her right
+arm, while with her left she beckoned me imperiously.
+
+"Whitnee, come alonga this side, washy-washy!" Her thin clear voice cut
+the air like the swish of a rapier.
+
+It was, strangely enough, the fact that she lapsed into the vulgarest of
+_bêche-de-mer_, rather than the eagerness of her gesture, that drove
+home to my wandering wits the fact that Rona was confronted with
+difficulties, that she needed help. Verging on nervous and physical
+collapse as I was (and as I knew I would continue to be until I had
+gulped my first steadying draught from the cool green bottle), the
+realization that something concrete was demanded brought me instantly
+out of the half-trance in which I had walked since dawn. Still a sorry
+enough specimen, I was at least sufficiently in hand not to need any
+more finger-bitings or shin-kickings to know the difference between what
+seemed real and what was really real. Letting my easel go one way and my
+paint box the other, I hastened forward in answer to Rona's summons.
+
+"Katchem washy-washy one piecee boat," Rona began as I came up, her
+heaving breast, flushed face and flashing eyes revealing the emotion
+that held her in its grip.
+
+"Man-man; my word, what name this fella thing you do?" I interrupted
+between breaths, blurting mixed _pidgin_ and _bêche-de-mer_ English of a
+brand to match the vile blend the girl had discharged at me.
+
+"I too much cross this fella 'Slan','" she started to explain. "Him too
+much--"
+
+"You'd think she was cross with me, Whitney, if you could see the way
+she's sticking me in the neck with her hat pin," Allen cut in, the
+half-sheepish, half-amused grin he had worn from the first broadening as
+he spoke.
+
+That was the first "straight" English to be spoken, and the words had
+the effect of reminding Rona that she had been speaking nothing but low
+jargon from the outset. For weeks she had been taking the greatest pains
+to avoid both of the weird volapuks in all her chats with me. Pulling
+herself together with an effort, she strove again to be a purist.
+
+"'Scuse me, Whit-nee," she chirruped, paying "Slant" for his sally with
+a prod that made him duck like a prize-fighter avoiding a straight-arm
+punch; "'scuse me, but I'm veh-ry mad. This bloody boundah he put
+_kor-klee_ in Bel-la's drink. He take Bel-la to schoonah. Now we all go
+off to schoonah. If Bel-la he dead, then I keel this boundah, 'Slan'.'
+You will do us the paddl'?--ple-ese, Whit-nee."
+
+There was a deal more that I would fain have been enlightened about, but
+my brain was clear enough now to understand the urgent necessity of
+getting off to the _Cora_ without delay. A drugged man (or a poisoned
+one--it was not until later that I learned how that strange essence of
+the wild Papuan fig might be expected to act) on a plague-infested
+black-birder looked like just about the last word in hopelessness; but
+(I told myself) if there was anything I could do for my friend, it was
+up to me to try to do it. Rona seemed to have some sort of plan in her
+head, though just what she was taking Allen along for I didn't quite
+twig at the moment.
+
+The funny part of it was that the Australian didn't seem particularly
+averse from going off to the schooner. Indeed, it was he who cut in to
+call Rona's attention to the fact that they were rushing preparations on
+the _Cora_ for getting under way, adding: "If you don't want to be left
+at the post I might suggest you whip up a bit." Even as he spoke the
+throbbing wail of a chantey came to our ears across the water, and I
+could just make out the blur of motion on the forecastle where a knot of
+niggers was circling round the capstan.
+
+"Washy-washy! Quick! quick! Whit-nee," implored Rona, leading the way,
+with Allen's head still in the crook of her arm, to the canoe; "we must
+make the great hur-ee."
+
+Luckily, the dugout, although Allen had left it pulled well up on the
+beach when he landed, was half awash through the rising of the tide, now
+just about to ebb. I launched it without difficulty. Still with her
+knife at "Slant's" neck, Rona made him enter ahead of her and crouch in
+the bottom of the canoe, well forward, while she seated herself on the
+sinnet-wrapped thwart immediately behind his hunched shoulders. When the
+unabashed rascal coolly leaned back and started to make himself
+comfortable with an arm thrown over her knee, the girl stiffened with a
+start of repulsion. It was more than a prick she gave him this time, for
+I saw the sudden swell of his jaw muscles wipe out the lines of his grin
+as his teeth set over a repressed oath.
+
+Pushing off, I slid gingerly along the port weatherboard until the canoe
+heeled just enough to bring a gaping hole in the starboard bow clear of
+the water that started to pour through it, and began to paddle
+cautiously inside the outrigger, the only place I could get at from
+where I sat. Our progress was, of course, slow as to speed and wobbly as
+to direction. Even at that, a good deal of water kept slopping in, and I
+couldn't blame Allen, who was sitting in it, for asking Rona if she
+minded if he baled a bit with his sun-helmet.
+
+Her only reply was another prod with the needlepointed _kris_. (I knew
+it was the little Jolo dagger, for I had seen it as she adjusted her
+shawl on sitting down). "Hur-ee, Whit-nee," she urged, quiveringly
+tense, and continued to keep her flaming gaze riveted on the schooner,
+where the latter, foot by foot, was moving up on her shortening chain.
+
+About halfway out Rona gave a start and a glad little cry. "I see
+Bel-la," she laughed. "He stand up by wheel. By jingo, he look--he look
+like he lick his weight in wile cats!"
+
+That had been the big Southerner's favourite expression when, glowing
+with the reaction from his deep, eye-opening dive from the reef, he
+would come prancing back to his door of a morning. The sight of his bare
+muscular torso, white as marble against the dingy folds of the
+half-hoisted mainsail, must have called up in the girl's mind the
+picture of Bell breezing in from his bath, and brought the tersely
+quaint phrase to her lips. As a matter of fact, there was no saying at
+that distance _how_ Bell looked; but it was good to see him on his feet,
+at any rate. Probably Rona had been mistaken about the poisoning.
+
+"I told you he was all right," Allen remarked drily, shifting a few
+inches to get clear of the water that was beginning to swish about his
+knees. "He was drunk--dead drunk; that's all. He began to buck up an
+hour ago. Looked through my glass and saw them dousing him with water.
+First thing he did was to take a drink (plenty of it aboard)--saw him
+tilt the bottle. Then he must have made them open up the hatches.
+There's more than the crew lining the rail there for'ard; besides--you
+don't think the slop-chute from the galley spills out the bait that's
+drawing those black fins, do you? I won't need to tell you they don't
+belong to chambered nautili out for an afternoon sail. There's a
+man-eating shark under every one of them. Can I lend you my binoculars?"
+
+He started to slip the strap of the powerful racing glasses over his
+neck, but desisted when Rona refused to clear the way by lifting the
+point of her dagger. Save for maintaining that one important little
+point of contact, she ignored him completely, and "Slant" seemed rather
+to resent the latter more than the former.
+
+"Well, if you don't want to use it, I suppose you won't mind if I have a
+bit of a look-see," he went on in half-assumed petulance. Rona replied
+with the usual prod, but interposed no further objection when he raised
+and began focussing the glasses.
+
+"Clubbing niggers on the fo'c'sl'," he commented presently, as signs of
+commotion were visible forward. "Skipper don't want 'em too thick on
+deck while he's getting under way, most likely."
+
+Then, a minute later: "Looks like you'll need an ice-breaker to clear a
+passage through those sharks, Whitney; or perhaps we can walk across
+their backs from the edge of the jam. Seem to be thick enough to give
+good solid footing."
+
+And again, shortly: "Chain almost straight-up-and-down, Whitney. Mudhook
+going to break out in a couple of minutes. Can't accelerate that 'long,
+long pull' of yours, can you? Looks as if they weren't planning to wait
+for us."
+
+It was a gruesome passage, that last hundred yards. The sharks were
+hardly as thick as Allen's picturesque hyperbole might have led one to
+believe, but there were undoubtedly more than a score of triangular
+dorsals slashing about in swift circles. But the sharks, for the most
+part, gave us a good berth. It was the things that _didn't_ get out of
+the way that came near to flooring me at the last--black, bloated
+bodies, floating face down, like logs awash, till the canoe struck them,
+then to roll shudderingly over and sweep you with the sightless gaze of
+their wide, staring eyes as you fended with the paddle. Rona, her
+flashing glances running back and forth over the schooner (following
+Bell, who appeared to be lending a hand now and then on sheet or
+halyard), seemed not to see the floating horrors around us. Allen's
+steely eyes met the corpses stare for stare, and looked them down. But
+upon me the horrors which passed the others by descended with full
+force. How I kept going is more than I can guess. But I did it. At last
+the loom of the _Cora's_ blistered starboard quarter cut off the seaward
+view, and I steadied the dugout in close to the upper line of her
+weed-foul copper sheathing.
+
+Apparently no notice whatever had been taken of us up to this time.
+Short-handed as he was, Bell was doubtless too busy to keep a lookout,
+while to the few niggers watching us through the wire the sight of a
+dugout carrying "two fella white marsters and one fella Mary" was of
+indifferent interest. All they cared about was getting away from the
+Death Ship, and they didn't need to be told that this "pickaninny boat"
+hadn't come to help forward their desires in that direction. Besides,
+the guard walking up and down behind them with a Lee-Enfield over his
+black shoulder had undoubtedly given them to understand that the first
+one to start over the side would be shot.
+
+It must have been the guard who reported us finally. Burning with
+impatience, Rona was just prodding up Allen and ordering him to clamber
+aboard and tell "Mistah Bell" she wanted to speak to him, when I heard
+the shout of "'Vast heavin'!" ring out, and presently a familiar tousled
+head was poked over the top of the barbed wire. (I should explain,
+perhaps, that three or four strands of "nigger wire" are run all the way
+round the rail of every labour-recruiting ship. This is done with a
+double purpose--to make it difficult for the blacks aboard to bolt,
+should the spirit move them, and to serve as a partial protection while
+at anchor against the always imminent attacks of the treacherous shore
+natives.)
+
+There was a look in Bell's face I had never seen there before. The old
+familiar furrows of dissipation showed deep around the mouth, but if he
+had been drinking heavily, there was nothing to indicate it. What struck
+me at once was his air of determination--I might almost say exaltation.
+His head was held high, his shoulders were thrown back, and he might
+have been treading the deck of a battle-ship as he swung up to the rail.
+Everything about him betokened the man who has taken a great resolve,
+and means to see it through if it kills him.
+
+Although I had heard no word of it up to that moment, I understood at
+once that Bell had taken command of the schooner, that he was going to
+try to sail her to some port where the plague-stricken blacks could be
+given medical attention and kept under control. It was like Bell to take
+on a job like that, I said to myself; but he would do it as a matter of
+course. It would never occur to him that there was any alternative, just
+as with an order in the Navy. There must be something more to account
+for that air of high resolve.... I couldn't help thinking that, and I
+was right. He let out what it was shortly.
+
+"It's right nice of you to come off to say good-bye, honey--and of you,
+too, Whitney," Bell called down genially; "but, as we'ah not quite what
+you'd call fixed fo' cawlahs, you'd bettah do it from wheah you a'. You,
+Mistah Allen, if you have fin'ly made up youah mind in the mattah of
+signin' up for the voyage, I reckon we can find accommodation fo' you.
+But fust, let me say that if you've got any mo' of that dope you put in
+my whisky stowed about youah puson, you'd best scuppah it befo' you
+climb abo'd. I doan quite twig what you did it fo', unless it was to
+dodge out of goin' yo'self, afta you had promised to help me see the job
+through. But now, seein' you've come off of youah own free will, I
+reckon I can fo'get that lil' slip, providin' it ain't repeated."
+
+Although Rona could hardly have known the exact meaning of "free will,"
+she caught the drift of Bell's remarks readily enough. "This rotten
+boundah" (bounder was the worst name she knew to call a man in "pure"
+English) "not come himself," the girl cut in shrilly, speaking for the
+first time. "I fetch him. See!" and she threw back the folds of the
+peacock shawl to reveal the bright wavy blade of her little _kris_
+boring into the hollow between Allen's right shoulder-blade and the
+corded column of his sinewy neck.
+
+"From the reef I see you an' this fella 'Slan''" (Allen's shoulder
+quivered under her designative prod) "go off to schoonah in boat," Rona
+went on, avoiding as well as she could in her excitement the jargons she
+knew Bell disliked so much. "Bime-by I see 'Slan'' come back--you stop
+schoonah. When I go home I smell'em _kor-klee_. You no sabe _kor-klee_,
+Bel-la. I sabe him too much long time. I smell _kor-klee_ in one
+glass--not in othah. Pu-retty soon this boundah 'Slan'' come house. He
+say: 'Bel-la go off in schoonah. Now I stop with you all time!' Then I
+sabe what for _kor-klee_ veh-ry queeck. So I katch'em this fella by neck
+an' fetch'm off schoonah. I say myself: 'If Bel-la dead, I keel this
+boundah; if Bel-la not dead, _he_ keel him.' Heah he is, Bel-la--you fix
+him pu-lenty. Then we go home-side."
+
+"So that's what upset the appl'-ca't?" There was nothing of the wrath of
+the jealous male in Bell's deep, chesty laugh. "Well, I'm not blamin'
+Mistah Allen fo' fallin' in love with you, honey. No propah man could
+quite help doin' that, as I see it. Just the same, I can't quite approve
+of his way of goin' about it, no' the occasion he took fo' it, eethah.
+So you brought him off fo' me to execute, honey. That's right rich.
+Youah a brick, you shuah a'. But I won't be killin' him, honey--no,
+hahdly that. I'm just goin' to sign him on as Fust Mate of the _Cora
+Andrews_, just as he 'lowed he do at the beginnin'. Of co'se I won't be
+goin' home with you, honey. Doan you see I'm in command of this heah
+ship?"
+
+A sudden shiver shook Rona's tense frame at those last words. Half
+rising, she started to speak, but Bell cut her short with lifted hand
+and went on himself.
+
+"Mistah Allen," he said, addressing himself now to the huddled figure in
+the bottom of the canoe; "I said I was goin' to sign you on an' take you
+with me. Let me qualify those wuds just a trifle. I'll pumit you to go
+if you'll agree in advance to my tums. I might explain that theah's two
+dif'rent views in the mattah of the best way of avoidin' catchin' the
+pleg. One is, that you must keep strictly soba--straight teetotal; the
+otha--diametrically opposed to the fust--is that you must keep dead
+drunk--pif'ucated. Now I reckon that it's goin' to take at least one
+white man to sail this hookah all the way to Australyuh; that is to say,
+at least one white man must steah cleah of the pleg fo' the entahprise
+to be crowned with success. But as theah ain't no suah data as to which
+is the safe an' sutin way to 'complish this, I figa theah's nothin' else
+to do but sta't with two white men, and let one of 'em try the fust
+purscripshun an' the otha the second.
+
+"Now (tho' I must admit it's a bit high-handed on my pa't) I've already
+picked the one I'm goin' to take; so, if you elect to sign on, Mistah
+Allen, you'll have to take the otha. Theah's a dozen cases of whisky
+abo'd--not Jawny Wakah, to be suah, but still fayah to middlin' cawn
+jooce--an' I had to toss off a tumblah o' two of it as an antidote fo'
+that dream-provokin' dope you wished onto me. But"--Bell's head was up
+and his shoulders back again--"_that's the last_." His square jaw
+snapped shut on the words like a sprung wolf-trap. Now I understood.
+_That_ was his Great Resolve.
+
+Bell paused, and in the waiting silence I became aware for the first
+time of the low rumble of groaning from the bowels of the ship.
+
+"So you'll see, Mistah Allen"--the corners of his mouth relaxed into a
+smile as Bell resumed--"that since the Skippah's plumped to try the
+'soba man' preventative, theah's nothin' left for the Mate to do but to
+fight off the pleg by the 'drunk man' method. Theah'll only be two of
+us, you see, an' it's theahfo' up to us to hedge ouah bets an' play
+safe. But you won't be havin' to go if you ain't hankerin' after it. I'm
+not (in spite of what the way you've been 'shanghaied' by--by Miss Rona
+might lead you to think) runnin' a press-gang. It's entiahly up to you
+as to whethah o' not you want to sail as the drunken Mate of the soba
+Skippah of a black-birdah full of pleg-rotten niggahs. You see, Mistah
+Allen"--the whimsical grin broadened--"you see I'm not tryin' to luah
+you on by paintin' the picture any brightah than it is. 'Drunk Mate of a
+soba Skippah'--do you get that?"
+
+Allen made no reply, that is, not directly. Raising his hand to fend the
+expected prod from Rona, he wriggled halfway round and started to speak
+to me, where, in the stern, I still paddled the canoe gently against the
+turning tide and held it close alongside the schooner. For an instant I
+was puzzled with the look on the side-face he presented, but almost at
+once saw the reason for it. For the first time in my recollection the
+thin upper lip was uncurled by its mocking smile. By that, I thought I
+could gauge something of the extent of his slip-up. Yet--if I could have
+read the man's mind--I would have known that it was something even
+deeper than the wreck of personal hopes that had sobered "Slant" Allen.
+What it was I learned later.
+
+"Whitney," he began, the words coming huskily from the dryness of his
+throat; "I don't dope a man's chances for finishing inside the distance
+flag in this little Handicap of Captain Bell's as better than a hundred
+to one. That's long odds to be on the short end of when a man's life is
+his stake. I don't give a damn about my life. Anyone will tell you that.
+I've thrown it into the pool on worse than a hundred-to-one shot a good
+many times before this. But--well, I'd rather appreciate it if--if you
+could see fit to make a point of not telling my friends on the beach
+that--that I had any help in--in volunteering--volunteering to lend
+Captain Bell a hand in getting this hooker on her way."
+
+Rona, sensing that her responsibilities, so far as Allen was concerned,
+were at an end, raised the _kris_ from his neck and thrust it into the
+knot of her _sulu_. The Australian lifted himself lightly to his feet
+and looked Bell straight between the eyes. "Lead me to your whisky," he
+said in a steadied voice.... "By Gawd, I need it!"
+
+Poising an instant on the middle of a forward thwart of the canoe, he
+sprang to the rail, clambered smartly to the top strand of the barbed
+wire, and swung lightly down to the deck on the main backstay.
+
+It was at this juncture that I went through the feeble motions of trying
+to act the part of a man myself. I pointed out to Bell that I had
+knocked about on yachts a good deal, and, while I couldn't claim to be
+much of a hand with niggers, was probably as good a navigator as Allen
+was. I also said something about three men standing a better chance than
+two of pulling off the job, and even added, half jocularly, that I was
+about ready to go to Australia anyway, as I had had word that an
+exhibition of my pictures was due to open in Sydney in a fortnight. I
+only hope my words didn't sound as hollow to Bell as they did to me--for
+they were the last ones I was ever to speak to him.
+
+Bell's gentlemanliness--nay, rather, his gentleness--came home to me
+more in what he refrained from saying in his reply than in what he said.
+He did _not_ say that he had no absinthe aboard, and that, as a
+consequence, I would be only more useless and undependable than if he
+had. He did _not_ say that his hands would be full enough looking after
+crazy niggers without having a crazy white man to keep an eye on. He
+even refrained from recalling to my mind a story I had told him of a
+French official in New Caledonia whose absinthe supply had run out while
+he was at an isolated post, and who, unable to stand the deprivation to
+the end of the three-days' run in to Noumea in a trading cutter, had
+taken a header over the side almost in sight of port--and relief.
+
+All he _did_ say was: "Nonsense, ol' man.... Quite out of the
+question.... Nothin' doin'." Then, as though to soften the curtness of
+his refusal: "'Twouldn't be propa, Whitney, to set a man that can slap
+colour on canvas like you can to herdin' sick niggas. Besides, I'm
+countin' on you to stick 'roun' Kai an' be a sort o' fatha an' motha' to
+Rona while I'm gone. Youah the only man on the island I'd ca'ah to trust
+with that job."
+
+There was nothing more to be said after that, I told myself; nothing
+more to be done. I gave up limply and relapsed into wondering how long
+it would take me to paddle Rona ashore and traverse the quarter of a
+mile of coral clinkers between the place where she would land and the
+long green bottle cooling in its breeze-swept swing beneath my coco leaf
+jalousies.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII
+
+                           RONA COMES ABOARD
+
+
+Well, I still think I was right on the score of the futility of further
+words. Nothing more that I could have _said_ would have changed the
+situation; but was there nothing more that I could have _done_? Rona
+answered that question, so far as she herself was concerned, then and
+there, though hardly in a way that I had the wit or the will to profit
+by.
+
+Bell's answer to the girl's anxious appeal that she be allowed to join
+him had been no less brusque and decided than that he had made to mine.
+"Sorry, honey. No 'commodations fo' ladies this voyage. You wun't
+intended to nu'se niggas, anyhow. Can't be done, honey." Then, to me:
+"Time to be shovin' off now, Whitney. Tide's already on the tu'n. Right
+sorry to have to hurry you-all this way." Not a word of farewell....
+Navy training would not down.
+
+"Bel-la, leesten to me!" There was more threat than entreaty in Rona's
+voice now. Beyond doubt, he had never crossed her before. That she was
+hurt and angry showed in every line of her tense figure, as she balanced
+precariously with her left foot on the outrigger and her right on the
+port weatherboard. "Bel-la, by crackee, I say I go with you! If you let
+me come on schoona, all good. If you say no, by crackee, I--I sweem! I
+sweem afta you. You know I good sweema, Bel-la."
+
+Swim! I knew the girl well enough to know it was not a bluff, and Bell
+must have known even better. I had heard him speak many a time of her
+absolute lack of fear. Also, although at that moment his imagination was
+not quickened (as mine was) by the drunken roll a black cadaver under
+the counter gave as a questing nose pushed into it from below, he must
+have known what shrift a swimmer would have in those shark-infested
+waters.
+
+Bell's mouth twitched at her words (I could just see his head and
+shoulders where he conned ship with a foot on the starboard rail and a
+hand in the shrouds of the mainmast), but he made no reply. Doubtless he
+counted on my doing what I could to fish her out before anything
+happened. Sweeping his eye fore and aft, he noted how the turning tide
+had swung the schooner so that she headed directly away from the
+passage, with the fluky puffs of the freshening trade wind coming over
+her port quarter. Then, cautioning the men standing by at the fore and
+main sheets to "take in sma't" as she gathered way, he bellowed the
+order to "Heave away!"
+
+The ululant surge of the _bêche-de-mer_ anchor chantey floated aft as
+the blacks resumed their rhythmic tramp around the capstan.
+
+    "_What name you b'longa?
+    What name you b'longa?
+        You Mary come catch'm ride.
+    What name you b'longa?
+    Come hear my songa--
+        I take you to Sydney-side._"
+
+I have often wondered if the frank invitation in the swinging lines
+might not have been the inspiration of Rona's astonishing action.
+
+The obligato of the incoming chain grinding through the hawse-pipe had
+accompanied the chantey for only a stave or two, when Allen's clear,
+ringing voice (he had not needed to be told where a mate belonged when a
+ship was getting under way) announced from the forecastle: "Anchor
+broken out, sir!"
+
+"Walk lively! Get catted 'fore she hits the passage!" Bell roared back,
+anxious lest the great length of chain still out would make trouble
+where the lagoon shoaled at its seaward entrance. A moment later he came
+aft and relieved the man at the wheel, ordering the latter to stand by
+to keep the mainsheet from fouling the nigger wire. It was the gigantic
+Malay, Ranga-Ro, bulking mightily against the purpling eastern twilight
+sky, who responded with a deep-rumbling "Ay, ay, su!" and sprang to the
+starboard rail to clear the sagging lines running back from the
+unstable-minded main boom. Then the amazing thing befell.
+
+As the schooner gathered way and began gliding ahead under the impulse
+of the half-filled mainsail, Rona had crouched as though for a spring at
+the towing whaleboat. The painter of the latter, however, made fast on
+the port side of the taffrail, brought the yawning double-ender too far
+away for anything but a creature with wings to bridge the gap. Seeing it
+was impossible to jump to the whaleboat, she straightened up again,
+swaying undulantly as the dugout bobbed about in the gently heaving wake
+of the schooner.
+
+"Bel-la, I come!" There was more of anger than despair in that
+steel-clear cry; more indignation than resignation in the hair-trigger
+poise of the reed-slender figure. The instant that she hesitated on the
+chance that this final threat might soften Bell's resolve was all that
+prevented what at best could not have been other than a nasty mess for
+the both of us. There was no possible chance for me to intercept her
+before she jumped, and, once in the water, I knew she was quite equal to
+upsetting the canoe rather than be dragged back into it. As for help
+from the schooner--Bell had determined upon his course, and his eyes,
+like his mind, were directed ahead, not astern.
+
+It was Ranga-Ro (deftly fending the slack of the mainsheet from the
+nigger wire), not Bell, who turned at the sound of Rona's cry. Whether
+or not he had glimpsed her during the previous ten minutes, I am not
+sure; but for the girl (whose eyes had been on Bell from first to last),
+I was certain that the big Malay had not impinged upon her vision
+before. Recognition of his racial characteristics must have been
+instantaneous. They were written for even an ethnic novice to read in
+the giant's straight black hair, high cheek bones, wide mouth, with its
+betel nut-stained teeth, and the light golden yellow skin clothing the
+monstrously muscled limbs. The peculiar twist of the loosely-looped
+_sarong_ and a wisp of rolled leaf behind an ear would have located him
+even more definitely; but to Rona the fact that there was an indubitable
+Malay staring into her eyes from the nearest rail of the receding
+schooner, made the incidental of his being a Moluccan--a Spice Island
+man--of little moment. She was used to handling big golden-yellow
+men.... They had proved a deal more manageable than a certain white man
+she could mention.
+
+I heard, without understanding, the swift run of her tripplingly-tongued
+Malay, and only the sibilant hiss of "_Lekas! Lekas!_" at the end told
+me that what she had ordered done was to be done "quickly! quickly!" Her
+next order--to me--was no less insistent. "Paddl' catch'n schoona,
+Whit-nee! Paddl' lak hell!"
+
+The girl's imperious mood brooked no delay. My work was cut out clear
+for me, and, everything considered, I am not at all sure that the yellow
+man--on the score of zeal, at least--outdid the white man in carrying
+out the orders he had received. Slipping back to the stern to even up
+the down-by-the-head trim Rona's presence in the bow gave the cranky
+dugout, I plied the stubby paddle with all the strength and skill at my
+command. The crazy craft rode higher now with Allen out of it, but even
+so the speed with which I drove it threw a wave inches above the hole in
+the crumbling bow. The up-curling water poured through in a steady
+stream. My race, I saw, was against that rising flood in the bottom of
+the canoe quite as much as against the schooner.
+
+There were only eight or ten yards to make up on the still slowly moving
+_Cora_, and, barring swamping or a collision with a shark or a floating
+nigger, I felt that I could do it easily. But what to do when we had
+caught her up? Ah, there was where the yellow man was to come in. Ranga
+was just as busily carrying out his orders as was I. "Clear away the
+nigger wire and stand by to pick me up," had plainly been the drift of
+that swift stream of Malay Rona had directed at him. Superbly disdainful
+of the sharp barbs that were slashing his bare palms to ribbons, he
+forced the whole savage entanglement down to the deck with no more
+apparent effort than a child would have used in collapsing a
+string-strung "cat's-cradle." Rove through steel stanchions set at close
+intervals along the rail, the wire could not be torn entirely clear. So
+the direct and simple-minded Ranga did the next best thing--gave a
+mighty heave and brought three or four of the nearest stanchions down to
+the deck in the tangle of wire they had supported.
+
+An order from Bell at this juncture would probably have stopped this
+wholesale destruction of his protective entanglement; or perhaps I
+should say _possibly_ rather than probably. One cannot be sure just how
+strong a force Rona had lashed into action. It has since occurred to me
+that the man must have been gripped with something very closely akin to
+the madness of _amok_ to handle that wire with his naked hands as he
+did. It may be that the only one from whom he would have brooked
+interference was the one who had fired that savage train of
+energy--Rona. These points were not to be put to the test, however. From
+first to last Bell--although, from the wrecking of the wire almost under
+his very eyes, he must have known what was going on--never looked back.
+
+What with the settling of the half-swamped canoe and the accelerating
+speed of the schooner, it was touch-and-go at the end. I had gained by
+feet at first; then by inches; and finally, with but a couple of yards
+more needed to bring the bow up even with the schooner's counter, I
+realized that I was no better than holding my own. It was the last ounce
+of reserve in my aching frame that I called upon for that final spurt.
+Rona must have sensed that I was going my limit, for she said no word
+... only crouched, tense as a waiting wild-cat, for the moment of her
+spring.
+
+For the first few seconds the gap closed quickly as the canoe gathered
+increased headway from the impulse of my wildly driven paddle; then more
+slowly and more slowly, until, again, I was no better than holding even.
+Another foot, and the jump would be safe. Bending low to make the most
+of my expiring strength, my eyes wandered from the goal for an instant.
+It was a shuddering gasp of consternation from the bow that brought them
+back again. The swooning mainsail, filled by the freshening puffs, was
+beginning to make its pull felt in earnest. The gap had widened. Instead
+of gaining a foot I had lost two. That dished me completely. "No good,
+Rona--I'm--all in," I groaned, and slid limply down into the bottom of
+the canoe, where the water now lapped level with the thwarts.
+
+Half fainting though I was, the picture of that super-simian spring of
+Rona's is indelibly etched upon my memory. Save for that one quick gasp,
+she made no sound. The jump was an impossible one ... sheerly
+impossible. And yet-- Only a swift gathering of muscles--very like the
+final quivering hunch of an ape that leaps from tree to tree--heralded
+action. Then, with a back-kick that forced the already half-submerged
+bow right under, she flashed up to her full height and launched her body
+into the air.
+
+It was a good jump,--a wonderful one, indeed, considering the unstable
+take-off--but of course she missed the rail--and by feet. That didn't
+surprise me.... I had seen it was inevitable. But what I had _not_
+reckoned upon was the astonishing length of Ranga's mighty left arm.
+Standing by with a bight of the mainsheet gripped in his right hand to
+keep from overbalancing, he had sprung to the top of the rail as Rona
+jumped, leaning out at all of an angle of forty-five degrees, probably
+more. It was into the solidly pliant muscles of his great corded left
+wrist, extended to the full reach of the arm, that Rona clawed with the
+last half inch of her out-stretched fingers--clawed and _held_. I say
+_clawed into_, not clutched or seized. The girl's hold on Ranga's wrist
+was not that of an acrobat grabbing over the bar for which he has jumped
+(her leap was short by an inch at least of giving her a chance to do
+that), but rather that of a flung cat clawing into the limb or the trunk
+of a tree. With less strength of fingers or length of nails her hands
+would merely have brushed the outstretched arm and missed a hold.
+
+Under the impact of that flying hundred and twenty pounds (in spite of
+her slenderness, Rona must have weighed quite that) of bone and muscle,
+striking, as it did, just where the greatest leverage would be exerted,
+Ranga was all but swung round and thrown from his footing. The
+hastily-seized mainsheet was hardly a scientifically-run guy for the
+leaning tower of his stressed frame, nor did the wreck of the barbed
+wire entanglement writhing over the rail offer the solidest of
+foundations. Back and forth he swayed, like the half unstepped mast of a
+grounded sloop; then steadied, quiveringly, up to his original tense
+slant.
+
+The acrobatic miracle wrought by Ranga in swinging Rona's precariously
+hanging form inboard was the most perfect feat of strength and balance I
+ever saw, or ever expect to see. It looked as sheerly impossible as the
+jump had looked--and was accomplished scarcely less quickly. The drawing
+up of the extended left arm (what a marvellous rippling and bunching of
+golden muscles that was!) brought the girl's pendant form close in
+against the corrugated bulge of the giant's chest, reducing the terrific
+leverage by a good half. A similar doubling up of the right, with a
+sudden tug on the mainsheet at the end of it, did the rest. For an
+instant the great rangy rack of corded muscles balanced erect in the
+midst of the wire-tangle festooned over the rail; then jumped lightly
+down beyond and deposited its burden on the deck.
+
+Hardly ten seconds could have elapsed from the instant of Rona's jump to
+the one in which Ranga plumped her down beside Bell at the wheel. The
+gap between the canoe and the schooner had widened to hardly twenty
+yards. I could see both the Malay and the girl quite distinctly as, with
+the latter still looped in the crook of his fingernail-torn left arm, he
+poised for a moment on the rail. Neither appeared to have turned a hair.
+Neither seemed in the least flustered ... might have been in the habit
+of doing that sort of thing every day for all the excitement they showed
+about it.
+
+The first thing Ranga did, as the dropped mainsheet gave him a free
+hand, was to reach to the knot of his _sarong_ and satisfy himself that
+the little bamboo flute tucked in there had ridden out the storm. And
+Rona--her first move was to gather up and stow an amber-streaming corner
+of the peacock shawl, which was threatening to catch in an uprearing
+strand of the nigger wire. Those two funny little incidentals complete
+my recollections of that breathless quarter-minute. Whether Rona, or
+Bell, or anyone else on the schooner waved good-bye in my direction I do
+not recall. Ranga was taking in the slack of the mainsheet when I looked
+again, and Bell, peering up at the flapping headsails, was grinding away
+at the wheel. Two or three shots rang out following a commotion
+forward--probably fired to check a fresh up-surge of the blacks from
+below.
+
+As Bell brought her round in a wide circle, the _Cora's_ sails were
+flattened in and she began to beat up toward the entrance of the passage
+in a series of short tacks. As she headed in past the quay, I heard a
+burst of cheers roll up from a knot of humanity blurring the beach in
+front of Jackson's. It was just a big, full-throated general whoop, that
+first one, but it was quickly followed by a number of other volleys of
+"huroars" that seemed to carry suggestions of control and leadership.
+The last of these was a hearty "three-times-three," topped off with a
+"tiger." "Cheering the parting heroes by name," I muttered to myself,
+and wondered who that last rousing "tiger" was meant to speed. I was
+still speculating when the sharp whish of a heeling dorsal, as a
+sheering shark avoided the submerged outrigger by a hair, awakened me to
+a rude realization of the fact that the swift tropic night had all but
+fallen and that I was drifting out with the tide in a holed and barely
+floating dugout.
+
+Of all the ebbings of the tide of courage that my sorrily spent life had
+known, and had still to know, those next few minutes--with the _Cora_
+dissolving into the swimming dusk as she beat out through the passage,
+the weirdly green wakes of the sharks lacing the oily-black water with
+welts of phosphorescence as they assembled for their ghastly banquet,
+and my swamped canoe teetering in balance between positive and negative
+buoyancy--registered low-water mark. I have never heard of a despairing
+absinthe slave trying to break his bonds at the end of the day. It is
+invariably at the end of the night that he makes his break for
+liberty--at the beginning of the day he has not the courage to face. But
+it was the shame of the yellow in me, rather than the green, that held
+empire now. Rona had brooked no refusal of her demand to be taken on the
+_Cora_. Why had I? She had been ready to swim for it. Why should not I?
+Surely the sea, better than anything else, would wash that yellow stain
+from my honour and leave it white at the last. I didn't even have to
+screw my nerve up to the point of jumping over. Listing heavily to
+starboard as the half-capsized dugout was, one little inch edged to the
+right, and not even the leverage of the outrigger could keep it from
+overturning. Just the inclination of my shoulders would do the trick....
+I would not even have to take the initiative to the extent of edging
+along. Surely--
+
+With a quick gasp, I slid sharply to one side--but it was to the
+left--the outrigger side. The great starshaped welter of green
+luminescence, where a half-dozen wallowing man-eaters nuzzled into a
+bobbing witch-fire-streaked shape of unreflecting opacity, proved too
+much for my last unbroken filament of nerve--all that I needed to make
+my honour white. I had always dreaded sharks, and it was my horror of
+them now that checked the worthiest impulse that had stirred me that
+day. The momentarily eclipsed image of the cooling green bottle took
+shape again before my eyes, and, after that, there was nothing to do but
+make the best fight I could to reach it.
+
+Proceeding with infinite caution to avoid the upset which I now feared
+above everything in the world, I crawled forward along the outrigger
+side and stopped the hole in the bow with my folded drill jacket, as a
+necessary preliminary to beginning to bail out with my waterproof
+sun-helmet. But before I turned to on what could have hardly proved
+other than a hopeless task, the sound of oars and voices reached my
+ears, and presently the bow of a hard-pulled whaleboat came pushing up
+out of the darkness. It was old Jackson whose strong arm reached out and
+dragged me in over the gunwale. When they got back their breaths lost in
+cheering the departing schooner, he explained, after depositing my limp
+form in the stern sheets, Doc Wyndham bawled over to them from
+"Quarantine" that some cove had been left behind in a foundered canoe.
+Jackson himself reckoned that the Doc was beginning to go off his nut
+and see things; but as several of the others seemed to have hazy
+recollections of something of the same kind, it was thought best to put
+off and investigate.
+
+"'Ow'd you 'appen to miss c'nections?" Jackson asked sympathetically. "I
+spotted you paddlin' the canoe off, an' we was so sure the Skipper 'ad
+signed you on that we give a speshul w'oop in your 'onour. 'W'at's the
+matter wiv W'itney?' I bellered ('member the night you learned us that
+one?--time the looted fizz from the _Levuka_ was on tap); an' the boys
+cum back wiv: ''E's all right!--you bet!--Ev'ry time!'"
+
+"That wasn't the big 'three-times-three' at the end, was it, Jack?" I
+asked, my face burning with shame at the thought.
+
+"Well, no; 'ardly that un," was the half-apologetic reply. "That
+ripsnorter was in 'onour uv 'Slant' Allen. Long time pal uv all uv us,
+'e is. Slash-bangin' finisher, li'l ol' 'Slant.'... Trust 'im allus to
+be on 'and w'en they're liftin' 'ell's 'atches."
+
+I knew then that I wasn't going to be tumbling over myself to tell
+"Slant's" friends on the beach that his volunteering to go with the
+_Cora_ had been just a shade less voluntary than they reckoned. _He_ had
+not pulled up dead at his first hurdle as I had, anyhow. No, until I
+knew more of what had transpired earlier in the day, I was not going to
+give the man away; and not to his old friends in any case. I would do at
+least that much homage to his nerve.
+
+Seeing how dead beat I was, Jackson waved back the crowd at the quay and
+headed me straight for home. He knew what I needed, and I was as
+grateful for the bluff old outlaw's unspoken sympathy as I was for the
+help of his sustaining arm. With rare delicacy, he avoided being a
+witness to my assault on the green bottle by leaving me at the door.
+Like all the rest of those rough, red-blooded roysterers of Kai, Jackson
+felt that habitual absinthe drinking was degenerate, almost immoral....
+All right for a "Froggy," of course, but not for a proper white man....
+A thing that a real self-respecting beach-comber would never allow
+himself to be guilty of. The fact (which could not be concealed for
+long) that I was known to be addicted to the habit had taken even more
+living down than my painting, especially when they learned I was
+straight Yankee and not a "_We-we_."
+
+I drank hungrily at first--gulping glass after glass of the cool green
+liquid,--but stopped just as soon as I found my nerves were steadied and
+before the first stage of "elevation" was entered upon. (A seasoned
+drinker takes some time to reach the latter.) Unspeakably tired
+physically, I dropped off to sleep almost as soon as the absinthe
+relaxed the tension on my nerves. My rest was dreamless and
+untroubled--or comparatively so.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VIII
+
+                           I LEAVE THE ISLAND
+
+
+Rolling out of bed at the end of twelve straight hours of sleep, I found
+the Trades blowing fresh and strong again, and the air--after the
+soddenness of the past week--almost bracing. A plunge from the reef and
+a piping hot breakfast of fried clams and duck eggs--my first solid food
+in over thirty-six hours--bucked me up astonishingly. For almost the
+first time since I came to the island, I was out before ten o'clock--and
+well in hand, too. I had to be.... There was much that it was up to me
+to learn--and perhaps to act upon.
+
+That which I most desired to get some line upon was what Allen had been
+driving at in drugging Bell, or even, possibly, trying to poison him.
+What was _kor-klee_? (of which Rona appeared to be so terrified), and
+how did it act? were questions which I wanted especially to find the
+answers to. Was it a drug with a delayed action, following a preliminary
+stupefaction of comparative mildness? If so--no, there was nothing that
+could be done for Bell in that case; but, as a friend of his, I might do
+what I could to square the account later on. There was no lack of
+confidence _that_ morning. The reaction (which had eluded me completely
+the day before) was strong upon me, and I felt quite equal to any
+situation that might arise. I still blushed with shame at the thought of
+the contemptible figure I had cut from dawn to darkness of the day
+previous, but I was ready to make such atonement as was humanly
+possible. It was merely one of my "high" moods coming three or four
+hours ahead of time. I could have slung my colours with telling effect
+that morning, if there had been a chance for me to get at canvas.
+
+From one and another at Jackson's I gathered a fairly connected account
+of what had happened during the hours I was away on the leeward side of
+the island. The salient incidents of this I have already set down. None
+of them knew much of anything about _kor-klee_, but all agreed that Doc
+Wyndham would be sure to be an authority upon it. I dropped the subject
+for the moment, as I did not care to be pressed for an explanation of
+why I sought the information. The next day I slipped quietly over and
+had a long-distance interview with the learned Wyndham.
+
+The Doc had buried the _Cora's_ recruiting agent the night the schooner
+sailed, doing everything except the digging of the grave with his own
+hands. He had then returned home and shut himself in for his ten days of
+solitary quarantine. Solitary is hardly the word, though. Wyndham was
+far from being alone. Unlike Bell, he was a "spree drinker" rather than
+a speedy tippler. It was his habit (as he put it himself) to accumulate
+aridity during five or six months of the most rigorous teetotalism, and
+then blow up the dam and make the desert blossom like the rose under the
+stimulus of a generous flood. The breaking up of the Monsoon and the
+culmination of Doc Wyndham's biennial sprees were bracketed together in
+the Islands' list of seasonal disturbances.
+
+The desert was hardly due for its wetting at this time, but Wyndham,
+shaken by his unsuccessful fight to save the Agent's life, was loath to
+face the ordeal of the confinement ahead of him without company. So (as
+he explained after he had halted me a dozen paces from his door with a
+revolver flourished from the window) he called in the only dead sure
+plague-immune he knew--his old friend John Barleycorn--and raised the
+floodgates. The last thing he had impressed upon his brain before
+putting Barleycorn in charge was that he must rigidly confine his desert
+reclamation project to his own wastes. On no account was he to leave his
+own house, and, on no account, was anyone to be allowed to enter it.
+"Strict quarantine's the word," he had repeated to himself many times
+before he started drinking, and "Strict quarantine's the word" was the
+greeting--and the warning--I heard when I stepped into the shadow of the
+big breadfruit tree in front of his door.
+
+Solemn as an owl, Wyndham had been catching purple shrimps (or something
+of the kind) with a butterfly net and putting them under his microscope
+for examination. The big brass instrument was set upon a table pulled up
+to the window, while the shrimps were being harvested from the bosky
+depths of a patch of elephant-eared taro just outside. It was his
+favourite hunting and fishing preserve, that taro patch, the Doc had
+confided to me once, and the rarity and variety of the specimens
+captured there were rather remarkable. I don't remember many of them,
+but a sea-cow and a sabre-tooth tiger were among the commonest he had
+made slides of. Everything went under the microscope, of course. His
+captures were small in size during the first few days, starting with
+mere animalculae, but bulked steadily bigger as the desert blossomed to
+a jungle. It required a microscope with a great latitude of adjustment
+to handle such a wide range of subjects--but his was a most excellent
+instrument ... most excellent. Thus the Doc.
+
+Pretending to ignore my approach completely, Wyndham continued squinting
+through the eye-piece of his microscope until I crunched over the
+dead-line he had established. Then he flourished the revolver, barked
+out his quarantine formula, and asked what I wanted. "When I replied
+that I had come to inquire respecting the effects of a drug called
+_kor-klee_, his manner changed instantly. By some queer psychological
+process quite beyond me to fathom, he started at once speaking French,
+or rather what he thought was French. It was a weird jargon he had
+picked up in the Marquesas, where he had spent a year in research work
+when he first came to the Islands, and where (it was said) only his
+passion for collecting pearls--other people's--had prevented his winning
+to international fame for his all-but-successful efforts to isolate the
+bacteria responsible for the dread _fe-fe_ or _elephantiasis_.
+
+"_Kor-klee--mais oui, mon ami. Je comprend him fella kor-klee too much.
+Parfaitement. C'est la liqueur essential de la ficus--ficus--nom d'un
+chien--ficus what-dyucalum. C'est la aphrodisique le plus exquite, le
+plus fort, en tout le monde. Prenez vous comme ca--whouf!_"--and he made
+a great pretence of inhaling the contents of his shrimp net to show how
+the drug was administered for that particular purpose.
+
+"_Encore--quand--quand eat'm like kai-kai!_" he floundered on learnedly;
+"_quand eat'm kor-klee il fait--mak'm mort--dead--tres vite_."
+
+Here he interrupted himself to ask for which purpose it was I intended
+to use the stuff.
+
+"Neither," I denied stoutly. "I was merely asking out of curiosity."
+
+"_Parle that talkee a la marines_," he scoffed. "_Le meme chose talkee
+parle_ 'Slant' Allen. _Je voudrais connoce ou--ou in hell you fella
+catch'm kor-klee._ I'd like to get my fist on some of the blooming
+elixir myself," he trailed off into English.
+
+Save for that one lapse, Wyndham, in spite of my reiterated appeals
+that he speak straight English, rattled on in his impossible
+Franco-_bêche-de-mer_ from first to last. That which I have tried to
+render does it scant justice. Most of it was quite unintelligible. At
+the end of a rather trying half-hour (though it would have been amusing
+enough had I been less anxious for information that might throw light on
+the mystery I had set myself to unravel), about all that I had been able
+to gather was that _kor-klee_ was the name given in the Dutch Indies to
+several preparations made from the latex of the wild fig of New Guinea.
+A crude infusion of it was employed by the Papuans in stupefying fish in
+their rivers. More elaborated extracts were distilled for their narcotic
+and other properties. One of these, vapourized and inhaled, was much
+prized by the Rajahs of Malaysia as a quickener of the languid pulse, a
+restorer of youth. Another--the most powerful extract of all--was a
+deadly poison--very neat and incisive in its action.
+
+I also understood Wyndham to say that the use of the drug in any form
+acted as a great exciter of the cravings for alcohol and narcotics on
+the part of those addicted to these habits. "If that's the case," I said
+to myself as I turned home, "God pity poor old Bell's teetotal
+resolutions! It would have been hard enough without anything further in
+the way of a 'thust aggravata.' I'm afraid he'll be having to exchange
+rôles with 'Slant' after all--to let the latter be the 'soba Mate of a
+drunken Skippa.'" Now that I had a chance to think about it, I didn't
+have any great faith in Bell's ability to refrain from drink for any
+length of time--certainly for not more than a day or two at the outside.
+He'd probably see the thing through, I admitted, but not as a "soba
+Skippa."
+
+Turning over all I had picked up at the end of a couple of days, I felt
+that I could come pretty near to reconstructing in my mind those scenes
+of the drama of which there had been no witnesses save the actors
+themselves. Allen's infatuation for the girl had undoubtedly got the
+better of him the instant the turn of events suggested a plan which
+promised to give him undisputed possession of her. To this end he had
+plotted to get Bell off on a voyage from which there was no more than a
+negligible chance of his ever returning, while he himself remained
+behind to enjoy the spoils.
+
+Considering that Allen's plan was evolved upon little more than a
+moment's notice, there could be no question that it was laid with
+consummate cleverness and carried out without a hitch--save, of course,
+for that final fatal slip-up which undid all the rest. To make sure of
+Bell and disarm his suspicions, Allen had assured the American that he
+himself would also go on the _Cora_. That he had tried to poison Bell, I
+had my doubts. I had not learned enough of how the drug acted to make my
+speculations on that point of much use. At any rate, with Bell
+unconscious on the schooner, it had clearly been the Australian's plan
+to return to the beach and remain there until she sailed, at the turn of
+the tide. That the _Cora_ should get under way at that time had already
+been arranged between the unsuspecting Ranga and himself. The pretence
+that he had missed the schooner while engaged in getting his own and
+Bell's kits together would save his face with his friends on the beach.
+This latter consideration, it appears, was something the rascal never
+lost sight of. In the improbable event that Bell ever returned--but that
+bridge need not be crossed until it was in sight.
+
+Allen's cropper at the last jump was directly due to his cool assumption
+(natural enough, considering his success with South Sea ladies
+generally) that the girl, once Bell was out of the way, would fall into
+his lap like a ripe mango. That, and his long-curbed passion for her,
+led him to rush in search of Rona the moment he landed from his first
+visit to the schooner, and, missing her then, to return before the
+_Cora_ had got her anchor up. The consequences of his finding her in on
+this latter occasion I had seen something of myself. How that slip of a
+girl got the drop on the most notorious bad man in the Islands I could
+only conjecture. Probably, with Allen, it was the old story--prudence
+going out of one door as passion entered at the other. I didn't reckon
+that Rona had ever read the story of Delilah; yet I felt pretty
+confident that the point of that little Joloano _kris_ had found its way
+to the pulse of "Slant's" jugular some time after the girl's arm had
+gone round his neck in what he thought--for a second or two at
+least--was a warm embrace. Rona's uncanny faculty for getting away with
+everything she went after--from having her peacock shawl dry-cleaned to
+boarding a schooner which was all of "two jumps" beyond her reach--had
+greatly impressed me. And well it might have....
+
+Even allowing that Allen had not tried to poison Bell outright, the fact
+remained that he had played the worst kind of a low-down trick on the
+American in treacherously attempting to railroad the latter out of the
+way and deprive the girl of his protection. That much was plain, and it
+was dead against the shifty Australian. In "Slant's" favour was the game
+manner in which he had stood the gaff at the last, when Bell left the
+way wide open for him to return ashore without even going over the side
+of the plague-infested schooner. He had not hesitated an instant in
+staking his life in what he had very fairly characterized as the short
+end of a hundred-to-one shot. There must be redeeming qualities in a man
+who could do that, no matter how shot through with infamy his past
+record had been. It occurred to me as just possible that Bell's
+magnanimity had struck a responsive chord in Allen's sense of
+sportsmanship--that the latter was going to play whatever remained of
+that grim game on the square. If the _Cora_ was lost, or if Allen and
+Bell and the girl all died of the plague (one or both of which
+contingencies seemed practically inevitable), the whole slate would be
+wiped clean anyhow. If not--if the _Cora_ won through with any of those
+three surviving--some hint of what had transpired on the voyage would
+certainly be obtainable at Townsville, or whatever port the schooner
+succeeded in making. In any event, I told myself, it was up to me to get
+on to Australia at the earliest possible moment.
+
+The fact that my Exhibition would be sure to have opened in Sydney by
+the time I reached Australia, really had nothing to do with my decision.
+In spite of the bluff I had tried to put over on Bell, I had had no
+intention of leaving Kai for a number of months to come. Nor, even after
+I began getting ready to go, did I attempt to ignore the fact that there
+might be duties for me to carry out in Townsville, the performance of
+which would be more likely than not to interfere seriously with my
+freedom of action for a good deal longer than the art world of Sydney
+would be inclined to pay homage to my marines.
+
+No, my coming show had nothing to do with my resolve to hurry south,
+although, naturally, I fully intended to take it in if things shaped so
+as to make it possible. Since my daubs had been making good with the
+connoisseurs of Kai--men who knew at first hand the things I was trying
+to paint,--I had little fear that the more sophisticated critics of
+civilization would not fall for them. I hadn't any worry on that score.
+I knew I had been doing good work. But--well, an artist who isn't
+interested in the way his work will react on his fellow-beings is
+lacking in a very important stimulus to success.
+
+Kai manifested its usual sympathetic interest in my preparations for
+departure, but, with characteristic delicacy, asked no questions. Well
+off the steamer routes, and with only the most infrequent comings and
+goings of pearling and trading craft, the problem of reaching Australia
+with any dispatch seemed, at first, a hopeless one. For a while it
+looked like the best I could do would be to accept "Slim" Patton's
+kindly offer to run me over in his pearling sloop to Thursday Island,
+where I could count on getting a south-bound China-Australia liner
+inside of a fortnight. As Patton was known to be in bad for several
+little things at Thursday Island, his offer did more credit to his heart
+than to his head, and I was a good deal relieved when Jackson figured
+out a plan that promised to make it possible for me to reach my goal by
+another route. After thumbing a greasy sheet of Burns, Phillip sailings
+for the best part of an afternoon, the old outlaw suddenly announced he
+had found reason to believe that, with luck, a cutter getting away from
+Kai that night could intercept the Solomon-Australia packet at Samarai,
+off the easternmost tip of New Guinea. To be sure that the thing was
+done properly, he would take one of his own cutters and sail her
+himself. As my impedimenta consisted of little beyond a few changes of
+drills and ducks, my painting kit, and a case of absinthe, and as
+Jackson used neither paint nor absinthe and wore a flowered _sulu_ in
+place of ducks and drills, we had little difficulty in getting away on
+schedule.
+
+Jackson's carefully tabulated calculations--you can do that kind of
+thing in those latitudes when the southeast Trades are blowing steady
+and you know your boat--were only wrong by an hour. That is to say, we
+would have missed the _Utupua_ by something like that had we pushed
+right in to Samarai. Old "Jack," however, sighting a bituminous smear
+trailing off above the tufted tops of the coco palms that line the inner
+passage, promptly shook out all his reefs, hauled up four or five
+points, and headed away on a course calculated to converge with that of
+the outgoing steamer a couple of miles to seaward. It was only after an
+abrupt greening of the tourmaline depths of the passage we had been
+threading suggested a sudden shoaling that it occurred to him to unroll
+and study his chart.
+
+"Five 'undred fathom--three 'undred fifty fathom," he read laboriously
+as his tarry forefinger cruised along the tiny rows of dots and figures
+indicating soundings. "Three 'undred fathom--two 'undred fifty
+fathom--_one_ bloody fathom! By Gawd, W'itney, we're 'igh an' dry
+already! This bally chart says they's only one fathom uv water on this
+kerblasted coral patch, an' the cutter draws two feet mor'n that."
+
+But he never luffed her, never altered her course a fraction of a point.
+"More she 'eels the less she draws," he muttered philosophically,
+sitting down on the weather rail of the cockpit and starting to whittle
+at the end of a stick of tobacco with his clasp-knife. "Save a lot of
+wig-waggin' if we do pile up," he continued presently, rolling the
+shaved-off blackjack between his palms. "Ol' 'Choppy' Tancred never giv'
+the go-by to even a nigger dugout he could len' a han' to." Then he
+lighted his pipe, whoofed two or three whirling jets of blue smoke to
+leeward as he brought it to a proper draw, and settled comfortably back
+in puffing contentment. Ten minutes later he unrolled the chart again,
+produced a greasy stub of pencil from the band of his _koui_-leaf hat,
+and wrote with great care the letters "P.D." across the dotted expanse
+where curving lines of figure "1s," like the graphic representation of
+telegraph lines on a bird's-eye map, indicated six feet of water where
+the eight-feet-draught cutter had just crossed without a bump.
+
+"As I figger it," Jackson observed drily, rolling up the chart and
+tossing it down the companionway as a thing whose usefulness was
+ended,--"as I figger it, a bloke's only manifestin' proper conserv'tism
+w'en 'e marks as 'Position Doubtful' a reef that ain't tangibl' enuf to
+stop 'im w'en 'e 'its it." Then, presently, between puffs, as he
+stretched himself and sidled along to take the wheel as the cutter began
+to close the slowing steamer: "Wonder 'oo the bally cove'll be 'oo bumps
+a mis-charted reef w'en 'e thinks 'e's got four 'undred fathom uv brine
+'tween his keel an' the bottom uv the Pacific." The notorious inaccuracy
+of the South Sea charts is a continual source of amusement or
+wrath--according to whether a misplaced shoal or passage has spelt
+comedy or tragedy to him--for the man who sails their reef-beset waters.
+
+It was Captain Tancred himself who came tumbling down from the
+_Utupua's_ bridge to greet me as I clambered up the Jacob's ladder
+thrown over from the forecastle head. Hearing of him often before, this
+was the first time I ever set eyes on one of the best-loved characters
+in the South Pacific. He was a red-faced, blue-eyed, sandy-haired Scot,
+with a heart as big as his fist, and as soft as his voice was rough.
+Square himself as his own broad shoulders, and strictly law-abiding
+personally, he was credited with an amiable weakness for befriending
+every man who had run afoul of the statutes. I had heard them yarn by
+the hour at Kai of the way he had smuggled this one out of Australia,
+and that one into New Guinea; of how he had all but bumped South Head
+while standing-off-and-on in a "Southerly Buster" one night, on the off
+chance of picking up a jail-breaker, whose only claim upon Tancred had
+been that the latter had once before performed a similar service for the
+reprobate when he had forced his way out of the jug in Suva. Several of
+the push at Jackson's claimed actually to owe their lives to the bluff
+old Scot; many of them their liberty. "Choppy" Tancred--so called from
+his sun-washed red-brown mutton-chop side whiskers--was the nearest
+thing to a patron saint Kai ever had--that is, until the Rev. Horatio
+Loveworth hove up on their skyline some years later and converted the
+lot of them (just about) with the knuckles of his brawny fists.
+
+The last thing Jackson had said, as he steadied the ladder for me to
+swarm up the _Utupua's_ side, was to the effect that I ought to consider
+myself dead lucky to be stacking up with "Choppy" Tancred; "or,
+leastways," he qualified, "you would be if you was in any kind uv a mess
+'e could fish you out uv."
+
+"Don't give up hope, Jack," I chaffed back, clawing round a projecting
+ventilator; "I may land in a mess yet."
+
+"Then don't be forgettin' ther'll allus be a refooge for the errin' on
+the banks an' brays uv Kai Lagoon," he sang back, taking in the
+mainsheet as the cutter came up to the wind; "an' that 'Choppy'
+Tancred'll be the cove to give you a first leg-up on the way back
+there."
+
+Except for his very evident disappointment over the fact that I
+disclaimed any need of his help in getting ashore in Australia, Captain
+Tancred seemed not in the least put out over being stopped and boarded
+so high-handedly. He had carried many queer birds in his time, so that a
+man eccentric enough to take a case of drinkables with him on the
+_return_ trip from the Islands didn't worry him as much as it might have
+some others. He was also kindly charitable about my "exclusiveness" of
+evenings (when all normal beings expand and grow sociable at sea), and
+even good-naturedly tolerant of my weakness for having breakfast in my
+cabin. I made it up to him to the best of my ability in my "quickened"
+hours of the afternoon, and we became good friends.... Really good
+friends. I felt that I could count upon him in a pinch.
+
+The grounding of the company's Port Moresby steamer somewhere along the
+Barrier Reef was responsible for the fact that the _Utupua_, this
+voyage, had been ordered to pick up freight at both Cooktown and Cairns,
+instead of proceeding direct to Townsville on her regular schedule. This
+set her back two days, and brought us into the offing at Townsville
+twenty-four hours after--instead of twenty-four hours before--a
+sun-blistered, foul-smelling labour-recruiting schooner, with a dead
+Captain and a score or more of dying niggers, was brought to anchor off
+the Quarantine Station by the Mate, who, immediately the hook was let
+go, collapsed on the deck and went to sleep. The empty hulk of the _Cora
+Andrews_, swinging lazily to the turning tide, was one of the first
+things to catch my eye as the _Utupua_ steamed in and tied up to her
+buoy.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IX
+
+                         A GRIM TALE OF THE SEA
+
+
+I have often tried to figure just what effect on the succeeding train of
+events my earlier arrival in Townsville might have had. I have never
+come to any very definite conclusions in that connection. There were two
+or three things that were pretty well bound to happen, and if they
+hadn't come about one way, there is little doubt that they would have
+done so in another. Had I been there when the _Cora_ arrived, it is
+probable that I would have learned definitely at once (instead of
+somewhat tardily) that Bell had _not_ died of the plague. Certainly, on
+learning that fact, my impulse would have been to try to force Allen to
+an immediate showdown--to insist on his proving that the dope he had put
+in the American's whisky at Kai had not been the direct cause of the
+latter's death. Such a showdown would have been impossible to bring
+about at the time, however: for one reason, because Allen had been put
+into quarantine immediately, and, for another, because, completely
+played out by thirty-six hours at the wheel without relief, he had sunk
+into a sleep from which he had not rallied for over two days. Similar
+considerations would have prevented my seeing Rona. Besides being in
+quarantine she was in a state of raving delirium, which would have made
+it impossible for her to convey coherent information. Even Ranga,
+unaffected in mind and body though he was, I would hardly have been
+permitted to talk with when he landed, any more than I was two days
+later. No, everything considered, I fail to see where my earlier arrival
+would have made much difference in what happened. It must have been
+slated anyhow, I think--just bound to come off however the incidentals
+shaped.
+
+Still askance at what he rated as my temerity in making an open landing
+in Townsville, Captain Tancred had somewhat reluctantly granted my
+request for a boat to take me ashore as soon as the quarantine officials
+were through with the ship. I couldn't, of course, go off in the
+quarantine launch, but one of the doctors lingered a few minutes to tell
+me what he knew of the _Cora_. Although her captain had died twenty-four
+hours before the schooner anchored, his remains had not been buried at
+sea. This, it appeared, had been largely due to the protests of some
+sort of a Kanaka girl the Skipper had had with him. According to the
+Bo'sun's statement (fine upstanding fellow that looked like some kind of
+a Java man), she had gone plumb off her chump. Tried to knife the Mate
+first, and then plumped down by the Skipper's remains and threatened to
+stick the first man to touch it. The Mate, endeavouring to humour her,
+had not insisted on the burial--a reprehensible weakness on his part....
+Common prudence demanded that the dead on a plague ship should be
+scuppered as soon as the breath was out of their bodies. That is, with a
+white man; with a nigger it did no harm to anticipate that event by an
+hour or so--as long as you were sure the fellow was going to whiff out
+anyway.
+
+The funny part of it was, though (the Doctor went on), that the Skipper
+had not died of the plague at all. They had not, it was true, made any
+post-mortem in the rush of things; but it was certain, nevertheless,
+that his body had not displayed even the preliminary evidences of
+infection--no swelling of the glands of the groin or under the arms.
+Magnificent physical specimen the chap was, but plainly a man who had
+punished an ocean of booze in his day. And yet--confound it all!--there
+was no evidence that the fellow had drunk himself to death, either. Now
+if it had been the Mate--_he_ was exuding alcohol from every
+pore--absolutely reeking with it. Almost made a man drunk to breathe the
+air down to leeward of him. Seemed to have been on one glorious spree
+all the way from--somewhere up Solomon-way, he thought it was. Harried
+the niggers like a fiend, according to the Bo'sun. Clubbed three or four
+of them to death for not stepping lively enough to his orders. Lucky
+thing the Skipper had scuppered all but one of the guns the first day
+out. But not all the booze he had soaked up had effected the nerve of
+the Mate. Kept his head and his legs to the last, finishing up with a
+straight twenty-four-hour trick at the wheel. Said none of the crew knew
+the Barrier Reef as well as he did. Had one nigger holding a parasol
+over him, another playing a concertina, another waiting handy with a
+bottle of whisky, and a fourth standing by to block any rushes from the
+Kanaka girl with her knife. Funny thing it never occurred to him to have
+her disarmed and tied up, or shut up. Grabbed the bottle of whisky and
+started to brain the Bo'sun with it every time the latter tried to push
+in and relieve him at the wheel.
+
+A chap of terrible determination and iron nerves, that Mate was,
+observed the Doctor. But no wonder.... Think who he was! Allen! The
+Honourable Hartley Allen! The great Allen! Son of old Sir Jim Allen!
+Melbourne Cup winner! Best horseman in all Australia! Crooked as they
+make 'em--but how he could ride! Sent off to the Islands four or five
+years back for raising some sort of hell. His old Ticket-of-Leave had
+given him away when they came to strip him for a bath. No possible
+mistake about it. One of the doctors at the Quarantine Station had set a
+broken collar-bone for him once after he had fallen in a steeplechase at
+Coolgardie. Found the marks of the old compound fracture still humping
+up on the clavicle--the left one....
+
+It was not without difficulty that I brought the excited young medico
+round to speaking of Bell again. The astounding fact that he himself,
+with his own hands, had actually helped to put the great and only
+Hartley Allen to bed, was proving almost too much for him. It was
+certainly not less than three separate times that he assured me that it
+was his own silk pajamas that were encasing the limbs of the resurrected
+hero. He switched subjects reluctantly, rising to go to his waiting
+launch.
+
+"Nothing in the world the matter with the big fellow--not even too much
+drink," he said as he began shuffling his health sheets together. "He
+must have passed away from the sheer mental strain of the stunt he had
+tackled. Intense nervous strain--that was the one thing written all over
+the man. Face was starting to bloat a bit from the heat by the time I
+saw it first; but, even so, it still showed the lines of the most
+terrible mental suffering. Seemed to have gone out fighting hard to pull
+himself together--shoulders hunched up, finger-nails clenched deep into
+palms, lower lip bitten clean through."
+
+"May not those--those things you mention have been caused by physical
+rather than mental agony?" I asked, speaking very slowly to hide the
+agitation aroused by this significant intelligence. "Isn't that about
+the way a man would repress his feelings if he was racked with--with
+stomach cramps--if he had eaten something that disagreed with him?"
+
+"Possibly so," admitted the Doctor, with the air of a man weighing
+an idea that had not occurred to him before; "but somehow that
+wasn't the suggestion they carried to me--nor to any of us. Fact is,
+though, we didn't give the matter very much attention. That chap was
+dead--finished,--while the other white man and the girl--to say nothing
+of forty or fifty niggers--were alive. Then, with the excitement of
+finding we had the great Hartley Allen on our hands--and, on top of
+that, having the girl run _amuck_ and give us the slip complete,--there
+was enough else to think about. The only--"
+
+"The girl gave you the slip?" I interrupted. "How was that? You didn't
+mention it before."
+
+"Bolted and drowned herself in the creek," he replied; "or at least
+there's every reason to believe she drowned herself, though they haven't
+found her body yet. She wasn't going to leave the Skipper, even when we
+started to take his body away for burial.... And of course we couldn't
+allow her to leave the Station until her period of quarantine was over.
+Had to take her away from the body by main force. She fought the whole
+lot of us with tooth and nail and a wicked little curly-bladed dagger.
+Stood us all off, too, and looked like getting ready to use the knife on
+herself when the big Malay (who chanced to be there, but had taken no
+part in the shindy up to that moment) stepped in, caught her wrist and
+took the nasty little toy away from her.
+
+"The big yellow man seemed to have rather a quieting effect on the girl.
+Blind mad as she was, she didn't try to stick him. It seemed to steady
+her a good deal when he talked to her in her own lingo. She was panting
+like a cat coming out of a fit when we left her, but was quite over her
+raving--wasn't even sobbing aloud. She was coming out of her
+hysteria--getting rational again. Her eyes, though still wild and almost
+throwing off sparks of anger, were quite free of the crazy look. It
+looked like our trouble with her was about over, but, to be on the safe
+side, we locked her up in one of the 'mad' rooms. That was the last
+anyone has seen of her alive--or any other way, for that matter.
+
+"You wouldn't have believed the thing possible!" he ejaculated
+feelingly, turning back from the door and slapping the table
+resoundingly with his portfolio. "That room was made to confine
+dangerous lunatics in, and it had fulfilled its purpose, too--up to
+night before last. To make it perfectly secure, it had been constructed
+without windows--nothing but a two-by-two hole up against the
+twelve-foot-high ceiling admitted light and air. There were no beds or
+chairs to be broken up when the occupant had tantrums.... Just sleeping
+mats, a sheet, a blanket and a mosquito net. No more. Even the wash
+basin was brought in and taken out by the attendant.
+
+"In locking the girl in, no precautions were omitted except that of
+strapping her in a strait-jacket, and we had never resorted to that save
+in violent cases. The window--or rather air-hole--was so high and so
+small that it had never been considered worth while to put bars on it.
+But as it was the only conceivable way she could have got out (the
+attendant is absolutely trustworthy, and the key was not in his hands
+more than a minute or two anyway), we would have been forced to conclude
+that the girl had reached it with wings--had not we found the lower four
+or five feet of wall marked with the prints of the toes and balls of the
+bare feet which had apparently been violently projected against it. That
+led us to get a ladder and light and examine about the window more
+closely. For a foot or more below it the wall was splashed with blood
+and slightly scratched, where lacerated fingers had clawed at the narrow
+ledge.
+
+"It did not take us long to figure that, taking the whole length of the
+room to get going in, the girl had flung herself up the wall something
+in the way that a terrier will run six or eight feet up the side of a
+house for a ball or handkerchief fastened there. That's the only way we
+could account for the toe-prints on the wall, though it is quite
+possible that, after failing to pull off the trick in that fashion--it's
+a stunt that looks dead hopeless for anything but a monkey,--she managed
+it with a straight spring, high enough to get her fingers over the
+ledge. Even from there, not one woman in a million could pull herself
+up. But we had already remarked on the extreme wiriness of the girl (a
+regular human ape she was for agility), and so found it a bit easier to
+accept the evidence of our eyes. In some way or another she had managed
+it.
+
+"The air-hole opened out under the eaves of the sheet-iron roof," the
+Doctor went on, forgetting his waiting launch in the interest of the
+story, and seating himself again at the table. "It must have taken some
+jolly snaky wriggling to crawl through the hole, out over the eaves and
+on top of the roof; but she did it, else she could never have jumped
+across the big banyan, where we found some twigs broken at the point she
+hit, and some wisps of silk floss. The other side of that banyan--a
+hundred feet from the wall of the hospital--spreads until it comes to
+about fifteen feet from the station wall. The wall is ten feet high, has
+broken glass on the top of it, with three or four strands of barbed wire
+above that.
+
+"Swinging to the ground by a pendent air-root on the side she had landed
+in, the girl crossed under the tree--the marks of her bare feet showing
+plainly in the soft earth--and used a similar ladder with which to mount
+on the other side. To be sure of clearing the barbed wire, she had
+climbed to a firm perch fully twenty-five feet from the ground, and made
+her final jump from there. Luckily for her, the cane field on the other
+side of the wall had been flooded but a day or two before--though I
+don't doubt she would have jumped just the same if it had been to a
+cobblestone pavement.
+
+"We found the deep prints of her feet, knees and hands where she had
+sprawled on striking. Her tracks down to the edge of a sprouting row of
+seed-cane, and the marks where she had crawled up out of a deep
+irrigating ditch to the road, were all we had to indicate the direction
+she had taken. As she had seemed plumb daft about the dead Skipper, we
+figured that she had probably broken out with the idea of going to his
+grave, and perhaps making an end of herself there. If that was it, she
+failed. There were no signs whatever of her having been near the fresh
+mound we had tucked the big fellow away under. It was some distance away
+from the Station, and, in the night, it isn't likely she would have met
+anyone to ask the way of. The only grave she found was her own, and not
+a very restful one at that, I'm afraid.
+
+"We had noticed that she seemed to set great store by a big yellow shawl
+she wore--rather a fine old piece of Oriental work it looked, with a
+dragon or some other kind of wild animal embroidered on it. Well, when
+we found that lying on the bank of Ross Creek, just a bit inland of the
+town, we felt so sure that it marked the jumping-off place for her in
+more ways than one. For that reason, what search has been pressed since
+has been in the form of shooting alligators, and seeing if one of them
+appears to have enjoyed anything extra-special in the way of tucker
+lately."
+
+An impatient toot from his launch carried the Doctor to the door again,
+where he paused long enough to assure me for the third or fourth time
+that it would be most unlikely that permission would be granted me to
+see the Mate or the Boatswain of the _Cora_ until their spell of
+quarantine was over. If I was really anxious about it, he would gladly
+put in a word for me with the Chief. I would have to show good reason
+for my request, of course. Perhaps, if it chanced that I was able to
+shed any light on how the schooner came to get into such a mess--I cut
+him short by saying that I might call at the Quarantine Station when I
+came ashore a little later. What I knew about the sailing of the _Cora_
+from Kai happened to be the one thing I didn't care to confide to
+anyone--just yet. Asking the Mate to order my boat to stand by for me a
+few minutes longer, I went to my cabin to be alone while I turned the
+fresh developments over in my mind.
+
+I had been prepared to await the coming of the _Cora_ indefinitely. In
+fact, what I expected above anything else was that the final news would
+be a report that she had been found piled up on any one of a thousand
+reefs that spread their coral claws all the way from the Louisiades to
+the Great Barrier. And in case she did get through, I was quite prepared
+to learn that both of the white men and the girl had succumbed to the
+plague. But to be told that, after the schooner had avoided disaster,
+and all three of them the plague, that the two upon whom my interest and
+affection had centred were gone--dead,--was just a bit staggering. It
+was now up to me to determine upon a definite course of action, and,
+since it was now out of the question attempting to follow my first
+impulse of going to Allen at once and forcing a showdown, I wanted time
+to think.
+
+What the Doctor had told me of the way Bell appeared to have died had
+instantly reawakened my suspicions of Allen. Had the _kor-klee_, working
+with a recurrent effect, finally proved fatal? Or had Allen, perhaps,
+administered a second and stronger dose? He would have had a hundred
+opportunities to do that had he desired to. Rona's attacks on the Mate,
+indicating the deadliest hatred, seemed to prove that her first
+suspicions of him had not weakened during the voyage--more likely,
+indeed, had hardened to a certainty. The belief I had been entertaining
+that Allen had made up his mind to play the game out on the square was
+not very deeply grounded.
+
+My sense of personal loss in the passing of Bell and Rona was not a
+thing I cared to let myself dwell upon for the moment. There was no
+question that the news of Rona's death had shocked me even more than
+that of Bell's. Not that there was anything more between us than I have
+already told. I had never let myself think of her in terms of physical
+possession, though the sheer animal attraction of the girl was beyond
+anything I had ever experienced in a woman. But her appeal to the
+artistic side of me had been stronger even than that. Just as the thrill
+I felt at the first sight of her bathing in the pink-lipped bowl of the
+reef had made the very world itself seem more wonderful and beautiful,
+so now the depression that filled me on realizing that I was never again
+to have sight of her made the world seem emptier and drearier.
+
+Another thing: there was no denying that Bell, splendid fellow that he
+was, had shot his bolt. A real come-back with him was too much to
+expect. The most that could have been hoped for was that he would
+"finish in style," and that I was assured he had done, no matter in what
+agony of soul and body his brave spirit had taken flight. But Rona's
+bolt was still unsped. The girl had hardly begun to finger Life's
+bowstring. It was almost as hard to think of the flaming, soaring spirit
+of her as quenched, as it was to believe that the matchless perfection,
+the supple gracefulness of her body--_shooting alligators to see if any
+of them had been enjoying anything extra-special in tucker lately_! I
+could not pursue that line of thought any further. I agreed with the
+Doctor that the fact that the girl had parted with her beloved shawl
+indicated that she had reached a jumping-off place--a point where she
+had no further use for it. I could not picture her--living--without its
+amber-bright flame streaming about her limbs. The wonder was that she
+had not kept it for a shroud. As I came out upon the deck to go to my
+boat, the intermittent crack of rifle shots along the shore told me that
+the "search" had not been abandoned.
+
+Beyond deciding to go ashore and see if anything further could be
+learned, I had made no plans. It seemed that about the best I could do
+would be to wait in Townsville until Allen and Ranga were out of
+quarantine, and then let things shape as they would; but always assuming
+that, in case the former could not satisfy me he was innocent of Bell's
+death, I should do what I could to settle the reckoning with him. That
+would be my atonement--to Bell and to myself--for my sorry failure to
+"measure up" the day the _Cora Andrews_ came to Kai Lagoon.
+
+Captain Tancred, who had never quite settled it in his own mind how a
+man who openly admitted he had been living in the Kai colony for months
+would not have to be smuggled ashore on the quiet if he expected to
+avoid arrest in Australia, met me at the gangway.
+
+"Best to leave the luggage aboard, lad," he began genially; "then
+that'll be ain less thing ye'll hae to bother wi' if ye're haen' to cut
+an' run for it. If ye're not back ag'in by the time I'm gettin' awa',
+than I'll be sendin' it in for ye on the Company's launch. But ye'd best
+be hangin' on wi' me a bittie, an' tak' me to see them pictur's ye've
+been tellin' me aboot in Sydney toon."
+
+My pictures! The Exhibition had slipped my mind completely, driven out
+by the news of the _Cora_ and the anxieties that had followed in its
+train. I had told Captain Tancred something of my coming show, but had
+hardly convinced him. He was far too considerate to say outright that he
+didn't believe me, but my Kai origin could not be ignored. If I was to
+have an exhibition of paintings in Sydney, then why was I stopping off
+in Townsville? On that point--since I didn't want to go into the _Cora_
+affair with anyone until I knew how things were going to shape--I had
+hardly been able to reassure the old sceptic. I might be an artist all
+right enough--I don't think he had any serious doubts on that
+score,--but I must also be some kind of a crook. He was plainly
+convinced in his own mind that I was trying to slip into Australia on
+the quiet, and was rather hurt because I would not take him into my
+confidence and let him help me.
+
+But why not take in the Exhibition? In nine days, with any luck in
+connections, I could go to Sydney and back, with a day or two to spare.
+Even if the trip ran over that time, it was not likely that the man I
+wanted to see would be getting away immediately.... And, in any event, I
+would know how to find him, whether in Australia or the Islands.
+Further, it could not but have a salutary effect on my nerves to get
+quite beyond the attraction I felt that Quarantine Station would have
+for me if I lingered within physical reach of it. Nothing but absinthe,
+and more absinthe, and then more absinthe, could be depended upon to
+relieve my nerves once they were fully wrought up, as I knew they must
+be if I remained in Townsville in enforced inaction, fretting my heart
+out with impatience. And too much absinthe would mean only one
+thing--that I would begin the day on which I was to meet "Slant" Allen
+for a final showdown in a condition of mind and body precisely similar
+to that in which I had entered upon another day of accursed memory--and,
+doubtless, with equally shameful consequences to myself.
+
+These thoughts flashed through my mind in a fraction of the time I have
+taken to set them down. My reply to Captain Tancred followed close upon
+his suggestion that I leave my luggage aboard.
+
+"I think I'll be going through to Sydney with you, Captain--or at least
+as far as Brisbane," I said, motioning to the steward to bring up the
+bags he had already stowed in the waiting boat. "I know no one whose
+opinion on my daubs I'd rather have than yours. But I'll pay my little
+visit ashore here just the same, counting on you to get my kit landed in
+the unlikely event of my not being aboard again when you get under way
+this afternoon."
+
+I was not long in coming to the conclusion that there was nothing new to
+be learned ashore, that is, with respect to what had happened on the
+_Cora_ in the course of her voyage from Kai. This was not because the
+story was not on everyone's lips.... Quite to the contrary, indeed, the
+town was agog with the dramatic suddenness of the arrival of the plague
+ship and its astonishing sequel. But as no one had been allowed to see
+any of the survivors, such accounts as were current were only those
+which had been passed out by the quarantine people, and about all the
+latter knew I felt that I had already gathered that morning from the
+Doctor on the _Utupua_. Bell's name was not mentioned, and not a man I
+talked with knew that the dead white man had been the Skipper.
+
+For Townsville--for all of Australia--the overwhelming appeal of the
+event was in the fact that a black-birding schooner had been brought
+into port by an ex-Ticket-of-Leavester, who had _volunteered_ to risk
+his life in an attempt to save those of half a hundred plague-stricken
+niggers. That one circumstance in itself was wonderful enough, but when,
+on top of it, the announcement was made that the hero was none other
+than the former idol of sporting Australia, the Hon. Hartley Allen,
+popular imagination was stirred as rarely ever before. What man in all
+the Antipodes had not envied Allen, the supremely successful owner,
+rider and sportsman? What woman had not been intrigued by the romantic
+dash of him? What boy had not dreamed of growing up in his image?
+
+Townsville, delirious with the dramatic appeal of this splendid act on
+the part of a man who had tasted the wine of adulation as he had drunk
+the dregs of infamy, was but a microcosm of Sydney and Melbourne,
+Brisbane and Adelaide, to all of which the news had been flashed by
+wire. Every town and hamlet, from Cairns to Hobart, from Perth to
+Woolongong, were dispatching telegrams of congratulation to a man who
+was still muttering in his drunken sleep behind the walls of the
+Townsville Quarantine Station. Sydney was competing with Brisbane for
+the honour of being the first to bestow the "Freedom of the City" upon
+the man both of them had had some share in transporting. A special from
+Sydney to the local sheet, hinted darkly of what might happen to the
+misguided official who attempted to revive any of the old charges
+against the man "whose sublime courage had emblazoned his name upon the
+tablets of undying fame.... A hand that is raised today against the Hon.
+Hartley Allen is a hand that is raised against the noblest traditions of
+Australia."
+
+I had to elbow through half of a densely packed block to read that last
+on the bulletin in front of the _Trumpet's_ office. The mob cheered
+wildly as the message was chalked up on the blackboard--cheered the
+stirring sentiment and growled ominously at the suggestion that any hand
+would dare to be raised against the Hon. Hartley Allen and the noblest
+traditions of Australia. As I elbowed my way out again, I wondered just
+what the Charters Towers miner, who had manifested his exuberant
+approval by slapping me on the back, would have thought--nay, what he
+would have done--had he known that the hand fingering the guard of the
+revolver in the right side-pocket of my shooting jacket (I had brought
+the useful little weapon on the off chance that it might be needed) was
+rather more likely than not to be raised against at least one of those
+cherished institutions he was so anxious to uphold.
+
+I began to perceive that the line between dealing out retributive
+justice to a blackguard of a murderer and assassinating a national hero
+in cold blood might easily become too hairlike in its tenuousness for a
+red-eyed Australian jury to admit the existence of it. For it was
+nothing less than a national hero that "Slant" Allen was becoming, even
+before he roused from the heavy sleep which had held him ever since he
+collapsed over the wheel as the _Cora_ came to anchor. That
+circumstance, I told myself, complicated my task beyond measure, though
+I couldn't, of course, allow it to make any difference in my program in
+the event Allen wasn't able to satisfy me that he was guiltless of the
+murder of my friend. But if things should transpire which might make
+Allen anxious to put _me_ out of the way--if he, not I were the
+attacking party--that would simplify things greatly. I began to ponder
+that felicitous possibility.
+
+Would not the fact that I was the only living man (Ranga, whatever he
+had seen or heard, would hardly need to be reckoned with as a witness)
+who knew the actual facts about the way he had "volunteered" to join the
+_Cora_ at Kai awaken a desire in Allen's lawless breast to seal my mouth
+for good and all, now that he had so much to lose by the truth's coming
+out? The feeling that such would be the case--that the dizzily mounting
+fortunes of the ex-beach-comber would ultimately impel him to seek me
+out for an understanding--grew on me more and more as I turned the
+situation over in my mind, until at last it became a certainty, against
+which I felt justified in preparing as a boxer trains for a definitely
+scheduled prize fight.
+
+I did not reckon it worth while to call at the Quarantine Station, which
+was some distance from the town and not easy to reach. I did, however,
+just before I put off to the ship, meet the young doctor with whom I had
+talked in the morning. The only thing which he was able to add to what
+he had already told me was in connection with the question I had raised
+respecting the cause of Bell's death. To be certain that he had been
+correct in stating that the latter had not died of plague, he had made a
+special inquiry. In response to this he had been shown a slide made from
+a smear they had taken of the late Skipper's blood. The bacteriologist
+had seen to that immediately the body was landed. It showed no traces
+whatever of plague bacilli. I could be quite assured on that point. The
+Chief was unwilling to hazard an opinion as to what the real cause of
+the man's death might have been. He seemed rather to regret that he had
+failed to order a post-mortem. Allen was still sleeping heavily, but
+would be right as a trivet beyond a doubt as soon as he woke up and gave
+them a chance to sweat some of the alcohol out of his hide. Pulse steady
+as a church.... Temperature a shade sub-normal. Marvellous
+constitution.... Wonderful fellow altogether. Any word of the girl? No,
+nothing. Ten pounds reward had been offered for the recovery of her
+body, or any recognizable part of it. Search was still going on, and he
+pointed across to the opposite foreshore, where a couple of spindling
+Hindu coolies--evidently sugar plantation contract hands--were earnestly
+engaged in performing "_hari-kiri_" upon a plethoric 'gator they had
+just bagged and towed to the beach.
+
+The Doctor was already beginning to look ahead. Did I fancy Allen would
+be able to wangle it so as to get an entry in for the Melbourne Cup in
+the short time that remained before that classic was run? Entries closed
+some time ago, of course. He'd have to square it with the stewards some
+way. They might make a special exception, seeing who Allen was, and what
+he had just done. Any horse with his colours would carry a barrel of
+money, just out of sentiment if nothing else. Did I think he would
+wangle an entry?
+
+"No," I replied, stepping down into my boat. "No, I'm afraid the chances
+are all against it." My mind had been torn with doubt over a number of
+things that day.... It was a relief to be asked to express an opinion on
+a matter respecting which I had no doubt.... Not a shred of it.
+
+Captain Tancred welcomed me back to the _Utupua_ with a significant
+grin. "So ye didna find the outlook ashore to yer likin' lad?" he boomed
+boisterously, thumping me on the back. "Weel, dinna ye mind, since ye
+wasna nabbed. I'll be findin' a wa' to slip ye aff in Sydney sae they
+wan't be puttin' nose to yer trail till ye're clean awa'." The look on
+the old boy's face was a study when, a few days later, after the tugs
+had nosed his ship into her berth at the Circular Quay, I stalked
+brazenly off down the gangway, with no more regard for the two Bobbies
+guarding the dock gate than they had for me. He had exacted two promises
+from me before he let me go: one, that I was to take him to see my
+pictures, and the other, that I would not fail to let him know if there
+ever came a time when he could be of Service to me.... "Real sarvice,
+lad; you'll be twiggin' wha' I mean." I gave both promises freely, just
+as I kept them later--yes, both of them.
+
+As I had trunks, with all the common accessories of civilization, stored
+at the _Australia_, my transformation from a beach-comber to a fairly
+correct imitation of a comfortably heeled artist was the matter of but a
+few hours. My appearance at the Exhibition could not have been better
+timed. The affair had been extremely well handled from the first. I had
+been sending pictures to Sydney from all parts of the South Seas for the
+last eighteen months, packing them up as completed and getting them off
+whenever opportunity offered. Two or three had been lost, but, on the
+whole, I reckoned the plan safer than trying to take them round with me
+in one lot, at the risk of losing the bunch.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X
+
+                            ART AND SUSPENSE
+
+
+Nothing had been further from my mind than an Australian exhibition. I
+cared little for the provincial approbation of the Antipodes, and I was
+hardly ready for Paris--not quite yet. It was only at the reiterated
+requests of friends (two of them were young Australian artists I had
+known in my student days in Paris), to whom I was under real obligations
+for their kindness in receiving and storing my pictures as they dribbled
+into Sydney, that I finally gave consent to a public showing. In doing
+this, I had stipulated particularly that they were to take all the
+troubles and responsibilities of the affair, and that under no
+circumstances was I to be expected to appear in person--unless, of
+course, it suited my convenience and inclination at the time.
+
+As I have said, the affair had been most intelligently handled from the
+first. There had not been enough of my canvases comfortably to fill the
+wing of the big New South Wales Government Museum and Art Gallery which
+was available for exhibitions, but my friends, rather than pull the show
+off at a less pretentious and worse lighted gallery, had added enough of
+their own pictures to relieve the coldness of otherwise blank walls.
+These were also South Sea marines--it was a straight seascape show
+throughout,--but more or less conventional in inspiration and execution.
+Benchley might have been painting marine backgrounds for an aquarium, so
+faithfully did he labour to reproduce every detail of jutting coral
+branches and floating seaweed. Crafts, on the other hand, had fallen
+early under the influence of Turner, and persisted in bulling the yellow
+ochre market by drenching his Great Barrier Reef seascapes with such a
+flood of golden light as was never seen save at the head of the Adriatic
+and now and then on the coasts of Tripoli and Algeria.
+
+I would hardly characterize my own work as a compromise between these
+two extremes.... It was _not_ that, though I _was_ less of a slave to
+form than Benchley, and by no means so emancipated from it as Crafts.
+Rather, I should say, I was striving, independent of either classic or
+contemporary influence, to paint such depth, warmth and atmosphere into
+my tropical seascapes as would make them convey an _intenser_ suggestion
+of reality. I did not expect water spaniels to pay me the subtle
+compliment of trying to gambol in my breakers, nor children to try to
+launch their toy sailboats in my lagoons.... Benchley's "colour
+photograph" effects were more likely to attain to those distinctions
+than my comparatively impressionistic sketches. What I was striving for
+was an effect that would compel some such comment as old Jackson had
+made the first time he stood off and conned my "Swells and
+Shells"--"Gawd bly'me, that's _it_! That water's wetter 'n a swept deck,
+an', s'elp me Mike, but I c'n bloomin' near sniff them bloody clams!"
+
+Very naturally, then, since the sea was what I was painting, the
+impressions of anyone who didn't know the sea as intimately as did my
+beach-combing cronies of Kai wasn't going to worry me much. The opinions
+of men who knew less about the subject of my pictures, and more about
+how pictures in general were painted, didn't strike me as anything that
+counted very seriously. Nevertheless when, at Brisbane on the voyage
+south, I got the Sydney papers with the account of the opening of the
+show, it was a good deal of a satisfaction to find that my work appeared
+to have got over with the art critics. These had, of course (since they
+were denied Jackson's facility of expression), to confine themselves to
+the jargon of their kind. It was plain, however, that they had been
+favourably impressed, and were doing the best they could with their
+comparatively restricted vocabularies. Mere city dwellers, too, most of
+them, one had to allow for their limited capacity of appreciation for
+something--the sea--which they knew only from other pictures. But even
+allowing for that, it was reassuring to find that they were coming
+across so whole-heartedly. Such capsules of praise as they had in stock
+were scattered with lavish hands for whoso would to swallow. "The soul
+of the sea palpitates through every canvas," said the _Herald_; "you
+leave the gallery with the tang of blown brine fresh in your nostrils,"
+said the _Telegraph_; "Australia is honoured with having the first
+chance to see this brilliantly distinctive work," said the illustrated
+_Australasian_, and promised four full pages of reproductions of the
+"gems of the collection" in its next issue. The young lady (I judged she
+was young) who was on the job for the Melbourne _Age_ gushed
+breathlessly for a column and a half. This was a sample: "In
+'Mother-of-Pearl' he has woven with a warp of sunbeams and a woof of
+rainbow--a shimmering brocade of exultantly sentient brightness!"
+Capsules of praise, every one of these; but they were from the top shelf
+beyond a doubt, and the fact that they had been reached for indicated
+that at least something of my message had dribbled over the frames.
+
+The _Bulletin_ had done rather better than the others in commissioning
+for the occasion an "art critic" who (as transpired in the course of his
+half-page article) had sailed his own sixty-footer to Auckland and back.
+He, at least, had met the sea on more intimate terms than was possible
+through Sunday mixed-bathing at Coogee and Manley (with occasional
+ferryboat passages, about the limit the others had gone, I reckoned).
+Said he, in speaking of "The Seventh Son of a Seventh Son": "The beat of
+the eternal sea was behind every slash of the brush with which this
+Franco-American wizard of light and colour painted that rolling mountain
+of water. I felt my fingers involuntarily clutching at the spokes of the
+wheel to bring her up to meet the menace of that curling crest. I forgot
+where I was ... I almost felt the heave of a deck beneath my feet...."
+
+I rather liked that, I must confess; though perhaps it didn't give me
+quite the double-barrelled thrill of "Heifer" Halligan's comment when I
+sent for him to pass judgment on that same picture before the paint of
+my finishing touches upon it was dry. A month before, as I have already
+mentioned, I had given the "Heifer" a pretty severe pummelling with the
+four-ounce gloves, and, like the good sport he was, to show that there
+was no hard feeling on the score of his battered optics, he had
+volunteered to sail me in his sloop to Tuka-tuva (the reef on which Bell
+lost the _Flying Scud_, it may be recalled) so that I could make some
+close-range studies of hard-running waves at the point of breaking. And,
+just to show that there was no hard feeling on _my_ part over the wallop
+below my belt with which the "Heifer" had finally brought the bout to a
+close, I accepted. The studies had been made--just a few slashes on
+oil-cloth with a rather useful waterproof paint I had mixed specially
+for "sloppy" stunts like that--with my shivering anatomy lashed to the
+_Wet-Eyed Susy's_ bowsprit, while the "Heifer" tacked back and forth
+just beyond the line where the pull of the shoaling reef, dragging at
+their bases, let the green-black tops of the combers tumble over in a
+thunderous roar. As he was really taking a good deal of a chance of
+losing his handy little pearler, if nothing else, it was only right that
+the "Heifer's" request for a first look-see at the completed picture
+should have the call.
+
+He studied it in silence for a minute or two, legs wide apart and his
+bullet head cocked judicially to one side. Then his fine teeth were
+bared in a broad grin and he vented a throaty chuckle of amused
+admiration. Said he: "Mister Whitney, that hulkin' ol' lalapalooser
+there looks like he has all the kick behint him of that bally wallop on
+the solar plexus you floored me with the other day." Not even the Sydney
+_Bulletin's dilletante_ yachtsman could do quite as well as that--from
+my standpoint, at least. But of course I had a weakness for the Kai
+viewpoint.
+
+The Exhibition had been opened early in the week--the usual affair of
+the kind, "Under the Patronage and in the Presence of His Excellency,
+the Governor General and Lady X----," and a long list of specially
+invited guests. Amiable old Lord X---- had made one of the happy little
+speeches for which he was famous. Then they had all had tea and a look
+at the pictures. This inevitable formal session out of the way, the show
+was opened to the general public. Under the stimulus of the
+astonishingly enthusiastic press, the public had come through beyond all
+expectations. For the next three days the crush at the gallery was, as
+the _Bulletin_ had it, like a "bargain day rush at _Morden's_." On
+Friday, it was advertised, Sir Joseph Preston, R.A., a very
+distinguished English artist visiting in Australia, had consented to
+speak at the Exhibition on "The Painter with the New Method and the New
+Message." This was the day of my arrival in Sydney. It did not occur to
+me at first just who the subject of the discourse was to be. When it
+finally came home to me, I began speeding up my transformation process
+at once. By dint of rushed valeting and dressing, I just managed to
+reach the gallery as Sir Joseph was getting under way.
+
+I won't endeavour to set down his speech, not even in outline. It was
+highly complimentary from first to last--and not even condescending,
+which was as surprising as pleasing when one considered how lofty an
+eminence Sir Joseph occupied in the art world. One thing I was just a
+bit disappointed about, though, was that the speaker seemed to assume
+that the pictures on exhibition represented my ultimate expression, the
+best I could do, or could be expected to do; whereas I knew that I had
+hardly got my foot well planted on the first rung of the ladder. I
+regretted without resenting this. I hadn't painted my hopes and
+ambitions into the pictures, so how was Sir Joseph Preston, more than
+anybody else, to see what I was driving at? I rather wanted to tell him
+about it, though. I hadn't talked with an artist of the old boy's
+calibre since I was in Paris, and not often there.
+
+I was just screwing up my nerve to push in and introduce myself, when
+Benchley pounced upon me with a joyous whoop and did the thing as a
+matter of course. Totally oblivious of the widening circle of wondering
+cackle that arose as the news of my unexpected, and not undramatic,
+appearance spread outward through the jam, I held forth to the beaming
+Royal Academician on the things that had been passing through my mind.
+The great man fired as though he had been of tow and my words--my
+ideas--were a torch laid to the inflammable mass of him.
+
+"Magnificent! Perfectly ripping!" he exclaimed with enthusiasm; "but
+what a shame I didn't know that ten minutes ago so that I could have
+told them! By Jove, I'll tell them now! Better yet--jolly good idea;
+_you_ tell them. Just the things you've been telling me."
+
+Benchley, Crafts and my other sponsors descended upon me like a pack of
+hounds at those words, and the first thing I knew I had been hustled up
+onto their little dais, and Sir Joseph was introducing me as "a
+gentleman who can make a few pertinent additions to my late remarks."
+
+I hadn't been called upon for a speech since I won the middle-weight
+boxing championship of Harvard in my Junior year, and speaking was by no
+means my long suit even in those days. I bucked up and went through it
+now though, just as I did on that first occasion. It's no very difficult
+thing to get away with when you know what you want to say--and have the
+crowd with you. I spoke briefly, but very earnestly--very much to the
+point, too, I think. When the crowd had quieted down a bit, tea was
+served. The next morning, when I read the papers in bed, it was to
+discover that I had become a fully fledged--or perhaps maned is the
+proper word--lion.
+
+In one of those same papers there was an interesting item of news about
+another lion. The special representative the _Herald_ had rushed to
+Townsville immediately the news of the _Cora Andrews_ affair had been
+received, wired that the Hon. Hartley Allen, replying from the
+Quarantine Station to a note the correspondent had addressed him there,
+announced definitely that it was his intention to pay a visit to his old
+home town of Sydney. He would leave by the first steamer sailing after
+the doctors had certified him free of the danger of plague infection.
+
+That was good news. The best I could have hoped for. It confirmed my
+growing belief that I was not going to have to do much, if any, seeking
+in order to meet my man. And it was a hundred to one that the doctor
+with whom I had talked on the _Utupua_ had told Allen of the
+conversation as soon as the latter came out of his long sleep, I was
+even inclined to the opinion that his decision to go south as soon as he
+could had been influenced by a desire to find out once and for all what
+attitude I was going to take toward him. This was all to the good. There
+was no need of my hurrying back to Townsville now. I could stay in
+Sydney and enjoy my triumph while watching that of the Hon. Hartley
+Allen develop. With a lighter heart than I had known since the rumble of
+the _Cora's_ anchor chain awakened me on that day of hateful memory in
+Kai, I tumbled out of bed, took a cold bath, and went down to the
+dining-room for breakfast--the greatest burst of early matutinal energy
+I had shown in years.
+
+The avidity of the interest of the public in the Hon. Hartley Allen
+increased day by day as the time approached for the hero to come south.
+All of the important papers had special men on the job in Townsville,
+and every scrap of news bearing the least relation to the man of the
+hour was instantly put on the wires and rushed into print. Save for that
+one announcement that he intended visiting Sydney, Allen himself gave
+out nothing. The correspondents had to confine themselves to reports of
+his continued improvement in health, as passed out to them by the
+doctors, and to speculation--columns of it--as to what effect Allen's
+return might be expected to have upon racing. His elder brother--Sir
+James, who was now in England--had allowed Hartley's stable to run down
+a good deal after the latter had been shipped off to the Islands. There
+were a few good horses left after the best of the string had been sold
+to pay off debts, and these would form a nucleus which could not fail to
+develop quickly into a factor to be reckoned with in the meets of next
+season. There was no limit to the discussion of this phase of the
+affair, Melbourne and Sydney racing experts devoting even more space to
+it than the special men in Townsville.
+
+Of the story of the _Cora Andrews_ there was nothing new whatever being
+brought out. If Allen was telling the doctors at the Quarantine Station
+anything, it must have been in confidence, for these professed to have
+learned nothing further every time the correspondents pressed them for
+details. The schooner herself, it was reported, had broken from her
+mooring during a gale and been driven upon the beach of Cleveland Bay,
+some miles from the town. A hole had been stove in her bow and it would
+be impossible to get her off before considerable repairs were carried
+out. As she had not been disinfected since the removal of the plague
+victims, there would probably be some delay about the repairs,
+especially as the question of her ownership was in doubt. She had
+belonged to the man who sailed her in the labour-recruiting trade, and
+he was dead. So was the Skipper who had taken her over in the
+Louisiades. It looked like the Hon. Hartley Allen had the most valid
+claim to her, but that was a matter to be adjusted by the courts in any
+event. In the meantime, the schooner, as she was lying in fairly quiet
+water, was probably safe until the next gale. Thus the papers.
+
+When Allen finally came out of quarantine it transpired that he would
+have a wait of three days on his hands before there was a steamer
+departing for the south. The delay was unavoidable, although an
+enthusiastic Sydney paper had suggested that the Admiral commanding the
+Australian Naval Station should detach a gunboat to bring the hero home.
+Allen, it appeared, had actually tried to avoid meeting the newspaper
+men, and consented to do so finally only on the condition that he would
+not be expected to give out anything in the way of an interview in
+respect to his past, present or future. As they had no alternative in
+the matter, the correspondents accepted the ultimatum, but only--as most
+of them confessed--in the hope of getting it modified when action was
+joined. They were doomed to disappointment.
+
+Allen received them on the veranda of a house that had been put at his
+disposal by a prominent local shipping man--a detached bungalow in the
+grounds of the latter's home on the outskirts of the town. They reported
+him looking rather soft--a good two stone heavier than his former riding
+weight. He was heavily browned from the tropical sun, showed a tinge of
+yellow--doubtless from malaria and _dengue_,--and his face was deeply
+lined about the eyes and mouth. He looked to have aged rather more than
+the five years of his absence: but life in the Islands was hardly the
+rest cure most Australians fancied it. No, not by a long shot.
+
+Except for his refusal to tell anything whatever of the story of how he
+had brought the plague ship through the Great Barrier Reef, Allen had
+been very courteous and agreeable to the pressmen. They all agreed that
+he was in good fettle--quite full of beans. Indeed, it was Allen who did
+all of the interviewing. Persistently refusing to answer any questions
+about himself, he was avid of interest concerning all that had happened
+in the racing world during his absence. What were the real facts behind
+the breakdown of the Colchester filly after she had won the Victoria
+National so handily? Who was that colt _Ballarat Boy_ out of?--the one
+that had upset all the dope in the spring meet at Adelaide. Were Tod
+Sloan and Skeets Martin still piling up wins in England? What was the
+secret of their success? Was there any chance of these or any other of
+the Yank jockeys coming to Australia?
+
+Answering such questions as these for an hour was the way that bunch of
+high-salaried feature writers interviewed the Hon. Hartley Allen. And
+when, as one of them put it in somewhat mixed simile, they were "pumped
+dry as a last year's dope sheet," the hero announced that the interview
+was over.
+
+Disappointed in their endeavours to pry any pearls from the oyster
+into which Allen (for reasons best known to himself) had metamorphosed
+himself, the correspondents made the best of a bad job by playing up
+the modesty of the man they had been sent a thousand miles or so to
+interview. Modest was an adjective that--in the light of what most of
+them knew of Allen's past--it hadn't occurred to any of them to use
+before. Now, however, they made up for lost time. The modest hero did
+this, or the modest hero said that.... There was modesty in the way he
+stroked his chin, in the shrug of his shoulders, in the way he crossed
+and uncrossed his legs when sitting. His habit of looking sideways
+when speaking was rated as a sign of modesty; so was the trick of
+stroking his cheroot between thumb and forefinger as he smoked.
+_Modest_--_hero_--those words became permanently wedded in my mind
+during the week that I was reading leaders written with them for an
+inspiration, the report of sermons preached with them as a text. I
+cannot hear the one of them to this day without thinking of the other.
+_Modest hero!_ In the estimation of the public "Slant" Allen, whom I had
+always thought of as the most egotistic man I had ever known, remained
+that to the--until public estimation ceased to interest him.
+
+There was one little item of news telegraphed from Townsville which I
+read with a good deal of grim amusement. The day before his departure
+Allen was given some kind of a send-off in the Town Hall. As he was
+riding down the main street on his way to this affair, a man ducked
+under the rope holding the crowd back at the curb, rushed at the open
+carriage and aimed a blow at the breast of the hero with a knife. No
+whit perturbed, the latter had coolly deflected the thrust by striking
+up the assailant's elbow with his left hand. Then, seizing the ruffian's
+wrist with his right hand, he had brought it sharply down on the edge of
+the carriage door, shattering the bones and causing the knife to fall
+from the relaxed fingers to the pavement. Infuriated by the dastardly
+attack, the crowd had set upon the would-be assassin, who was only saved
+from being mauled to death through the interference of none other than
+Allen himself.
+
+The correspondents were much impressed, not only by the behaviour of the
+generous-hearted hero in intervening to save the life of the man who had
+just tried to take his own, but also--and especially--by a curious
+little circumstance in connection therewith. It was observed, in short,
+that, while Allen had defended his own body most effectually with his
+bare hands, as soon as he saw that the man who had attacked him was on
+the verge of being killed by a bloody-minded mob, quite beyond police
+control, he whipped out a revolver and used the menace of it to clear a
+space around the trampled body of his late assailant. The correspondents
+all thought that was rather fine; indeed, I was inclined to think so
+myself.
+
+Allen had flatly refused to lodge a complaint against the man who had
+tried so desperately to knife him, and even declined to help the police
+in their attempt to identify the fellow. "Just an old Island affair, the
+big-hearted hero had explained with a careless laugh, as he turned on
+his way to receive the Golden Key symbolizing the Freedom of the Queen
+City of Northern Queensland." That was the way the _Herald_ man had it.
+
+At the Police Station the prisoner was recognized at once as a man named
+Saunders, who had been convicted of a series of bullion robberies in the
+Kalgoorlie gold fields of Western Australia some years previously.
+Because of his diabolical practice of throwing red pepper and vitriol to
+blind his victims, he had gained the sobriquet of "The Squid." He had
+escaped after serving but eighteen months of his twenty-five-year
+sentence and made his way across the "Never-Never" to Port Darwin, where
+all trace of him was lost for the time. He was supposed to have slipped
+away to the Islands. This was confirmed a few months later, when a
+boatload of out-bound placer miners were held up and robbed of the
+fruits of their season's work in the Fly gold fields of New Guinea. Even
+if one of them, who had once been in Western Australia, had not
+identified Saunders, the fact that a jar of sulphuric acid had been
+thrown into the midst of the miners would have connected "The Squid"
+with the crime beyond a doubt. Australia had but fragmentary record of
+his later crimes, but he was known to have been mixed up in a number of
+pearl robberies in and about Thursday Island. He had continued to
+practise his vitriol-throwing trick (varying it occasionally with a
+fiendishly original stunt with some native concoction), and was still
+known as "The Squid." How long he had been lying low in Australia, or
+why he ventured there, he refused to tell; neither would he offer any
+explanation of his savage attack upon the hero of the hour. All he had
+said in the latter connection was: "'Slant' 'll twig why I took a flyer
+at returning the pig-sticker to him--it was his onct."
+
+I understood at once that the root of "The Squid's" grudge against Allen
+struck back to that affair of the old pearl pirate's missionary-reared
+daughter--a copper-haired, ivory-browed Amazon of a girl who had become
+one of the most consummate sirens in the pearleries after a three-months
+trip with "Slant" to Singapore had broken her in. Amazing story the
+whole thing, from its beginning with the girl's mother--a teacher in the
+Gospel Propaganda Society's school at Thursday Island who had fallen
+afoul of one of "The Squid's" tentacles long before his conviction--to
+its ghastly finish, when the girl herself settled her accumulated
+account against all mankind with the body and soul of one--a hot-headed
+lump of a young missionary just out from London.
+
+According to the version current in Kai, Allen had not been greatly to
+blame in the affair with the temperamental rack of bones and red braids
+that the girl was when she burst upon the Islands from the Auckland
+convent; but "The Squid" evidently felt that the man who had set the
+snowball (not a very apt metaphor, for I never heard the girl compared
+to anything so frigid) rolling was the one to settle with. I had heard
+of three or four rather ingeniously thought-out attempts he had made to
+square the account, all of which, however, had failed as a consequence
+of Allen's quickness of wit and hand in sudden emergency. The knife
+figuring in the Townsville attack, it occurred to me, was probably the
+one the resourceful "Slant" had put through "The Squid's" shoulder at
+twenty paces a fraction of a second before the latter had delivered a
+flask of red pepper from his upraised hand.
+
+I also thought I understood why Allen had bluntly refused to make any
+explanation of the attack. A veritable Turk in his relations with women,
+that Island Lothario had also the Turk's dislike for discussing his
+women in public. When sober, Allen rarely if ever boasted about
+anything. When very drunk, he would occasionally toot a horn anent his
+racing wins; and once, when he was all but swamped--awash to the rails
+with "Three Star"--I had heard him give a maudlin monologue on men he
+had put away. But I--and no one else, so far as I knew--had ever heard
+him talk of the girls he had bagged, though the Lord knows there had
+been enough of them. (The nearest he ever came to it was in that little
+joke of his I have mentioned--the one about having "a son and a saddle
+in every island group in the South Pacific,"--and that was only a sort
+of delicate implication.) His close-mouthedness about women was one of a
+number of little things I couldn't help but liking in the rascal.
+
+Since Allen and Saunders would not talk, and since the knife that
+figured in the affair--a heavy dirk, with a shark's hide handle and the
+mark of a Lisbon cutlerer on the blade--could not talk, the ever-baffled
+Townsville correspondents had been able to gather practically nothing
+about what their journalistic noses told them was a red-hot human
+interest story. Blocked on that trail, they devoted a lot of space to a
+discussion of the interesting revelation of the hero's Island nickname.
+More or less ingenious theories as to "Why 'Slant'?" filled the columns
+of the papers for a number of days. None of them was within a mile of
+the mark. One of the correspondents fancied the name had been given
+Allen because of his "aquilinity, his wiry slenderness, so that he clove
+the air like a slant of sunbeams as he rode." Another writer was sure
+the name was suggested by the hero's peculiar crouching seat--the slant
+of his back as he urged on his mount. They were quite incapable of going
+beyond Allen's physical characteristics, or of visualizing him save on
+horseback.
+
+That added another little item to the list of things I could have
+enlightened the press and the public on about "Slant" Allen, and, in
+this particular instance, I wouldn't have minded passing on the facts at
+once. Indeed, I made rather a hit at a Government House luncheon one day
+by telling how the nearing hero (he was expected to be landing at
+Brisbane on the morrow) had qualified for his queer nickname. Jackson,
+who was responsible for the title, had confided to me how he came to
+bestow it. There was no story behind it, as some of the papers had
+hinted. Old "Jack," after having known Allen pretty intimately for a
+couple of years, came to the conclusion one day that the lanky
+Sydney-sider was the first man he ever met who persistently and
+consistently kept him guessing. Given a situation, and the foxy old
+highwayman had discovered that he could usually tell in advance how any
+given man would be likely to meet it. It was after he had guessed wrong
+about Allen some dozens of times, without once guessing right, that
+Jackson made up his mind that there was no forecasting the "slant of his
+course from the slant of the breeze." And because something in the
+mellifluous sound of the word struck pleasantly on the trader's ear, he
+began applying the name to the man who had inspired it. "No re'l reason
+for it," he explained; "but it sure do seem to fit 'im like a new copper
+bottom does a schooner."
+
+The Governor General's Aide-de-camp, who was something of a follower of
+the ponies, confirmed Jackson's opinion and the fitness of the
+sobriquet. Said the gaily uniformed "Galloper": "The great secret of
+Allen's astonishing success as a point-to-point rider was his amazing
+faculty for bringing off the unexpected. Once, at Launceston, I saw him
+win on a hundred-to-one shot (how he happened to be riding the skate I
+don't know) by deliberately bolting the course and putting his mount
+full tilt through a thorn thicket. He was in tenth place, with a mile to
+go when he did it, and he won the race by a dozen lengths--his own and
+the waler's hide in tatters.
+
+"Another unexpected win of Allen's," he continued with the wry grin of a
+man who speaks of dearly bought experience, "was that 'Totalisator' coup
+of his at Adelaide. His pals got in on the 'Tote' somehow, and--" A
+warning cough from Lord X---- checked the loquacious "Galloper's" tongue
+in mid-flight, and, with reddening gill, he faded away with: "Sorry,
+sir, but I forgot it isn't quite--quite the thing to remember that
+little chapter of Hartley Allen's past. Quite right, really. My mistake.
+Dead sorry, sir...."
+
+There was no doubt that Allen was going to have a clean-scored slate to
+begin writing anew on. I was thinking of that, and "Why 'Slant'?", as I
+walked back to the hotel an hour later. "No forecasting the slant of his
+course from the slant of the breeze!"... "Faculty for bringing off the
+unexpected." I hoped that he wasn't going to disappoint me in the matter
+of bringing things to a showdown on his arrival in Sydney. But no.... My
+every instinct told me that he would not side-step that. So I made all
+preparations properly to receive "Slant" Allen, and, on the day of his
+triumphant home-coming, was waiting for him in my room at the
+_Australia_, as I have already told.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XI
+
+                          A HERO'S HOMECOMING
+
+
+It was two o'clock when I began powdering and screening the yellow-hued
+inner lining of my sea shells. Subconsciously, I must have set three in
+my mind as the time my caller would come, for it was not until that hour
+that I ceased my absorbingly interesting labours and looked at my watch.
+So far as I can recall, I felt no concern one way or the other. I simply
+noted that the hour had gone by without bringing my expected visitor,
+and went back to my work.
+
+As a matter of fact, having just made a most gratifying discovery, I was
+rather glad that the interruption had not come. I had isolated a new and
+wonderful colour--a dark coppery gold that I had yearned for every time
+I saw sunlight filtering through brine onto the gently undulating leaves
+of reef-rooted kelp. Now I had it; and it was not an accident--I could
+do it again. By standing on edge a fragment of one of the big bivalves I
+was experimenting with, I discovered that a sharp blow with the side of
+my pestle caused the thinnest of chips to fly from its enamel-like
+lining. These, glassily translucent as they fell, when reduced in the
+mortar gave a warm, almost glowing powder of exactly the hue I sought.
+Now if I could only devise a way of mixing it effectively....
+
+So well were my innermost faculties set to respond to that expected
+knock, that, when it came, not even the mazes of exultant speculation in
+which my discovery had set my brain--my outward wits--to wandering,
+prevented instant ganglionic reaction. I didn't have to think. That had
+all been done an hour before, and the necessary orders given. At the
+alarm, these had only to be carried out as prearranged. My legs and arms
+simply obeyed the directions that had been registered for them in some
+convenient little nerve-knots strung along my spinal column. That
+carried me, stepping softly, out of the bathroom, through the bedroom,
+and past the middle of the sitting-room, well beyond the direct line of
+vision of anyone opening the door from the hall. It was a position from
+which I must see anyone coming in before he was able to locate me. The
+rest of the order--carried out simultaneously--had to do with laying the
+pestle lightly on the bathroom table and thrusting the hand that had
+been wielding it deep into the right-hand pocket of my old shooting
+jacket.
+
+In the second or two that it had taken me to reach the middle of the
+sitting-room from the bathroom, my wits had relinquished their rainbow
+dreams and were back on their workaday job. They it was which, now the
+limit of ganglionic action had been reached, stepped in and took
+command. It was not from nervousness that I swallowed once and flashed
+my tongue across my lips before speaking. I only wanted to be sure my
+voice was as firm as I knew the resolution directing it to be. Speaking
+sharply, but in a tone not above the ordinary, I said: "Come in, Allen!"
+
+Among the several little surprises in store for me in the course of the
+next few minutes, not the least came when the man on the other side of
+the door coughed and cleared his throat as his hand began to turn the
+knob. I was just telling myself that such palpable symptoms of
+nervousness were very unlike "Slant" Allen to display, when the door
+swung inwards and "Slant" Allen stepped into the room. Allen, but not
+the Allen I had known. Absolutely nerved to readiness as I was, the
+contrast of this flushed, slightly embarrassed, almost diffident young
+chap and the ruthless, cold-blooded badman I had made every
+preparation--physical and mental--to meet came nigh to taking me aback.
+It was like clambering up out of a companionway, all set for a hurricane
+sweeping the deck--and finding it calm. For an instant my jaw must have
+come near to sagging in the amazement that swept over me. I pulled
+myself together quickly, though, and if Allen noticed my momentary
+lapse, he gave no sign of it.
+
+He was the first to speak. "So you were expecting me?" he said, but not
+as though greatly surprised.
+
+"Ra-_ther_," I replied with emphasis. "Look at this!" and I pulled out
+the revolver from my right-hand pocket, released the hair-trigger
+adjustment, slid the safety-catch, and laid it on the table by the
+window. I would not have been guilty of such an obvious act of bravado
+had not my preternaturally acute senses told me that, so far as Allen
+was concerned at least, there was not going to be any occasion to use
+the weapon. That feeling persisted even when, as Allen turned slightly
+in the act of closing the door, I noticed a very perceptible bulge where
+the flimsy corner of his pongee coat swept his lean right flank. The
+instant he entered the room I knew that, whatever motives had brought
+him there, the intention of trying to kill me was not among them.
+Scarcely less strong were my doubts that I would be able to establish
+any valid grounds for killing him. My old sneaking liking for certain
+things about the debonair rascal was not dead.
+
+He grinned appreciatively at the sight of the gun, and then, with a
+perfunctory "You don't mind, do you?" stepped over and picked it up. I
+watched him without misgivings, my mind still busy adjusting itself to
+the new aspect.
+
+"Was that the toy you used the day you put a bullet hole through the
+crown of my new hundred-dollar Payta hat?" he asked, fingering the
+exquisitely turned barrel admiringly. "My own fault, of course. I egged
+you on by expressing some doubts of your ability to do it from your
+jacket pocket. This looks like ..."
+
+"Same gun--same jacket--new pocket," I cut in laconically; adding: "I
+was prepared to repeat the operation just now--with about half a finger
+less elevation on the muzzle."
+
+It was the real old Allen grin that opened out as the significance of
+those concluding words sunk home. Not the mocking smirk which had curled
+his lips so much of the time, but a good, broad, healthy grin that
+betokened genuine inward enjoyment. The fellow--I had remarked it
+before--had a really keen and inclusive sense of humour--even inclusive
+enough to permit his hearty participation in a laugh that was on
+himself. But that irritating sneer (which had died on his lips as a full
+realization of Bell's bigness in giving him his choice of going on the
+_Cora_ or remaining at Kai came to him)--that sneer, with the amused
+contempt for all the world it connoted, did not reappear. Indeed, I am
+not sure that I ever saw it again. Had there been some inward change in
+the man to dry up the fount of contempt from which that ironic smirk
+rose to his lips? I wasn't clear on that point yet: but certainly he had
+been profoundly shaken--deeply stirred.
+
+Save for that expansive grin of real amusement, Allen made no comment on
+my implication that I had been waiting to send a bullet--a few inches
+below the crown of his hat. "Sweetest balanced little piece of light
+artillery I ever trained," he remarked inconsequentially, holding the
+revolver at arm's length and squinting along the sights to where his
+reversed image menaced back from the depths of a full-length mirror. He
+really admired the little gun--I could see that by the way his fist
+closed on the checked vulcanite grip, by the caressing touch of his
+forefinger on the locked trigger.
+
+"Made to order by the S. and W. people for my father," I explained,
+trying to fall in with his mood as far as I could. If he had come to
+talk about revolvers--well, who in Australia knew more about them than I
+did? I continued:
+
+"There's two or three of the Governor's own little gadgets on it, and
+one or two I had added myself. The one that I like best is that
+safety-catch.... Stranger can't release it till he's been shown how. You
+never can tell who may be picking up a gun that's left lying around, you
+know. You'll have to admit it would be doubly painful for a man to be
+plunked with his own revolver."
+
+I couldn't for the life of me have refrained from that last little
+sally, and Allen seemed to enjoy it as much as I did. His broadened grin
+showed an extra tooth or two at each end as he relaxed his extended arm.
+"I haven't the least intention of trying to impose that indignity on
+you," he laughed. "Besides, you needn't fear that the significance of
+that sag in your left-hand pocket has been lost on me. Had me covered
+from there all the time, didn't you?"
+
+"As a matter of fact, I had," I replied, beginning to grin myself; "but
+this confounded sawed-off _Mauser_ automatic has an upkick that makes
+anything like delicate work quite out of the question. I could wing you
+with it from there, no doubt; but the job wouldn't be a pretty
+one--nothing that I could take any pride in."
+
+I laid the stubby automatic on the table where the other weapon had
+been, saying that I always did hate the drag of a gun in my pocket.
+Then, letting my glance wander to the bulge on Allen's right hip, I
+added pointedly: "... especially when I can't see any immediate use
+ahead for it."
+
+Either missing the point of that gentle hint, or else ignoring it
+completely, Allen went on playing with the little S. & W. Breaking it
+gently with practised hand, he studied with bent head the smooth, easy
+action of the automatic ejector. Just a bit more of a bend, and the six
+cartridges slid noiselessly forth and fell into his hand. He commenced
+shoving them back, one by one. It was the last, or the next to the last,
+of the greasy cylinders that slipped from his fingers, struck the floor
+and rolled under the table. I remarked with admiration the magnificent
+swell of the flexed saddle muscles as the thin _pongee_ tightened over
+the bent thighs; the narrow hips, the lean, powerful back, the--
+
+"Good God!"
+
+The voice, hoarse with awe and surprise, was mine; but my own mother
+would hardly have recognized it. For an instant my quaking knees almost
+let me collapse to the floor; then my faltering inward control stiffened
+and clapped the brakes on my skidding nerves. By the time Allen,
+startled by my sudden exclamation, straightened up from his scramble
+after the still unretrieved cartridge, I had myself fully in hand again.
+I could not be sure whether his flush and quick breathing were from
+surprise or the stooping posture in which he had been.
+
+"Did you speak, Whitney?" he asked, after running his eyes over the room
+and assuring himself that no one had entered. I held his eyes with my
+own till I was sure my voice was steadied. When I spoke, it was
+deliberately and evenly. "So Rona came back," I said.
+
+The train of lightning mental processes by which I had arrived at that
+astonishing conclusion had not much of an edge on Allen's quick
+comprehension of what had started that train going. For only the
+briefest instant his eyes were blank with surprise. Then, with a look of
+complete understanding, he clapped a hand to the side of his neck and
+began smoothing straight the limp collar of his soft silk shirt. The
+ghost of what would have been a sheepish grin flickered up and died
+away, and to his face came something of that half-embarrassed,
+half-eager look that had sat upon it when he entered the room, as he
+said: "Yes, Rona has come back. That was one of the things I came to see
+you about. She--we--the both of us have a bit of a favour to ask of
+you."
+
+Quite the master of myself now (and of the situation, too, I thought), I
+came back banteringly with: "If it's that red, white and blue neck of
+yours you want tied up, I have one of B. and W.'s little First Aid
+cases in my bag...."
+
+It was the shockingly torn and bruised neck that had been revealed when
+Allen's collar had slipped back as he stooped to recover the rolling
+cartridge that set my swift train of thought going. This must have been
+something of the order of it, but electrically rapid of action:
+Lacerated neck--old Chinaman at Ponape whose neck was scratched when
+Rona ran away from him--Rona a specialist in neck-scratching--probably
+scratched Allen's neck (Question--Was it done in the course of one of
+the attacks she was known to have made upon him on the _Cora_?)--Could
+not have been done on the _Cora_, as they had left her over two weeks
+ago and these half-healed scratches were not over five or six days
+old.--Hence, Rona had scratched Allen's neck inside of the last week,
+and, therefore, could not have drowned herself in Ross Creek a
+fortnight ago. Conclusion--Rona has come back.
+
+It had taken not over a second or two for my quickened mind to run that
+devious course, and Allen's must have covered a good part of it in even
+less time. The wits of the both of us were keenly on edge. There could
+not but have been a fine display of sparks had he been in his wonted
+aggressive mood. But he had not come for fighting, physical or mental,
+it seemed. He had come to ask a favour--"for the both of us."
+
+"_For the both of us!_" The significance lurking in those words had
+eluded me for a moment in the sudden adjustment my mind was called upon
+to make in coming to a realization of the fact that Rona--the lissome
+lovely Rona--was not dead--that the bright flame of her was unquenched
+after all. But: "_a favour for the both of us!_" A sudden chill checked
+and throttled the thrill that had started to flood my being. "_A favour
+for both of us!_" "So--Bell dead--'Slant' Allen takes the girl in the
+end!" I said to myself. Then, the echo of Kai's estimate of Allen's
+track strategy: "An easy starter but a hell of a finisher, 'Slant'.
+Don't worry about what he's doing when the starting flag drops; watch
+him head into the stretch." "... _head into the stretch_," I repeated to
+myself. "Then what about the finish? Is he already under the wire?"
+
+These thoughts, like the train preceding them, must have flashed through
+my mind very quickly, for it was Allen's voice replying to my badinage
+about First Aid for his lacerated neck that brought me out of them.
+
+"The neck's doing very well, thank you," he was saying, "considering
+that its windpipe was closed for all of sixty seconds, and that most of
+the hide was clawed off from it all the way round."
+
+That was really very interesting intelligence, but my mind, deep in
+another channel, was quite incapable of compassing the significance of
+it for the moment.
+
+"So you've landed the girl after all," I said woodenly, cursing
+myself inwardly for the gallery play that had left both guns beyond
+my reach. For of course he had deliberately put Bell out of the
+running--shouldered him in the stretch.... Reviving suspicions brought
+also a realization of what it was up to me to do, now that there was no
+longer doubt....
+
+"That depends very largely upon you." Allen's quick reply cut short
+further conjecture.
+
+"Depends upon me?" I interrupted incredulously. "What do you mean by
+that? Oh, I see. Now that you've put Bell out of the way, perhaps you
+think that I, as his closest friend, ought to--to distribute his estate,
+so to speak. If that is the way you figure it, let me tell you that all
+the distributing you can count on me for will take the form of spraying
+lead over your worthless hide. You won't mind handing me one of those
+guns, will you? I don't mind which."
+
+It would have been sheer madness--straight suicide,--that outburst,
+had Allen been moved by the least desire to get me out of his way. I
+have never been quite able to make up my mind as to whether it was
+my instinctive feeling that he had no such desire that prompted me
+to take more leeway than prudence--nay, the commonest motive of
+self-preservation--would have dictated; or whether I simply lost my
+head--let my feelings get away with me. It may well have been the
+latter, for shocks had been crowding pretty thick, and it was hardly to
+be expected that the gears of my self-control wouldn't slip a cog now
+and then under the strain.
+
+Allen's brows drew together in a black scowl for a brief space, and his
+eyes contracted and grew hard as steel. Then, slowly, the scowl smoothed
+out, leaving only a deep flush behind it. It was not replaced by his
+former look of anxious embarrassment, however. Rather his expression was
+one of a serious, controlled determination.
+
+"That matter of my putting Captain Bell out of the way, as you choose to
+phrase it," he said sharply, "is one of the things I called to talk with
+you about. Since you've stated so plainly what you intend to do about
+it--assuming it's a fact,--perhaps it would be in order to take it up
+before--before the other matter. As for these pistols.... Since they're
+yours, help yourself to both of them." Stepping back from the table,
+well out of reach of the guns, he added: "But I'd rather appreciate it
+if you could see your way to refraining from using them until I'm
+through with what I've got to say; after that ..." (he gave his
+shoulders an indifferent shrug) "it's up to you. Do what you think best
+with them. I don't want them--neither one of them."
+
+"Of course not," I sneered. "Quite naturally, you'd prefer to use your
+own. Quite right, too. Get it out of your hip-pocket while you've got a
+chance. That's a new chum's way of carrying a gun, anyhow. I'm just a
+bit surprised to see a practised killer like Mister 'Slant' Allen
+resorting to it. No chance in the world to make an even break of it with
+a man with a gun in his side-pocket. Tail of your coat's always getting
+mixed up with your fingers just when you want to use them."
+
+Allen had braced himself after my first taunt came so near to getting
+him going, and this second one--galling as it must have been--hardly
+moved him. Only the faintest flutter of a corrugation between the brows
+told that another scowl had been repressed. The half-surprised tap he
+gave to the bulge on his hip--a gesture that would most certainly have
+drawn a shot from me had I had a gun in hand--suggested that he really
+had forgotten that there was anything there. I am positive that I could
+have grabbed a revolver from the table and beaten him to it on the draw.
+A move so naïve on the part of an old gunman convinced me, even before
+he had spoken a word, that I had let my feelings send me off at
+half-cock.
+
+"I haven't a pistol in my hip-pocket," he said evenly. "Never did carry
+one there, and wouldn't be likely to begin it if I was going gunning for
+a specialist like you. You'll have to take my word for that. Yes, and
+since I'm going to ask you to take my word--my unsupported word--for a
+number of other things, it may be in order to try to make you believe
+that my word, when I give it to you straight, isn't quite--that it isn't
+on just the same plane with the rest of my doings."
+
+I was just a bit surprised that he didn't take out whatever it was that
+created that bulge in his hip-pocket, but hardly reckoned it worth while
+mentioning. I was fully assured that, far from seeking trouble, it was
+the one thing he had steadfastly resolved to avoid. That was enough for
+the moment. He was also about to speak of the one thing I was interested
+in above all others--the doping of Bell. There was every reason why I
+should encourage him to speak of that. The matter of Rona would come up
+in due course. He evidently had something to say about her also.
+
+"Sit down," I said, and extended my cigarette case.
+
+He declined my fat gold-tipped Egyptians, heavily salted with _kief_
+(another accursed habit I had picked up in Paris), and lighted a slender
+Sumatra cheroot from his own case. It was not as a move of precaution (I
+was through with all pretence of that now) that I set the big lounging
+chair I shoved up for him so that he would sit facing the light. I
+merely wanted to watch his face. Yet even that was not necessary to
+satisfy me of his sincerity, at least for the moment. His every tone and
+gesture was sufficient proof of that.
+
+"In the matter of the value of my word...." Allen was losing no time in
+getting to the point. "In the time you have spent mooching about the
+Islands, Whitney, you have doubtless heard me referred to by a good many
+hard names, such as pirate, murderer, thief, blackguard, jail-bird,
+crook, and so on without end. You've heard all of these, haven't you?"
+
+"All, and many others," I assented readily. His frankness rather
+appealed to me just then.
+
+"Quite right. Yet I dare say you didn't happen to hear the name of liar
+included among the number. If you did, it was used by some cove who had
+a grudge against me, and didn't care whether he stuck to facts or not. I
+don't mean that I haven't put over a lot of crooked deals in my time,
+nor that I haven't come out with a gratuitous falsehood now and then
+when it suited my purpose. I don't claim to be a George Washington. But
+I do mean just this: that when I have deliberately assured a man that a
+thing was, or was not so, I was giving him the dead straight of it to
+the best of my knowledge. And that's the way I'm speaking when I tell
+you that I haven't a revolver on me, and that that dope I slipped into
+Bell's whisky at Kai had nothing to do with his playing out on the
+voyage. As for the reason of that ..."
+
+Allen frowned slightly and ceased speaking for a few seconds. When he
+resumed it was not to take up the thread where he had dropped it.
+
+"I don't know whether you'll have difficulty in believing it or not,
+Whitney," he went on after a half-dozen puffs at his slow-burning
+cheroot; "but this is the first time since I was packed out of Australia
+five years ago that I've tried to explain to anyone anything I've said
+or done--tried to make out a case for myself. That was simply because I
+didn't give a damn whether anyone approved of it or not. The reason I am
+doing it now--well, there are two reasons."
+
+He puffed quietly for a few moments again, as though gathering his
+thoughts. Then he continued: "The first reason is that I owe it to you
+for the consideration you showed in the matter of not telling them at
+Kai what an ass I'd made of myself. That was dead white, Whitney. I've
+got to give it you for that. No one but a thoroughbred could have held
+his tongue for five minutes about a thing like that, especially seeing
+you were under no obligations of any kind whatever to me. And, for all I
+can learn, you've held your tongue for a month. How do I know? Well, I
+know about Kai (the only ones I care much about anyway) through a letter
+Jackson got off to me from Samarai--after he'd delivered you over to old
+'Choppy' Tancred to bring south. Got it the night before I left
+Townsville. It wasn't much of a literary effort, but he managed to say a
+few things that--things that I knew he wouldn't have said if you had
+given them the facts--all the facts about my departure in the _Cora_. As
+for Australia.... If you had been dishing up any inside dope in this
+nest of old women and busybodies, no fear that it wouldn't have come to
+me before this. I know them. Their tongues will waft gossip from
+Melbourne to Port Darwin quicker'n the telegraph. My word, don't I know
+them!"
+
+Quickened puffs registered the bitterness of unpleasant memories as
+Allen fell silent for a brief interval. "I'm not fool enough to believe
+that you kept quiet here out of any regard for me," he went on
+presently. "That wouldn't be it, for you haven't any. I don't blame you.
+As a matter of fact, I don't seriously care what Australia thinks
+anyway. I'm through with them here for good and all. But the Islands are
+different. The rest of my life, such as it is, is going to be lived
+there, and the only men I have ever had any great respect for are living
+there now. So, whatever reason there was behind it, Whitney, I'm deeply
+grateful to you for not showing me up in Kai. It was dead white of
+you.--I say it again. I've thought of it a good many times since I got
+Jack's scrawl, and it was the first thing I intended to speak to you
+about today. Only, my slate got a bit upset. That little gun of yours
+deflected my thoughts, and then--but you saw how I got forced off on
+another tack.
+
+"The other reason" (Allen hurried on as though anxious to avoid hearing
+any observations I might feel impelled to make on what he had just said)
+"why I am going to the trouble of trying to clear up your suspicions in
+the matter of Bell's death is because, if I don't, there will be no hope
+of your granting the request I have come to make of you--and I can't run
+any chances of failure with that.
+
+"I didn't want to kill Bell, but--well, it seems that I was equal to
+playing a damn dirty trick to get him out of the way. I won't need to
+tell you why. I hate to drag the girl into it, but it can't be helped.
+She must have bewitched me, I'm afraid. Not intentionally. Quite to the
+contrary, she never gave me a look. I admired Bell--in spite of his
+rather standoffish way with me--as much as any man I ever met. That was
+the only reason I held myself in about the girl as long as I did. I
+don't know just what would have happened if the schooner hadn't come.
+Chances are, since I was getting pretty near the limit of my
+self-control, I would have blown off some other way.
+
+"The opportunity which I saw to get rid of Bell in the schooner was too
+great a temptation to be resisted. So far as getting him clean away with
+the _Cora_ was concerned, I have only my own hot-headedness to blame for
+failing. I was simply asking for trouble when I went prancing down to
+take over the girl before the schooner even had her hook broken out; and
+I found it. No more than I deserved, though."
+
+Allen paused while the old humorous grin spread over his face for a
+moment. Then: "I trust you won't mind if I don't go into details about
+how I came to put my head into the noose," he said, still grinning. "It
+wasn't very edifying, you know--from my standpoint, I mean.
+
+"But it would have made no difference even if Bell had got away, while
+the girl and I remained behind on the island. She wouldn't have had
+anything to do with me anyway--at any rate, not while she had any reason
+to hope that Bell was still alive,--and probably she would have knifed
+me at the first chance for the part I had in getting him away. She would
+have found the chance, too, let me tell you. That girl creates her own
+opportunities--there's no holding her once she takes the bit in her
+teeth. What she wants to do, that thing she does. And what she wants a
+man to do for her, that thing _he_ does. She'll put through what she's
+after if she has to go through hell for it--and no minding whom she
+takes with her."
+
+The queer unnerved look on Allen's face drew my first interruption. "So
+it's come to that?" was all I said.
+
+"Yes, it's come to that," he assented, the seriousness of his eyes
+belying the whimsical smile on his lips. "But I'll be returning to that
+presently.
+
+"About that dope I gave Bell," he went on--"it was absolutely harmless.
+I bought the stuff in Macassar a few months ago, more out of curiosity
+than anything else. The old Sultan at Ternate had told me about it, and
+I was just a bit interested in its effects. It was pretty concentrated,
+though not a hundredth of the strength of the essence from the same
+plant that Rona took it for--the deadly poison, which has the same
+pungent smell. It was a considerable overdose of the stuff I took one
+night that put me on to the fact that, after a short spell of rather
+pleasant mental stimulation, it would drug a man to sleep for an hour or
+two. Hardly any after-effects at all, except a deuce of a thirst for
+liquor for a few days. I had talked about it with Doc Wyndham two or
+three times, and am perfectly certain of what I tell you.
+
+"It was the only stuff I could lay hands on that promised to do the
+trick. You see, I was afraid that if Bell wasn't drugged, he would
+become suspicious when I failed to return to the schooner, and come to
+look for me--perhaps even chuck up the stunt entirely. If he hadn't been
+pretty drunk (much the furthest along I ever saw him--probably on
+account of the beastly heat--you remember it?) he must have sniffed the
+half-dozen drops I put in his half-emptied glass of whisky while he was
+conning that old chart he had on the wall. It was a light dose (I've
+taken twice that much myself), and though he went under jolly fast--due
+to his being so far gone with whisky, probably--he was up and taking
+command of the schooner inside of an hour. And you'll remember how he
+was going right on ahead getting under way to catch the tide, even
+though I hadn't returned. The best nerves I ever saw in a man, bar none,
+that chap had. Will of iron and eyes for nothing but the thing he set
+out to do. There was a lot in common between him and the girl on that
+score. No wonder they were so strong for each other."
+
+Allen fell silent again, stroking his cheroot between thumb and
+forefinger--the habit the correspondents had characterized as a sign of
+modesty. "I hope you won't insist on my telling any more about the
+voyage than I have to in connection with Bell's death," he said at last.
+"I hate to speak of it at all. The thing is almost as much of a
+nightmare in memory as it was in fact. You saw how things were on the
+schooner when we got away. Well, just picture them getting worse and
+worse day by day for--how long was it?--something over a week, I
+believe, but it seemed a lifetime. The whisky I kept bracing up with
+made it a lot easier for me to stand--kept me from going crazy and
+jumping overboard, as so many of the niggers did. But Bell--he didn't
+have the whisky--wouldn't have it. Yes, he kept up that mad joke of his
+about being a 'soba skippa' to the end. That was what killed him--just
+that, and nothing else. It was beyond a being of flesh and blood to do
+what he set himself out to do--and live. He tried to (my God, how he
+tried!)--and died.
+
+"I never felt such pity for any living thing, unless it was old Recoil,
+my first steeplechaser, when he lived for twenty-four hours after
+staving in his chest against a stone wall. I was hardly more than a kid
+then. I lay in the straw of his box all that time with his battered,
+bleeding frame, and swore I'd kill the first man that tried to shoot
+him. Then I pulled myself together and did the humane job myself. But I
+couldn't shoot Bell, and he wouldn't shoot himself. That would have been
+the easy way out (since he had steeled his will against taking another
+drink), but he wouldn't follow that short-cut either. Said he was--how
+did he put it?--'goin' to ride the wata wagon all the way to po't, an'
+then fall off good and plenty.' Some Yankee expression about keeping
+strict teetotal, wasn't it?
+
+"It got to me worse than the crazy niggers--watching the agony of his
+mind and body contorting the muscles of his face, as he tried to hide
+what he was going through. The girl was a good deal of help to him for
+the first day or two, and he admitted that he was glad she had decided
+to join his 'li'l' pa'ty at the last minnit.' But even she failed to
+create a diversion as his cravings for whisky became more and more
+intense, and he seemed to try to avoid her as much as he could toward
+the last--probably because he couldn't hide his suffering from her. I
+saw that it was killing him--that he would never last out the voyage on
+the course he was heading,--and tried hard to make him see that it was
+only reasonable to allow himself at least enough whisky to ease off the
+tension on his breaking nerves. But he wouldn't listen to it.
+
+"'I gave it out official,' he said, 'that I was goin' to keep soba on my
+next ship, if I eva got one. An' soba's the wo'd.' To put an end to the
+matter, he turned his back on me and went for'ard among the niggers.
+
+"After that I tried to explain to Rona (I had managed to get on speaking
+terms with her as soon as she became satisfied that Bell had not been
+poisoned) how things stood, in the hope that she would fall in with a
+plan I had for giving him small doses of whisky with the coffee he had
+taken to drinking with increasing frequency as the craving for liquor
+grew on him. She flew into a temper at once, however. Said that, far
+from helping me to give him whisky on the quiet, she would taste every
+cup of coffee after it was poured for him in the galley, and then take
+it to him herself. She ended by saying that if I tried that trick she
+would knife me with her own hands: in fact, rather regretted that she
+hadn't done it when she had a chance at Kai. I couldn't for the life of
+me see why the girl should take that attitude, when it was so plain that
+whisky was the only thing that would pull Bell through; but take it she
+did, and that was the end of it, at least as far as co-operation from
+her was concerned, I mean. That simply left it up to me to watch my
+chances and do the best I could on my own.
+
+"Bell had insisted on standing watch-and-watch with me from the first,
+usually, in his own watch, taking the wheel himself, probably because it
+gave him something to occupy his mind--and his hands. (He was beginning
+to tear the skin of the palms of his hands from clenching and
+unclenching his fingers.) What broke him finally was discovering that he
+was no longer fit for a trick at the wheel. His eyes went bad rapidly
+under the strain, and it was not long before he could not distinguish
+the readings on the compass card. He told me about it at once, but was
+confident he could manage to hold a course by the stars. This went on
+all right as long as it was clear. But one night, when it was squally
+and overcast, he lost the 'Cross' (which had been giving him a shifting
+but fairly approximate bearing), and fell back on trying to keep her a
+couple of points off the wind. This would have done all right if the
+Trade had held from the southeast. But it hauled up to east in a squall,
+and Bell, following it around by the 'feel' of it on his face, had the
+schooner all but onto the Baluka Reef and shoal at daybreak. I let him
+extricate himself to save his feelings; but he knew that both the Bo'sun
+and I had twigged what had happened, and why, and it must have been the
+realization of the fact that he had become quite useless in navigating
+the ship that hastened the final collapse.
+
+"He came on the following night for his watch--the 'graveyard,' from
+midnight to four in the morning,--but made no objection when I stuck on
+at the helm. We were closing the tangle of the Barrier Reef by then, you
+see, and it wouldn't have done to trust the wheel to a nigger. In fact,
+when I went on at eight the previous evening, it was practically the
+beginning of the thirty-six-hour trick at the wheel that ended when we
+anchored off Townsville.
+
+"When Bell let me stay on at the wheel at midnight, he showed the first
+voluntary signs of giving in, not in the matter of closing his lips to
+whisky--nothing could affect his decision on that score,--but to the
+other alternative. I mean that he gave up hope of holding on till he had
+brought his ship to port--gave up hope of living to the end of the
+voyage. Up to that time he had always tried to pass the whole thing off
+as a sort of a joke, running on with patter like that about the 'wata
+wagon.' But he dropped all that from the moment I refused to give way to
+him at the wheel.
+
+"'Youah quite right, Allen,' he said in a weary sort of voice, and went
+over and sat down on the rail of the cockpit. His voice was hollower
+still when he spoke again, maybe ten minutes later. 'Allen,' he croaked,
+'I've got a hunch I'm not up to pullin' my weight in this heah schoona
+any longa. I'm all in--no mo'n so much ballast. Just a dead drag.'
+
+"I didn't reply to that. I was too much awed--yes, awed--even to urge
+him again to take the drink I knew would be the saving of his
+mind--perhaps his life. He didn't speak again till after I roused him to
+prevent the main boom giving him a crack on the head as I put her about.
+(We were working through a nasty patch of broken coral--the outskirts of
+the Barrier--but scant seaway and fluky airs.) As he settled back on the
+weather rail of the cockpit he said, speaking very slow as though hard
+put to control his voice: 'Allen, I make it about two hundred miles to
+Townsville by youah noon position. Say thirty-six to forty hours'
+sailin', with the wind holdin' up. Do you reckon you an' Ranga--good
+man, Ranga--do you reckon you an' he ah up to pullin' it off alone?
+I'm--damn it all, I'm seem' hell-west-an'-crooked just as we hit the
+dirty navigatin' Allen, take my wud fo' it, this soba skippa stunt ain't
+all it's cracked up to be--not by a long shot. I'd rather ha' had the
+plague by a damn sight, Allen.'
+
+"He wouldn't mention the other alternative--whisky--even then, and I
+simply didn't have the nerve to take advantage of the opening and
+suggest it to him outright. But I did what I thought was the best thing
+under the circumstances--waited for a stretch of open sailing, gave the
+wheel to a nigger, fished up a convenient bottle of whisky, and set it
+down just behind him against the cockpit rail. I didn't speak even
+then--just pressed his shoulder, tilted the neck of the bottle against
+his hand where it clutched the rail, and went back to the wheel.
+
+"I had the feeling (and I still have) that I was doing the decent and
+humane thing, just as I did when I put old Recoil out of his misery;
+though the cases aren't quite parallel of course. But I knew it would
+force a crisis one way or the other, and that was what, in all
+sincerity, I thought was the kindest thing to do. If Bell drank (though
+it well might be that he would go on drinking until he fell in a
+stupor), it would surely save his life. What if he did get dead drunk?
+He wouldn't be any more useless in navigating the schooner than he was
+already. On the other hand, if he still refused to drink, the heightened
+temptation of the handy bottle would increase the tension and hasten the
+collapse of mind and body, which was now but a matter of a few hours at
+the outside. I think you'll agree with me, Whitney, that I did the
+kindest thing possible under the circumstances."
+
+"I wouldn't venture an opinion on that offhand," I temporized; "but, in
+any event, it's the thing I would undoubtedly have done myself had I
+been in your place. There's no question in my mind on that point at
+least."
+
+"I'm glad to hear you say that," he said warmly; "especially as there
+was one person--a rather important person to me--who didn't approve of
+my action.
+
+"Bell's only acknowledgment of what I had done," Allen went on, "was a
+sort of disjointed muttering. 'Many thanks, ol' man. Nothin' doin'. Good
+intentions. Soba skippa to the fareyewell!' (I think that was the word).
+He shoved the bottle along out of easy reach, but didn't even make a
+bluff at throwing it over the side. I have an idea that the reason for
+his restraint on that score was due to the fact that he remembered I had
+told him that the supply was running low (I had been putting an awful
+crimp in it), and didn't want to deprive me of it. He was quite
+considerate enough to think of that sort of a thing, even with his
+senses toppling, as they must have been from the beginning of the watch.
+
+"It was a moonless night, and heavily overcast, so that I could just
+make out the blur of Bell's head and shoulders against the deckhouse
+where he sat hunched up on the port rail of the cockpit. But there was a
+crack opening up in the beastly binnacle, and through it an inch-wide
+welt of light slashed diagonally across his tortured face. One eye, the
+side of his nose and half of his mouth were sharply lighted up. The rest
+was a shadowy blank. The vivid gash of light, like a magnet, kept
+drawing my gaze away from the compass. That one eye, wide and staring,
+never blinked in the bright beam. The nostril, distending and
+contracting jerkily, was red, like that of a horse that has been
+galloped to the point of death. The teeth looked to be clenched through
+the lower lip, and blood was trickling over the lighted streak of
+clean-shaven chin. Not all his sufferings had made him miss his morning
+shave. Almost like a rite with him, that was."
+
+"Holdover from his Naval life," I suggested hastily, fearful less he
+should be tempted to digress upon irrelevant details.
+
+"I don't know just when it was that the end came," Allen resumed. "I was
+expecting every moment that he would jump up and begin his restless
+pacings, as he had done on previous nights. But at six bells his
+position was still unchanged, and to blot out that beastly slash of
+light across his drawn face I threw a piece of canvas over the top and
+back of the binnacle, so that the beam from the crack was cut off. Just
+as the morning watch was called a nasty bit of a squall was threatening
+to bore in and give us a raking, though it finally passed astern of us
+and spun off down to leeward. My hands were full for some minutes
+preparing against the imminent onslaught, and it was not until the
+menace was past and I had taken over the wheel from Ranga (who had
+relieved me when I went for'ard to have a squint ahead for myself), that
+it struck me that Bell had been paying no attention whatever to all that
+had been going on--didn't appear to have shifted at all, in fact.
+
+"I was just going to call to him to suggest that he go below and turn in
+for a spell, when the nigger on the lookout in the bows sung out
+'breaka--dead ahead!' It was a near thing, but I managed to sheer off
+and avoid grounding on a patch of barely submerged coral, just becoming
+visible in the shimmer of the false dawn. As I knew that the main wall
+of the Great Barrier must be close at hand to lee, I was chary of
+letting her fall off very far in that direction. I had just ordered a
+man to stand-by to heave the lead at the first sign of shoaling water on
+the starboard bow, when the tail of my eye caught a glimpse of Rona
+stepping out on deck from the cabin companion way. (We had sulphured out
+the Agent's cabin and made it fairly comfortable for her use. It was out
+of the question her sleeping on deck, on account of the incessant
+squalls.) She headed straight for Bell, who was still hunched up on the
+weather rail of the cockpit, the outlines of his face just beginning to
+show in the ashy light of early morning.
+
+"As her hand touched his shoulder she let out a shrill squeal and
+plumped down on her knees beside him. In doing this she must have bumped
+the whisky bottle, which had been rolling back and forth on the deck
+with the lurches of the schooner. It was with more of a hiss than a
+scream that she grabbed it up and flung it straight for my head. Oh, I
+should hardly say _straight_," Allen corrected himself, "for Rona
+evidently can't throw any better than the run of her white sisters. The
+bottle smashed against the wheel, deluged the cockpit with broken glass
+and one of my last half-dozen quarts of whisky. If I had not been pretty
+sure that Bell was already dead, the fact that the smell of the old
+familiar juice welling up from the deck didn't bring a twitch to his
+nostrils would have been enough to drive it home to me.
+
+"Without waiting to observe the effects of her throw, Rona launched
+herself right on after the bottle--only a shade better aimed. Unluckily,
+the cross-cut she took to my throat carried her right over the
+wheel--and at the very instant that the appearance of a second line of
+foam down to leeward confirmed my fears about our desperately scant
+working room. The instinctive lifting of my right arm to block the
+girl's grab at my face came near to bringing disaster. I fended the
+clutch from my throat all right, but the weight of her body falling
+across the wheel tore the spoke from my left hand and threw the schooner
+up into the wind.
+
+"Ranga's quick presence of mind was all that saved the situation.
+Jumping into the cockpit regardless of the broken glass cutting his bare
+feet, he grabbed the girl about the waist, disentangled her flying arms
+and legs from the wheel, and smothered her struggles against his side. I
+threw the wheel back an instant before she jibed, and then, for two or
+three seconds, things hung in the balance. Finally, very slowly, she
+filled away on the port tack again, and the immediate danger was over.
+Had the schooner gone about, nothing could have saved her from running
+onto the reef. There was not enough room left in which to wear her
+round.
+
+"Bell must have given up the fight along toward the end of the
+'graveyard' watch. I heard him muttering off and on for a while, but the
+last coherent words that came to my ears were, not unfitly: 'Nothin'
+doin'. Soba skippa to a fareyewell.'
+
+"That rub with the reef was the nearest squeak we had--though I can't
+say that I remember much about the navigation that took us through the
+Barrier and on to Townsville. Drunken man's luck doubtless. I was sure
+drunk, and no mistake, though both my legs and my head were grinding
+right along to the finish--only ceased functioning when there was
+nothing more to do.
+
+"The girl--when Ranga let her go again--went back and settled down by
+Bell's body. Wouldn't let anyone come near it. Only left it on the two
+or three further occasions that she took to fly at my throat when she
+thought I wasn't looking. I didn't want to lock her up (it was inviting
+the plague to force her to stay 'tween decks for too long), but managed
+to get around the difficulty finally by having one of the crew stand-by
+to push in and absorb the impact whenever she made a break in my
+direction. She gave up trying after that. Seemed to loathe the touch of
+a nigger. But with Ranga it was different. She grew quiet as soon as he
+picked her up--something like a kid with its nurse.
+
+"The big fellow was wonderful, by the way. Always doing the right thing
+without waiting for an order, always cool and quiet, always
+good-natured. Spent his spare time sitting on the taffrail and peeping
+to the sea-gulls on a queer little Malay flute he always carried in his
+belt--some kind of hollow stem, full of little wooden balls that gave a
+weird sort of ripple to the notes. First and last, Ranga was the man to
+whom the bulk of the credit was due for taking the schooner through. I
+still feel a bit guilty that I didn't divide the whisky with him. But
+perhaps it was best to stow it where I did.... You never know how a
+yellow man or a black man will react to the stuff. It's hard enough
+guessing with a white man sometimes."
+
+Allen smiled whimsically as he lighted a fresh cheroot. He was through
+with the worst of the story and seemed a good deal relieved. It was
+plain enough that he spoke the truth when he said that the memory of it
+was still a nightmare, and that he hated to have to speak of it. He said
+a few words more in explanation of why he had not buried Bell at sea,
+which appeared to have been mainly because he was afraid the girl would
+have followed the body over the side. He had no misgivings about keeping
+it aboard, he said, as he was quite certain that it carried no plague
+infection. He mentioned incidentally, that they had found a lot of stick
+brimstone among the stores, and that the thorough smudging they gave the
+after quarters with this was probably responsible for the fact that the
+plague had not reappeared there. It had been impossible to devise a way
+to disinfect the big 'midships hold where the labour recruits were
+housed, on account of the more or less crazy condition of all of the
+niggers.
+
+Allen looked at his watch, but went on with his story as though in no
+particular hurry. "You're doubtless impatient to hear about the girl's
+turning up again," he said. "You've already heard of the rather
+remarkable escape she made from the Quarantine Station--Butler, one of
+the doctors, mentioned that he told you about it on your steamer. At the
+Station it was the theory that the girl had broken out so that she could
+kill herself on Bell's grave--that she was more or less off her head
+anyhow. That was a mistake, though a natural one. She had just one thing
+in view when she clambered out of the mad cell and over the wall: that
+was to lie low until I came out and then, watching her chance, try to
+make a better job of polishing me off than she had done on the schooner.
+She realized that they were on their guard against her at the Station,
+and that she might be kept under restraint indefinitely, or at least
+until I was out and gone beyond her reach.
+
+"Her mind was working well enough to make her reckon that that Chinese
+shawl (which everyone would have noted) was the one garment she had that
+could not fail to be recognized. So--it must have been something of a
+wrench for her--she left it on the bank of Ross Creek and went to seek a
+hiding place.
+
+"Luck was with her in the search. Locating the native quarter after
+wandering for a while, she circulated around until she came upon the
+signs--in Hindustani, I fancy--in front of the shack of an old East
+Indian drug seller and money changer. How she got around him I don't
+know; but at any rate she persuaded him to keep her there until I was
+out of quarantine. She even contrived to get the old rascal to spy out
+the refuge I had flown to--a bungalow just out of town, where I figured
+I would be a bit quieter than at the hotel. Then she took a hand in the
+game herself.
+
+"It was on the second night after I came out, and I had turned in early.
+I had taken no precautions of any kind against attack. Never have
+bothered much with that kind of thing. The doors and windows were wide
+open. I had a servant--a Chino,--but he was sleeping in his own hut in
+the rear of the grounds.
+
+"It was the window she came in by, though she could just as well have
+used the door. I was more than half awake (hadn't been sleeping very
+well any of the time since my two-day snooze after landing from the
+schooner), lying on my back under the mosquito net, with no covers over
+me. It was probably her intention to slip up quietly and get her hands
+under the net before disturbing me. She had no knife, by the way. They
+had taken that little Malay dagger away after she had tried to stick me
+at the Quarantine Station. As she would have had no difficulty in
+raising another through old Ratu Lal had she wanted it, I take it that
+she felt confident enough of doing the job with her hands. No idle dream
+that, either; you know something of the strength of them.
+
+"I sat up in bed in a dazed sort of way as her shadow darkened the
+window. (There was a bit of a moon, shining on that side of the house.)
+It must have been my movement under the netting that made her change her
+plan. Very naturally, she counted on my shooting first and asking
+questions afterwards. It was the rational and proper thing to do, and it
+is probably what I would have done had my pistol been handy. But, not
+dreaming of an attack (this was the day before old 'Squid' Saunders
+turned up and took a jab at me), my gun was in my coat pocket. I have
+always carried it there--when I had a coat on--ever since I saw your
+little exhibition of pocket gunnery at Kai," he added with a humorous
+smile.
+
+"As I was saying, the stir I made under the mosquito net forced the girl
+to speed up her schedule a bit. You saw the jump she made the time she
+caught up the schooner at Kai. Well, it must have been about that same
+kind of a spring over again. She never touched the floor between the low
+window ledge and my bed. Landed right on my chest, bringing down the net
+under her weight, and went to my throat with an instinct as sure as that
+of a fighting bulldog. She was choking me right through the net before I
+really knew what had happened.
+
+"Of course, taking it for granted that she was dead, I didn't have the
+ghost of an idea it was Rona who was sprawling on my chest and shutting
+off my wind with steel fingers that seemed closing in to meet at the
+base of my brain. I didn't even know that it was a woman. In fact, the
+deadly pressure of that grip argued all the other way--that I was being
+throttled by a man, and a deucedly powerful one at that. If I did any
+speculating at all, I probably figured it as some kind of a thieving
+stunt. But a man fighting for his life--and that is precisely what I was
+doing--doesn't waste much time in conjecture. My immediate problem was a
+simple one. If that grip wasn't broken inside of a minute, it might stay
+there forever as far as my shaking it off was concerned. I had been
+choked before, and also done a bit of choking on my own account; so I
+knew to within a few seconds how long it is before the head of a man
+whose wind is shut off begins to reel.
+
+"Still quite the master of myself, I tried on, very deliberately, the
+best thing I knew for breaking a strangle grip--that simple little
+_jujutsu_ trick of thrusting your arms between those of the man choking
+you, and then throwing back your shoulders and expanding your chest.
+Stiffening the chest muscles, I mean--of course you can't expand it with
+air while your windpipe is closed. That never fails if you are both on
+your feet, and will sometimes work even when you are on your back. Here
+the tangle of the net blocked the up-thrust of my arms, and I failed to
+get enough leverage to break the hold on my neck.
+
+"Then I tried my next best bet--that of turning over and over and sort
+of unwinding the grip on your throat. I was a shade less confident now.
+Time was getting short. I did some jolly active wriggling in trying to
+work along far enough to roll over the side of the bed, but again it was
+the net that defeated my effort. I was getting a good deal peeved with
+that bally canopy; and yet, in the end, it was the very thing that got
+me clear.
+
+"Nine times out of ten a man being held down and choked by another
+man--that is, if the choker knows his job--has no chance of doubling up
+in a ball and kicking his assailant off by straightening out his legs.
+If the man choking you flattens his body closely enough against yours,
+you simply haven't the room to start doubling your knees. My assailant
+knew his business right enough, but the folds of the net (some of the
+corners of which were still clinging to its frame), prevented his
+flattening in close to my legs. The sag of the woven bamboo bed springs
+also gave me a few inches of leeway.
+
+"There was nothing deliberate or confident in the jerk with which I
+began drawing my knees up against my chest. I had already failed twice
+with what I rated as decidedly better bets than that one, and the time
+limit was nearly up. My head was already beginning to swim. It was neck
+or nothing this heat. The sheer desperation of my effort won out for it.
+The push of my knees against the chest of the incubus did not lift it
+quite enough to break its hold, but it did enable me to squirm my right
+foot up and get it firmly planted in the pit of the creature's stomach.
+Then, with all the strength left in me, I straightened out in a terrific
+kicking push.
+
+"In reverse, the flight of the muscular body that had been holding me
+down must have been fully equal to that opening jump from the window.
+Indeed, I am almost sure that it hit the further wall before it did the
+floor. The hold on my neck was the only point of contact that did not
+break readily, and there the result was--as you saw a moment ago. As
+those steel-claw fingers would not give an inch, they simply ripped out
+through the flesh. I can consider myself dead lucky that they didn't
+hook onto my windpipe or jugular. Both of them would have come right
+along with all the flesh and hide those unrelaxing talons took with
+them.
+
+"It didn't occur to me for a few moments that I might have knocked out
+my assailant, and I was a good deal surprised when he neither returned
+to the attack nor made any break to escape. The laboured gasping in the
+darkness on the other side of the room quickly told me the reason,
+however. I had knocked the wind out of him with my mighty kick. I knew
+that spasmodic gasping for air meant that I wasn't going to be greatly
+troubled for a minute or two at least, so took my time about fumbling
+for my automatic and lighting the lamp.
+
+"A bit dazzled by the light for a moment, I took the lanky yellow figure
+huddled up against the wall to be a Hindu coolie. The thin legs and arms
+were like those of the East Indian indentured labourers of the sugar
+plantations, and the two or three yards of white cloth trailing off
+along the floor suggested a Madrassi waist and shoulder rag.
+Presently--for that one rumpled wrapping was all she had worn--I saw
+that it was a woman; and then--but as a matter of fact I think that the
+girl spoke before I recognized her face.
+
+"'"Slant,"' she piped out in that bird-like chirrup of hers; '"Slant," I
+guess I make a meestake. 'Scuse me, ple-ese, "Slant."'
+
+"Could you beat that for cheek? Trying to tear a man's throat out one
+minute, and asking him to 'ple-ese 'scuse' her for it the next. And what
+do you think of a man who would tumble for it, especially after the way
+she had made me jump through and roll over at Kai? But that's Rona; yes,
+and that's me. I tumbled, and--I may as well admit it--I am still
+tumbling.
+
+"Having the girl turn up like that--after I had been thinking of her as
+dead for a week or two--didn't give me quite the shock it would have if
+that voice had come out of the darkness without my seeing her first. It
+was a deuce of a surprise even as it was; but, when all is said and
+done, a pleasant one, in spite of the rather startling way she chose
+to--to re-materialize. I was glad to find that she was alive, whether it
+meant anything more to me than that or not.
+
+"We didn't talk much that night--there wasn't much talk left in either
+of us as a matter of fact. Rona continued to croak and hiccup, while my
+own swollen vocal chords smothered every other word I tried to get past
+them. I managed to assure Rona that I quite understood her feelings
+against me (though I didn't entirely, and don't yet), and begged her to
+give me a chance to explain the way Bell had come to his finish. She
+admitted that she had begun to believe that she might have been hasty in
+her decision and action, and said she would be glad to hear what I had
+to say. She told me where she was in hiding and asked me to come there
+in the morning; also to do what I could to square her with the
+quarantine authorities for breaking out of the Station ahead of time,
+and on no account to let anything happen to old Ratu Lal for giving her
+refuge. She seemed to take it as a matter of course that I would do
+these things. You'd have thought I was some sort of a _mayordomo_ taking
+orders.
+
+"It was not very late and, luckily, the bungalow (which Ralston had
+occupied himself at times) had a telephone. I ordered a closed carriage
+sent out, and also got the Quarantine Station and arranged for one of
+the doctors--Butler, the chap you talked with on the steamer--to come to
+the landing and wait for me to pick him up. They had been very decent to
+me at the Station, and I wanted to avoid having to explain things to a
+strange doctor.
+
+"Rona tied my neck up for me--very handily, too--and when the carriage
+came I bundled her in and gave the driver the direction which carried
+him along the edge of the 'foreign quarter.' I dropped her at a corner
+not far from Ratu Lal's joint, promising to look in on her early the
+next morning. Butler was waiting for me at the landing when I got there,
+and I told him about Rona's coming to life, and its sequel, as we drove
+back to the bungalow. After he had dressed my neck I told him what I
+wanted him to try to do for me and sent him back to the landing, where
+his boat had hung on for him.
+
+"Rona was looking a bit white about the gills when I called the next
+morning, and complained that her stomach 'got mad' every time she sent
+food down to it. I told her that she still had the best of me, as I
+didn't expect to be able to get any food down to my stomach for a couple
+of days yet. That seemed rather to buck her up, and she had a good laugh
+over it. Then we got down to business, and had an hour's yarn in the
+drug-scented quiet of old Ratu Lal's back room.
+
+"As my Malay is fairly good, we talked without difficulty. I told her
+more or less what I have just told you about Bell and why I had given
+him the whisky. She said, rather grudgingly, that she thought she could
+understand why I had done as I did. Then I said a few things
+about--well, about my personal feelings toward her. Finally, I asked her
+point-blank if she would go back to the Islands with me. Told her she
+could live anywhere she wanted, and in any way that she wanted. I didn't
+say that I was willing to marry her, because (since, if she has any
+religion at all, it's Hindu or Mohammedan) I felt that would make no
+difference to her one way or the other.
+
+"Am I really willing to marry her?" (It was the lift of my eyebrows that
+suggested the query to Allen, for I did not speak.) "Well, yes, I think
+I am, if she made that a condition. But I don't think the question is
+one likely to arise.
+
+"The girl took in the whole thing without giving away by word or look
+how it impressed her. When I had finished, she coolly suggested that I
+run along and square matters up with the quarantine people about her and
+Ratu Lal. She added that she would be obliged if I'd look up her Chinese
+shawl for her. She also started to speak about her dagger, but changed
+her mind and said to let that go for the present. As for what I'd been
+telling her.... Well, perhaps if I could see my way to dropping in again
+toward evening she might have an answer for me. High and haughty as a
+Sultana, she was, sitting cross-legged on a mat and pulling away at one
+of Ratu Lal's big 'hubble-bubbles.'
+
+"I went to the Quarantine Station straightaway, and, in spite of the red
+tape tangling up a thing of that kind, managed to get them to agree to
+discharging the girl without anything more than a perfunctory call from
+a doctor to certify her free of plague. That done, the rest was easy. I
+told the story--omitting, of course, the girl's attack upon me--at the
+Police Station, and they agreed not to arrest Ratu Lal as long as the
+quarantine authorities were satisfied and lodged no complaint against
+him. They said they were only too glad of a chance to do me a favour.
+Then I got them to let me have the shawl, and begged them to keep the
+news of the girl's turning up quiet as long as they could.
+
+"'Squid' Saunders's little diversion that afternoon gave the pressmen
+something else to take up their minds, and the matter of the missing
+girl was forgotten, at least for the remainder of my time in Townsville.
+The fact that she did not drown herself must have leaked out since, but
+they probably haven't been enough interested in it--now that the hunt
+has followed me here--to wire it south.
+
+"When I broke away from the official reception committee and dropped in
+on Rona at the end of the afternoon--impatient enough, I can tell
+you--she gave no sign that the matter I had come for an answer about was
+in her mind at all. She grabbed the Chinese shawl out of my hand with a
+yelp of delight, but almost dissolved in tears when she saw how the
+embroidery had been smudged and ruffled in her scrambles over trees and
+walls and ditches the night she escaped from the Quarantine Station. You
+may remember that it was a big peacock that was embroidered on the
+shawl--pretty nearly life-size--rather a fine piece of work, it always
+struck me. Well, ignoring me entirely, she spread that old peacock out
+over her breast--something in the way she used to display it when she
+wore the shawl in Kai--and began chirping and crooning and muttering to
+it like a dove to its nestlings. She would nuzzle into the plumage,
+smoothing the ruffled feathers with her lips, just like she was the old
+peacock preening himself. Every little bit of torn floss she would try
+to put back where it came from.
+
+"Stiff with funk, I sat quiet until she had gone all over the moulting
+old bird, but when she started in working down from his crest again, I
+thought it was time to remind her of my presence. I had never sat around
+waiting on anybody like that before, Whitney; even my old nurse couldn't
+make me do it. So I cut in and told her that I had arranged things at
+the Quarantine Station--that she wouldn't need to go there again; also
+that old Ratu Lal need not worry any longer about a visit from the
+Police. Incidentally, I mentioned that I was making him a present of ten
+pounds to show my appreciation of his consideration in not claiming the
+reward offered for her.
+
+"She took no notice of anything I said. Just went on crooning and
+preening and stroking down the ruffled feathers, giving a little sob
+every now and then as she came to a place where they were badly mussed
+up. Then I went off on another tack, saying that I knew of a shop in the
+town that carried Chinese embroideries, and suggesting it was possible a
+skilled needle-worker might be found there competent to undertake the
+restoration of the bird's damaged plumage. She deigned to cock up an ear
+to listen to that, but her only reply was a disconsolate shake of the
+head, as though anything like proper restoration was a matter beyond all
+hope.
+
+"That quieted me for a while, but after twirling my thumbs through ten
+or fifteen minutes more nuzzling and crooning, my patience gave out. I
+jumped up to the accompaniment of a good lively string of oaths, and
+asked her point-blank if she had made up her mind about the matter we
+had been speaking of in the morning. She broke into a ripple of smiles
+at that, and cooed sweetly: 'Ye-es, I think 'bout that plenty, "Slant."'
+Then she slipped into voluble Malay and laid down a perfectly simple and
+direct proposal, on the fulfilment of the conditions of which she was
+willing to return to the Islands with me. It was not what I had
+expected,--not what anyone would have dreamed of expecting under the
+circumstances; yet ridiculously easy of fulfilment in the event a
+certain third party fell in with the idea. That third party is you,
+Whitney. That's the main thing I have come to see you about. Everything
+is up to you now. Perhaps that will make it easier for you to understand
+why I rattled on for an hour or more in the hope of putting myself right
+with you about Bell. I've never tried to justify myself with any living
+man before, and probably will never do it again. But it had to be done
+this time, Whitney, and I hope I've been successful."
+
+My nod might have meant almost anything, but I was not unwilling that
+Allen should interpret it in his favour. As a matter of fact, he had
+convinced me wholly that--after the abortive attempt at drugging in
+Kai--he had played straight with Bell. As for Rona--well, if he was also
+ready to play straight with her (and he had just about convinced me on
+that point, too), what was it to me? If she could forget Bell so easily,
+it was her own affair. If Allen were trying to carry her off against her
+will--that would be a different matter of course. But he was not.
+Plainly it was the girl herself who held the whip hand. The whole thing
+was a bit obscure yet, but what Allen had still to say might do
+something to clear it up. Without committing myself by more than that
+one nod, I waited for him to go on.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XII
+
+                            A BAD MAN'S PLEA
+
+
+The expression of nervous anxiety I had noticed several times since he
+came was on Allen's face again as he started to speak. "It's a queer
+enough proposition," he began. "You see, it's like ..." He hesitated,
+stopped, got up and walked to the window, where he stood for a few
+moments, frowning and biting the end of his cheroot. Suddenly he turned
+to me with: "Whitney, what do you say to a bit of a turn in the fresh
+air? I've been talking more than I'm used to, and this stuffy room of
+yours is getting on my nerves. We might walk out through the gardens to
+the Domain. I can tell you all that I have to tell out there."
+
+I did not need to look at my watch to know that it was getting on toward
+five o'clock. Only the absorbing interest of Allen's narrative had
+prevented my becoming conscious of that fact before. My own nerves were
+less under control now, and the inevitable end-of-the-afternoon
+restlessness was surging strong upon me. But I was anxious to hear Allen
+out, and no reason occurred to me why it should not be in the open air.
+If there was any decision to be arrived at, that could be made on the
+morrow, or whenever I felt up to it.
+
+"Right-o, Allen," I cried; "I'll be glad to get out myself. I shall want
+to be back in about half an hour though."
+
+I was grateful for his restraint in not greeting that last with an
+indulgent smile, for I knew that he fully understood what it was that
+focussed my interest upon five o'clock. It was very evident that the man
+had retained all the finer instincts of a gentleman, little opportunity
+that he had had to exercise them in the last five years.
+
+I got my hat and stick, and, feeling sure I would have no use for them,
+put both the revolver and the automatic pistol into the drawer of the
+table upon which they had been lying. I was rather glad of the chance to
+show Allen that I had confidence in him to that extent anyhow.
+
+Anxious to avoid recognition, Allen pulled on a pair of dark spectacles
+and drew the brim of his Panama low down over his forehead. Turning out
+of crowded Pitt Street, he removed the spectacles, and as we passed the
+entrance of the Botanical Gardens took off his hat and fanned his brow
+with it as he walked. He had not spoken so far, but with the deep breath
+he inhaled as he felt the springy turf underfoot his restraint passed
+from him.
+
+"It's a great relief to get clear of those damn walls and pavements," he
+said fervently, opening his coat to let the cool breath from the Bay
+strike his chest. "I can't get used to them again. I've been free of
+them too long now. But I'm finished with them for good, I hope." Then,
+as we came out upon a broad path: "Bear away to the left, if you don't
+mind. I want to take a squint at that bunch of palms as we pass."
+
+As we came abreast of a big bed packed with a riot of dense tropical
+growths, he pulled up and appeared to be searching for something. "Ah,
+there she is!" he ejaculated presently, and pushed in close to a queer
+little dwarf palm, which straggled drunkenly on a half-dozen spindling
+legs set something like those of a camera tripod. Pulling up the stamped
+metal marker, he gave it a quick glance and then handed it to me with a
+grin. "The fruits of my first and only dip into botanical research," he
+remarked. "What do you think of it?"
+
+"_Pandanus Bensoni Allensis_," I read in large letters, and below:
+"Habitat: Portuguese Timor. Very rare. The only other catalogued
+specimen is in the Royal Dutch Gardens at Buitenzorg, Java."
+
+"So that _Allensis_ stands for you, does it?" I said, not a little
+impressed, as I handed him back the metal disc. Then added: "And racing
+and polo cups weren't the only objects you collected."
+
+"The merest accident," he replied. "I had always liked plants and
+flowers, ever since my nurse used to wheel me down this very walk in my
+pram. I suppose that gave me an interest in the tropical growths of the
+Islands, after they packed me off there. I thought this little fellow
+looked a bit on the unusual when I chanced upon it one morning in a low
+valley back of Deli; so I dug it up and shipped it to Sydney direct on
+the China Line steamer, which touches in there. It turned out to be a
+real find. Benson of Kew Gardens, the great authority on tropical palms,
+described it, and tacked my name on as the discoverer. The old cove's
+letter contained the only kind words addressed to me from the outside
+world in the last five years. And now look at them ..."
+
+I had come to expect that note of bitterness in Allen's voice every time
+he spoke of the past, and especially of his "transportation" to the
+Islands. He evidently thought that he had been badly treated; too badly
+for even the present wave of frantic adulation to make atonement. He was
+through with it for good. Several little things he had let drop
+indicated that.
+
+The incident of the palm was interesting in throwing an illuminative
+crosslight on the gentler human side of a man who had generally been
+rated as without either gentleness or humanity. So, also, was the very
+evident appeal to Allen's sense of natural beauty made by the matchless
+panorama of the Bay as it unfolded to us from the far end of the point.
+
+We had skirted the Naval anchorage of Farm Cove, picked our way along
+the path below the ledges where benighted "sundowners" were wont to boil
+their "billys" and spread their "blueys" in the shallow wave-worn caves,
+and climbed up through the gums to the rocky lookout on the outermost
+tip of the sharply-jutting point. The clocks in the town behind us began
+chiming the quarters heralding the hour of five, and presently, on the
+first of the heavier strokes, the flotilla of trans-bay ferry-boats slid
+from their slips at the inner curve of the horseshoe of the Circular
+Quay and "fanned" out on their divergent courses to points on the
+opposite side of Port Jackson.
+
+"That sight has never failed to quicken my pulses from the time I used
+to wait and watch for it as a kid down to today," Allen said with almost
+a thrill in his voice. "It is the one picture that has remained clearest
+in my mind all these years I've been--shut out from it. Did you ever
+read Henry Lawson's lines to 'Sydney-Side,' written from somewhere in
+the West, I believe? Something like this they go:
+
+    "'Oh, there never dawned a morning in the long and lonely days,
+        But I thought I saw the ferries streaming out across the bays--
+    And as fresh and fair in fancy did the picture rise again
+    As the sunrise flushed the city from Woollahra to Balmain:
+
+    "'And the sunny water frothing round the liners black and red,
+        And the coastal schooners working by the loom of Bradley's Head;
+    And the whistles and the sirens that re-echo far and wide
+        All the light and life and beauty that belong to Sydney-Side.'"
+
+"A sentimentalist, too," I muttered to myself, the surprise of that
+revelation checking for a few moments the rising tide of my
+absinthe-hunger.
+
+Allen led the way back to where a flat ledge of rock made a rough
+natural seat. "'Lady Macquarie's Chair,'" he explained, motioning me to
+sit down. "Named from the wife of a former Governor who was supposed to
+slip away out here and enjoy the view. The Domain runs right back behind
+the Government House, you know. I always used to mooch along out here
+for a look-see every time I got a chance, partly for the fine prospect
+of the Bay and partly for the comprehensive visualization it permitted
+of what I might call 'The Rise and Fall of the House of Allen.'
+
+"Haven't you an expression in the States to the effect that it's 'three
+generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves'? Well, here in
+Australia we put the same natural law of evolution in the form of a
+conundrum and answer. It goes: 'How long does it take for an arrow to
+become a boomerang?' The answer varies, but for the 'House of Allen' it
+is: 'Four generations.'
+
+"The arrow, you understand, is the 'Broad Arrow' that marked the
+transported convicts, while the boomerang merely suggests something that
+rises, circles and returns to the point of departure. Well, from this
+place where we sit I can trace the full circle of the 'arrow-cum
+boomerang-cum arrow' of the Allen quiver. Look! I'll show you. Follow me
+closely.
+
+"Over there," he said, pointing seaward and easterly, "are the Heads, in
+through which sailed the brig bearing Jim (alias 'Crab') Allen, convict,
+with a few hundred more of the scum of London, to the shores of
+Australia. That is, I've always liked to fancy my distinguished
+progenitor sailed in through the Heads, though it's quite possible that
+the brig beat around into Botany Bay direct. Now" (he pointed westerly
+to where the Paramatta wound out of sight between green hills) "at the
+end of that deep cove over there is the slaughter house where the
+convict's son, James Allen, dealt in hides and hoofs and horns and laid
+the foundation of the family fortune, the fortune that wasn't seriously
+dented when the convict's grandson gave a hundred thousand pounds to a
+drought-relief fund and drew down a Baronetcy. That big red-brick pile
+among the trees on Darling Point" (Allen was pointing east again) "is
+the mansion of the late Sir James Allen, Bart., and now owned by his
+eldest son, the New South Wales Agent in London. Old Sir James' second
+son, Hartley, was born in the south wing of that unsightly heap of red
+bricks.
+
+"And here" (this time he turned and pointed south where a sharp
+dagger-blade of inlet plunged deep into the heart of Sydney's lowest
+slums) "is Wooloomooloo, where young Hartley Allen, descending from the
+soft refinements of Darling Point, found his level, organized his own
+'push' of rock-throwing, head-smashing larrikins and completed the
+social circle. The cycle of metamorphosis had begun its round. I was the
+throwback, Whitney. Old 'Crab' Allen, the transported convict of
+Houndsditch, lived again in young Hartley Allen, whom most people
+thought of as a racing man and polo player, but who had all the natural
+qualifications of an out-and-out crook.
+
+"I can trace all of my little moral obliquities, Whitney, back to old
+'Crab,' and, everything considered, I think he would rate me as rather a
+credit to his name, whatever contempt he might have had for my
+comparatively law-abiding father and grandfather, to say nothing of my
+pillar-of-the-state elder brother. 'Crab' was transported as a
+consequence of his persistent disregard of his fellow townsmen's rights
+to their lives, wives and silver plate. I--well, I never did care much
+for silver plate."
+
+All this would have been intensely interesting to me an hour earlier,
+but now the fervour of my longing for my "_solitude à trois_" (as I was
+wont to call my séance with the long green bottle and the glass of
+cracked ice) was getting beyond control. The flowing lines of the
+reaches of cove and inlet glowing in the slanting light of the declining
+sun were becoming jerky and jagged and intershot with dazzling little
+spurts of light like one thinks he sees after receiving a crack on the
+head. The evening breeze lapped clammily about my chest and I fumbled
+clumsily with the buttons of my coat, trying to shut out the chill.
+
+"I ought to have been back at the hotel before this," I mumbled, getting
+to my feet. "You had something more to tell me, hadn't you? You can do
+it as we walk back. I've got to be going now."
+
+By this time I wasn't in a state to observe things very carefully.
+Undoubtedly (as I've thought it over since) Allen had been stalling to
+gain time and screw his nerve up to advancing the plan he had in mind.
+This being so, it must have jarred him a bit to have me call the turn so
+suddenly. I don't remember whether his face showed consternation or not.
+The one thing I recall was the quick movement of his hand to that hump
+on his right hip.
+
+I did not recoil an inch. I am sure of that, for I felt no apprehension.
+I was beyond apprehension--save over delay. But Allen's hand came back
+empty. "I'll tell you at once," he said brokenly. "But please sit down.
+Don't go just yet. We'll have to come to a decision straightaway." Then,
+seeing I was turning to go: "It's just this: Rona wants you to paint her
+picture--on the schooner--the _Cora_. Wants a picture done of the whole
+layout--ship, Bell, her, me, Ranga, niggers, everything. Says she'll
+pose for it on the schooner. Says I must pose too. Seems to be bitten
+with the idea of perpetuating the event for posterity, or something of
+the kind. Crazy scheme, but she's set her heart on it. Says when it's
+done, if she likes it, she may go back to the Islands with me. Nothing
+certain for me, but it's a chance and I've got to make the most of it.
+Will you do it, Whitney? She says you've always wanted to paint her
+picture, and now she's all for it. You won't turn it down, Whitney?"
+
+The incongruity of "Slant" Allen in the rôle of a plaintive pleader
+struck me with scarcely less astonishment than his strange and
+unexpected request. I was, however, totally unfit to cogitate upon
+either just then.
+
+"I'll think it over and let you know tomorrow," I said dully. "Got to go
+now."
+
+"It has to be decided here and now, once and for all," Allen answered
+firmly. "Here!--" This time there was no hesitation in the movement of
+his hand to the hip-pocket hump. When it came back it was holding a fat
+stubby flask--one of the thermos type, just coming into general use at
+that time.
+
+"I know what's calling you away, Whitney," he said steadily, unscrewing
+the top of the flask and pouring into it a bright green liquid with a
+familiar smell and sparkle. "On the off chance that we might be detained
+beyond the hour when you're used to depending upon it, I had this cooled
+at the Marble Bar--old hangout of mine--and brought it along with me.
+Don't use the stuff myself, but I know the hooks it throws into a man
+who does use it. Drink hearty!"
+
+He handed me both the brimming screw-top and the flask itself. The
+contents of the former might have been drugged heavily enough to kill a
+horse for all I cared. It was absinthe beyond a doubt, and cold enough
+to frost the outside of the little nickled cup that held it. I gulped it
+down hungrily; replenished and repeated. The third cup I drank less
+greedily, letting my eyes rove slowly where the jerkily jagged zigzags
+of hill and headland and foreshore were smoothing into a softer fluency
+of contour. Sipping the fourth cup, I unbuttoned my coat to give more
+intimacy to the caress of the milk-warm evening breeze.
+
+"Not bad stuff, Allen," I breathed at last. "Very good of you to think
+of it. What was it you wanted me to do just now?" Five minutes later I
+had promised to meet "Slant" Allen at the railway station in time to
+catch the nine-thirty train for Brisbane, en route Townsville.
+
+It appeared that Rona's ultimatum had stipulated that Allen was to be
+back in Townsville with me, ready to begin arranging for the picture,
+inside of ten days. The only northbound boat, the _Waga Tiri_, which
+would arrive within the limit, had already left Sydney but could be
+overtaken at Brisbane by entraining at once. Allen had booked sleepers
+for the express and wired for cabins on the steamer before he called on
+me at the _Australia_. There was nothing left to do but throw together
+what things I wanted and get to the station.
+
+It was rather a wrench, checking myself after getting all poised for
+flight with the "Green Lady," but not so hard as it would have been had
+I really "got off the ground." The contents of Allen's flask were hardly
+more than a strong bracer. Once I got back to the hotel and into my
+packing, it was easy going, especially as my enthusiasm was mounting for
+the work ahead. To have Rona for a model at last! And for such a
+picture!
+
+The dramatic appeal of the thing grew on me with every passing minute.
+It was not, to be sure, quite the kind of a work I was best prepared to
+do. With my ambition to become a marine painter, I had gone in more for
+colour than for anatomy and drawing; but I was still confident that I
+could make good with anything that gripped my imagination strongly. And
+"The Saving of the Black-birder" (I had already given it a tentative
+name) fairly took me by the throat. I would not fail with it. Nay, more,
+I would triumph. Perhaps--why not?--Paris! Yes, "The Black-birder"
+should open a short-cut to my goal. The rails beneath the wheels of the
+speeding Brisbane Express were clicking _black-bir-der_--_black-bir-der_
+when I dropped off to sleep that night somewhere along toward the
+Queensland boundary.
+
+That the morrow should bring some reaction from this fine frenzy was
+inevitable, but it was a comparatively slight one. That Allen had
+deliberately planned to draw me away and take advantage of my weakness
+for absinthe to gain my intervention in his favour was evident enough.
+Indeed, the consummate manner in which he turned the trick argued an
+almost pathological intimacy with the reaction of the insidiously subtle
+essence of wormwood upon the human brain. But I did not hold this
+heavily against him. It was plain that he had only done it to play safe
+in a matter respecting which he did not dare to take any unnecessary
+chances of failure. I could not but admit to myself that I would
+probably have fallen in with the plan ultimately in any event. There was
+no disloyalty to my friend in making him (as I intended to do) the
+central figure in a picture that I hoped would become famous in two
+hemispheres. On the contrary, what greater tribute was there I could pay
+to his memory? If Rona cared to flaunt that memory by going off to the
+Islands with Allen, it was her own kettle of fish. Besides, she had not
+gone yet; didn't even appear to have committed herself definitely in the
+matter.
+
+To minimize explanations and the possibility of complications, Allen and
+I had agreed to defer wiring our Sydney friends of our departure until
+after we were aboard the _Waga Tiri_ in Moreton Bay. His message to the
+Chairman of the Reception Committee, and mine to Benchley at my
+Exposition, went ashore on the tender that brought us off, and the
+steamer was under way before they could have been put upon the wires. It
+was not until the next northbound boat brought the Sydney papers to
+Townsville that we learned what a wave of surprise and speculation had
+been started by our joint hegira.
+
+In the course of the voyage Allen told me some few further details of
+developments in Townsville. Before his departure he had managed to
+induce Rona, for her own comfort, to move her headquarters from Ratu
+Lal's joint to the Medical Mission of the London Bible Society. The head
+surgeon of the Mission he characterized as "a good old sport" he had
+knocked up against in the Straits and the Dutch Indies. He was just like
+an ordinary missionary to look at, but redeemed in "Slant's" eyes by a
+real love of horses, and even--very much on the quiet--a shrewd interest
+in racing. "It's in his blood. He can't help it," Allen explained
+laconically but comprehensively.
+
+Explicit instructions had been left at the Mission that Rona was not to
+be worried about her spiritual future. She was to be just a "straight
+boarder" until Allen's return. She was well provided with money, as he
+had seen to having everything Bell had with him at the time of his death
+deposited to her account at a local bank. This had included eighty gold
+sovereigns, found in a money-belt around Bell's waist, and some hundreds
+of Chilean silver _pesos_ he had brought off to the _Cora_ in a canvas
+sack.
+
+Ranga had been put up at the Sailors' Home. There had been a flat
+refusal to receive him at first, on account of his colour, but this was
+promptly withdrawn when it was found the request came from Allen, whom
+the town was going pretty strong on delighting to honour just at that
+juncture. Allen, who seemed very fond of the big fellow, also saw that
+the latter was comfortably provided with money.
+
+Allen did not speak again of the proposed picture until the steamer was
+nosing up to her buoy in Cleveland Bay. Then, after inquiring if I had
+everything I needed to go ahead with, he intimated that he would
+probably find Rona fretting to get things under way. "She seemed to have
+some wild sort of an idea," he said, "that the whole thing would be done
+on the schooner--that we all might move out there, bag and baggage, and
+make it our head-quarters until the picture was completed. She even
+wanted me to go out to that plague-rotten wreck with her and look the
+ground over before I left. I had no time for it, of course, and am jolly
+glad I didn't. Can't see what the good of it would have been anyhow. I
+was hoping I had seen the last of the damned hulk, though I suppose I
+can stick it for an hour or two in a pinch. I fail to see what she's
+driving at, but whatever it is you may as well make up your mind that
+she will have her way about it."
+
+I assured him that the picture would probably be mostly studio work as
+far as he was concerned, though I myself might want to sketch a few
+details on the schooner. It might save time, however, I suggested, if
+the whole lot of us went aboard before I began work so I could figure
+out a tentative grouping and get a general idea of the composition. Then
+I could make notes and sketches of whatever parts of the schooner would
+be included, and be ready to work on the individual figures as soon as I
+rigged up a studio.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIII
+
+                      THE SCENE OF THE FINAL DRAMA
+
+
+We spent the night at the hotel and went together to call on Rona at the
+Mission the following morning. The change in the girl was startling, far
+too great to be accounted for by the baggy Mother Hubbard that had
+replaced the close-clinging _sarongs_ and _sulus_ in which I had grown
+accustomed to seeing her at Kai. Her face was thinner and the former
+peach-like bloom of her cheeks had given way to a dusky sallowness. The
+curve of her lips had flattened--and hardened; hard, too, was the fixed
+stare of her great sloe eyes. To a stranger the pucker of concentration
+between her eyebrows might almost have suggested sullenness. The lines
+about her eyes and mouth, which spoke to me of suffering, might have
+seemed to another as stamped there by hate. She was still beautiful, but
+in a new way. It was a wild, fluttered sort of loveliness that haunted
+rather than allured. The woman before me could never "sit Buddha," I
+told myself; those dreamy spells of repose had not punctuated her
+present life with intervals of Oriental peacefulness.
+
+Decidedly reserved in her manner toward Allen, Rona tried to be warm in
+her greeting to me, but quickly showed signs of restraint and
+embarrassment. She became even more ill at ease when "Slant," after
+genial old Dr. Oakes invited him out to see a new saddle horse that had
+just arrived from Singapore, excused himself and left us alone. She
+sheered off so sharply from my first mention of the name of Bell, and
+became so palpably nervous at a couple of attempts I made to lead round
+to him by degrees, that I gave up trying to induce her to speak of him
+out of sheer pity. Even my inquiry after the health of "Peeky" of the
+embroidered shawl drew only a weary little smile and a sad shake of her
+riotous tumble of blue-black hair.
+
+She was ready enough to talk about the picture, though even in that
+connection I was at once conscious of a lack of real enthusiasm on her
+part. She seemed anxious to get it started, however, and said she
+supposed we would be going to live on the schooner in a day or two. She
+even confessed to having worried a good deal for fear the _Cora_ would
+be broken up by a storm before the picture was made. When I told her
+that we would not need to live on the schooner, and perhaps would not
+have to make more than one or two short visits to it, she appeared a
+good deal put out for a few moments. She scowled angrily and started to
+speak; then thought better of it, bit her lip and held her tongue. She
+appeared a bit mollified when I said we would make our first visit, to
+plan the picture, just as soon as the quarantine people would disinfect
+the schooner for us. (That this had not been done yet I had already
+learned through 'phoning to the Station the night before.) She observed
+impatiently that she thought disinfection was a needless precaution, and
+I had to explain that it was not a matter of precaution at all on our
+part; that it was against the law for anyone to board a ship that had
+carried plague until it was disinfected, and that if we tried it on the
+_Cora_ the whole lot of us would probably be clapped in jail and
+quarantined afterwards.
+
+She softened a little as I got up to go, and her "Next time I show you
+'Peekie,' Whit-nee--'Peekie' is a ver-ee sick bird," sounded almost like
+old times. The hand she gave me was hot and dry but unshaking, and the
+almost cutting grip of it tense with nervous force. I noticed that her
+finger nails, though trimmed closer than of old and no longer stained,
+were still of unusual length.
+
+I found Allen, his face flushed with enthusiasm, putting the doctor's
+new colt up and down the sward before the Mission chapel in sharp bursts
+of terrific speed. The animal, Oakes explained to me, had been given to
+him by a petty Rajah of the Federated Malay States as a token of his
+appreciation of the doctor's success in removing a troublesome appendix
+from a favourite dancing girl some months previously. It was a chunky
+bay gelding, only his small head, full neck and a certain trimness of
+hock bearing out Oakes' claim that he was out of a Mameluke imported
+direct from Bassorah by the Sultan of Johore. For the rest he favoured
+his Timor dam, and looked built for endurance and handiness rather than
+speed. The instant Allen was on his back, however, his sure instinct
+told him that the powerful little beast had swiftness as well as staying
+powers, and he was already itching to put his judgment to the test. A
+week later, having quietly entered him in the race of the day--the
+Planters' Handicap--at the Townsville midsummer meet, he rode the
+gelding himself and gave the local betting public the worst jolt in
+North Queensland track annals by winning at two-hundred-to-one. Every
+pound that the wily Allen cleaned up on the race went to build the good
+Doctor Oakes, shortly transferred to Fiji, the largest and best equipped
+Medical Mission in all of Polynesia. The full story of what the winning
+of that race meant to the game old missionary with the sporting blood
+has yet to be written.
+
+My plan of visiting the _Cora_ to make a preliminary study of the
+"Black-birder" met with an unexpected check. The quarantine people had
+readily consented to give the schooner a rough disinfection, one that
+would make it quite safe for us to board her as long as we kept clear of
+the holds, which would require more drastic treatment. Before the
+formaldehyde squad got away, however, several cases of smallpox were
+reported in the native quarter, and all the available disinfecting
+apparatus was called upon for use there. It would be at least a week or
+ten days, we were told, before an outfit would be free for the _Cora_.
+
+Personally, I didn't mind the delay in the least; for one reason,
+because Rona's strange mood had quenched my initial surge of ardour for
+the picture, and, for another, because I had still to find a suitable
+place in which to work. Allen seemed to be worrying very little over the
+forced wait. "I've laid my bets to win or lose, and I'll be there to
+cash in after the finish," he said philosophically. He spent most of the
+time in the saddle, getting out mornings at daybreak to give the
+"Missionary Colt" (as he called the Oakes gelding) workouts on the
+quiet. As far as I could observe, he saw very little of Rona.
+
+It was the girl who really chafed under the inaction of waiting. Two or
+three times she sent for me to urge that we disregard the quarantine
+regulations and go off to the schooner. Allen mentioned that she had
+also begged him to take her out for a look-see at the _Cora_ on the
+quiet. How she spent her time I did not know. Oakes told me that she
+went out for long walks every day, sometimes going toward the hills and
+sometimes along the shore. I found freshly picked tiger-lilies on Bell's
+grave the day I visited it, and it occurred to me that the gathering of
+these might have furnished the motive for the solitary walks. But if she
+was still devoted to Bell's memory, why wouldn't she speak of him?--and
+why the plan to go off to the Islands with Allen? The girl's conduct was
+quite beyond my understanding. That was one thing I was sure of, at
+least.
+
+Meanwhile I went ahead looking for a place I could turn into a studio.
+It had been Allen's idea that the suburban bungalow he occupied after
+coming out of quarantine would be suitable, but I was compelled to veto
+it on account of the poor light--a consequence of the dense tropical
+growth surrounding it. The same difficulty--light--ruled out a number of
+other attractive places that were offered me, and I was about to close
+with a rather squalid little shack near the beach as a last resort, when
+Allen got wind of a temporarily vacant house on a big sugar estate, some
+miles from town.
+
+This little gem of a hillside bungalow had been built by the sugar
+people for a sub-overseer of the plantation, who had gone to Melbourne
+to meet and marry a girl from home. As the lucky chap had been given a
+three-months holiday for a honeymoon in New Zealand, the local manager
+of the sugar company decided that there could be no objection to my
+occupying the nest in the interim; in fact, he was sure his directors
+would be highly honoured to have their property used by so distinguished
+an artist, and for so laudable a purpose. He hoped I would not hesitate
+to call upon him for help at any time. He would see to it that the
+servants already hired against the return of Borton and his bride
+reported at once, and that Borton's trap and saddle horses were placed
+at my immediate disposal.
+
+I was greatly pleased with my find for a number of reasons besides the
+fact that it had a large and well-lighted living-room that could be made
+all I could ask to work in. Not the least of these was its location.
+Several hundred feet above the sea, its wide verandas caught cool
+currents of the Trade wind that the sultry lower levels never knew.
+Infinitely refreshing, too--both in fact and in suggestion,--I found the
+splendid stream which circled close under the rear wall, forming, where
+a mossy ledge reared a natural dam, a deep, clear pool to which I could
+jump from my bedroom window. The revitalizing effect of an early morning
+plunge, I had found by long experience, was beyond comparison the best
+antidote against the insidious absinthe poisoning paralyzing body and
+brain at the end of the night.
+
+A couple of hundred yards further down the stream took a swift run
+through a verdant tunnel of fern fronds and overhanging palm leaves,
+before it leaped in a fine compact spout of green and white over the
+verge of a creeper-clad cliff, to a lucent hyacinth-lined basin thirty
+feet below. From there, quieter of mood and mind after its hillside
+gambols, it meandered by pleasant reaches across a broad belt of
+shimmering sugar cane, beyond which it disappeared in tangled growth of
+primeval bush. By dark ways and devious, broadening and deepening in the
+lower levels, it finally lost itself in the mangrove swamp that fringed
+the sea fifteen miles to the northward.
+
+I mention this stream particularly because of the part it was destined
+to play in the final act of the drama of the _Cora Andrews_. For a
+similar reason it may be in order to say a few words about the great
+flume, which took off from the stream at the pool below the waterfall
+and led down to the big central sugar mill on the shore of the first
+deeply indented bay north of Townsville. It was built, following the
+successful Hawaiian practice, for the purpose of floating the cut cane
+from the fields to the mill, a method which, wherever the natural
+conditions were suited to it, had proved both cheaper and more
+expeditious than the old system of transporting the succulent stalks by
+tramway and bullock carts.
+
+The flume itself was built of imported Oregon pine planks, and was
+carried on a trestle of rough-hewn blue-gum and _jarra_ trunks. In
+section, the box of the flume was about four feet wide by three feet
+deep. The water it carried--about a quarter of the normal flow of the
+stream that fed it--varied in depth according to its velocity. The
+latter, of course, depended upon the grade of the flume, this varying
+from two or three per cent. in the broad upper valley to all of fifteen
+per cent. in a couple of short steep pitches near the coast.
+
+I was interested in this flume from the first time I saw it. In the
+course of a visit to Hawaii some years previously, I had found no end of
+sport in what was called "sugar-fluming"--riding from the mountainside
+plantations down to the mills seated on a water-propelled bundle of
+sugar-cane. On my inquiring of the local manager if the highly diverting
+stunt was practicable here, he had answered with a most emphatic
+negative. "You could go down the flume all right," he said, "but the
+volume of water is so great that you could not stop yourself by holding
+to the sides even where the grades are the slightest. On the sharp
+inclines, where the flume runs down to the mill, a team of bullocks
+couldn't hold you back. Only one man ever tried the feat deliberately,
+and we were picking fragments of him out of the _bagasse_ for a month.
+Also spoiled a lot of sugar--everything from the juice in the vats to
+the unfinished article in the centrifugals had to be thrown away. Same
+thing has had to be done on the several occasions coolies have fallen
+into the flume while at work. Jolly costly accidents for the company. I
+hope that you're not contemplating...."
+
+I hastened to assure him that, after what he had told me, I most
+certainly had ceased any contemplations I might have allowed myself to
+indulge in up to then. Still I couldn't help picturing in my mind what
+sport could be got out of the thing if only some sort of buffer were
+rigged up at the lower end. That prompted me, a day or two after I was
+settled in the bungalow and while time was still hanging on my hands, to
+put my horse down the bridle-path along the flume when I went out for a
+ride in the cool of the afternoon. After that I lost all interest in
+"sugar-fluming" as a sport. It was just conceivable that a man of great
+strength and agility might stop himself by gripping the sides of the
+flume at several points in the first five or six miles, but from where
+the sharp descent to the coast began I was inclined to agree with the
+manager's statement, that the drag of a man's body in the pull of the
+racing stream would take a team of bullocks off their feet.
+
+I dismounted and leaned over the edge of the flume where it ran through
+a narrow cut in the rock at the brow of the great basaltic cliff that
+followed the curve of the beach of the bay. This was the upper end of
+the first of the two sharp drops and the water, which was running within
+a foot of the top of the flume a hundred yards above, and here flattened
+down to a scant six inches in the bottom, grey-green and solid like a
+great endless belt of flying steel. The butt of my riding-whip was all
+but jerked from my hand as I touched it lightly to the speeding water,
+and a curving fan of spray was projected up into my face and over the
+sides. The evidence of such a solidity of kick in running water seemed
+almost beyond belief, until I recalled having heard how a jet escaping
+from the pressure pipe of a hydro-electric plant somewhere in the
+American West had penetrated a man's body, cleanly, like an arrow.
+
+My desire to ride the flume died then and there, though even yet I
+couldn't help regretting that there wasn't a level stretch above the
+jump-off, where a man could check his headway and crawl out. It would
+have been rattling good sport down to there, but beyond--sheer suicide.
+There was, it is true, a couple of hundred yards of perhaps five per
+cent. grade between the first steep pitch over the edge of the cliff,
+and a second one, even steeper, that seemed to run almost directly upon
+the roaring, churning mass of cane-crushing machinery that began at the
+upper end of the big mill. Even there the water was lightning-swift,
+however, so that a man, once over the edge of the first pitch, looked to
+be less than a thousand-to-one shot in bringing up before going on into
+the second. And that would have been--how was it the manager put
+it?--more "spoiled sugar"--another "jolly costly accident for the
+company."
+
+The bridle-path I had been following continued on along the flume to the
+mill, but, desiring to strike the main highway to Townsville as quickly
+as possible, I put my sure-footed little Timor mare down what appeared
+to be an abandoned road graded into the face of the cliff. When I
+finally came out in the rear of what was plainly the remains of an
+ancient water-driven cane-crushing mill, I realized that the old grade
+by which I had descended must have been the bullock-cart road from the
+plantation. The mill was a picturesque old ruin, with its mossy
+water-wheel, crumbling roof and sprawling pier, and I made mental note
+of the lovely little cove as a place well worth returning to with
+paintbox and easel when opportunity offered.
+
+Returning through the town, I had the good luck to be hailed from the
+sidewalk by my bluff old friend, Captain "Choppy" Tancred. He was
+southbound with the _Utupua_ again, he said, but she was going to go to
+drydock immediately on arrival in Sydney and he was going to command the
+_Mambare_--a new steamer just turned out on the Clyde for the
+company--and start north the following day. It was hard luck missing his
+week at home with the wife and nippers at Manley, but his promotion to a
+ship on the Singapore run was some consolation. He would be back in
+Townsville again in a little over a week, and, as he had a lot of sugar
+to load for the Straits, hoped to have the time for a good yarn with me.
+It must have been more from habit than anything else (for the old boy
+should have read enough about me in the papers by this time to be
+convinced that I was not a fugitive from justice), that he repeated his
+injunction that I must not fail to let him know if there was ever
+anything he could do for me--"ye'll ken wha' I mean, lad." And, equally
+from habit, I assured him that I "kenned wha'," and would not fail to
+call upon him in my extremity.
+
+As I had nothing but what I had brought with me on the steamer to move,
+and as the house was practically ready for occupancy, I was comfortably
+settled in my hillside bungalow at the end of the third day after our
+arrival from the south. A Chinese cook and house-boy, a Hindu groom, a
+couple of New Hebridean blacks as roustabouts, and Ranga as general
+factotum, gave me a very tidy and self-contained establishment. Ranga I
+had taken to at once. He was quick-minded and quick-handed, extremely
+good-natured, and ready to do anything at any time of the day or night.
+I resolved to keep him with me indefinitely as a personal servant--that
+is, if it fell in with his own inclinations after he had given me a fair
+trial.
+
+I made a number of rather successful studies of Ranga by way of getting
+my hand in again, and that suggested that it might be profitable to put
+in the days of waiting by trying what could be done along the same lines
+with the others who were to figure in the picture. Allen, although busy
+with his secret training of the Oakes colt (all unknown even to the good
+missionary, by the way, who thought that "Slant" was merely borrowing
+the gelding for his morning ride), found time to come up and give me
+several sittings. It was easy to see that he hated the whole thing, and
+was only going through with it as a part of the bargain with Rona. The
+latter, after promising me faithfully to come, was reported missing on
+all of the three occasions I sent the trap for her. As her whim was at
+the bottom of the whole mad plan, I was not a little mystified at the
+girl's action. Also, as it was she whom I was most anxious to do full
+justice to in the picture, I was a good deal annoyed. Allen had no
+explanation or excuse to offer for her, saying the girl had him pocketed
+at every turn anyhow, but volunteered to try and round her up for me
+himself as soon as the Planters' Handicap was out of the way, and he had
+a bit more time on his hands. For all of his light way of speaking, I
+knew that he was as hard hit as ever, and had thrown himself into the
+training of the "Missionary Colt" only to give him something else to
+think about.
+
+Two unostentatious acts of kindness on the part of Allen in the course
+of the week which followed added fresh refulgency to his halo of
+popularity. Townsville had gone madder than ever about him following his
+sudden and unexpected return from the south, and the same appeared to be
+true of the rest of the country. In all sincerity, he had tried to do
+both of the things I have referred to strictly on the quiet, and that
+they became public was only a consequence of the zeal of the fresh army
+of "war correspondents" that had been rushed north again to camp upon
+the hero's trail.
+
+One of Allen's little kindnesses was an appeal, in his own name, to the
+Governor of Western Australia to have dismissed the proceedings that had
+been instituted to bring "Squid" Saunders back to be locked up for the
+twenty-three and a half years which still remained to be served of his
+original twenty-five-year sentence. This appeal was accompanied by a
+promise to send the ex-convict, immediately he was released, back to the
+Islands at Allen's expense.
+
+Doubtless the momentary magic of Allen's name had something to do with
+the Westralian Governor's complaisance. In any event, "Squid" Saunders
+was out of jail and off as a first-class passenger on one of the Solomon
+Island boats inside of a week. Allen, the correspondents were not long
+in learning, had bought the ticket, footed all of the very sizable
+telegraph bills, and given the purser of the steamer a hundred pounds in
+gold to be handed to "Squid" when he was disembarked at Bougainville.
+The correspondents, long baulked of any real "Allen stuff," went to that
+story like hungry hounds.
+
+But scarcely was the "Squid" Saunders story onto the wires before it was
+followed by the news of Allen's astonishing win of the Planters'
+Handicap with the rank outsider, Yusuf, at two-hundred-to-one. That win
+was spectacular enough in itself, but when, on the heels of it, was
+flashed the word that not only the thousand-guinea purse hung up for the
+race, but approximately twenty-five hundred pounds paid to Allen by the
+"tote" as well, had been donated to the owner of Yusuf to forward the
+realization of his long-cherished dream--the erection of a modern
+medical mission in Fiji--the climax was capped. Australia echoed anew
+with acclaim of the "philanthropist hero" (it was now), and press and
+pulpit moralized and maundered afresh on the Hon. Hartley Allen's
+goodness of heart and greatness of soul. The clamour of the people of
+the country to see their idol in the flesh fused the Townsville wires
+from every direction. It was all very well that the incomparable heroism
+of the saving of the _Cora Andrews_ should be perpetuated upon canvas,
+but why should the pushful American artist drag the hero off before his
+own people had a chance to do him homage? Let the artist rise to the
+occasion with a display of that famous "Yankee hustle" they had heard so
+much about and get the job over "right quick." It was the man himself
+they wanted; let the picture wait if it couldn't be finished
+straightaway!
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIV
+
+                           HELL'S HATCHES OFF
+
+
+That may give some hint of the state of mind of Australians when,
+waiting on the tip-toe of expectancy for word of the next dashing act of
+their hero, they received a message of quite another tenor. It was the
+Sydney _Herald_ man who sent the message that swept the country like the
+blast of a hurricane. He wired just the bare facts and no more. His
+imagination, even his reasoning faculties, as he confessed in a later
+dispatch, were numbed for the moment, temporarily paralyzed by the
+staggering shock of the horror he had looked upon.
+
+"The Hon. Hartley Allen was found at an early hour this morning" (ran
+the telegram) "bound, gagged and lashed to the wheel of the schooner
+_Cora Andrews_, which has been aground for some time at a lonely spot on
+the beach of Cleveland Bay, several miles north of Townsville. Allen,
+who was taken to the General Hospital as soon as he was brought back to
+town, is a raving maniac and not expected to live out the day. From
+information in the hands of the police, there is no doubt that the
+worse-than-assassin was the ex-convict, 'Squid' Saunders, recently
+released from jail and deported to the Solomons through Allen's generous
+efforts on his behalf. He is known to have escaped from his northbound
+steamer at Cairns, stolen a fishing sloop, and is believed to have
+headed back to Townsville to carry out the dastardly act his disordered
+brain has evidently nursed for years. As the police seem likely to yield
+to the popular pressure to employ bloodhounds in running down the
+fugitive, his capture is probably the matter of but a few hours."
+
+It was a fairly sane, reasonable-reading dispatch, that. None but a man
+who had felt his blood turn to ice-water at the sight the _Herald_ man
+had looked upon that morning could appreciate how much credit he
+deserved for stating the facts so coherently. For myself, at the moment
+the launch brought us back from the _Cora_ and put us ashore at the
+landing, I would have been incapable of writing my own name correctly.
+There was only one thing I could do--nay, would have had to try to do if
+the world had been disintegrating beneath my feet--and I did it. That is
+why so much of the next thirty-six hours is a blank in my mind.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was on a Saturday that Allen had made his spectacular killing in
+winning the Planters' Handicap, and on Sunday afternoon, to escape the
+importunities of Townsville generally and the correspondents in
+particular, he had ridden up to pay me a visit at my hillside bungalow.
+I had missed the race (through another appointment for a sitting with
+Rona, which, like the others, she had failed to keep), and so took the
+occasion to get some account of it at first-hand from Allen. He was in
+high spirits over his success, but rather inclined to be put out with
+the impulsive Oakes for breaking down in church that morning and
+proclaiming to all and sundry the real source of the thirty-five hundred
+and odd pounds that had fallen at his feet like manna from the skies.
+What had come nearest to flooring Melanesia's leading bad man, I think,
+was that the missionary had publicly announced his intention of naming
+the new medical mission at Suva after the donor!
+
+Allen also, somewhat to my surprise, was not averse to speaking of the
+"Squid" Saunders episode. "The only redeeming thing about the old
+ruffian," he observed, "is his affection for that girl of his--the
+red-haired one, I mean--the black-and-tans don't signify. Rather a
+remarkable girl, that one, Whitney. She was one of the kind that must
+either soar to the high places or wallow in the low ones, and I've been
+sorrier than I can tell that I was slated to--well, not to start her
+winging for the heights exactly. I really wasn't a lot to blame in the
+matter, but--that isn't either here or there. Old 'Squid' _thinks_ I
+was, and will go on thinking so till his dying day--or mine. I tried to
+get the old reprobate to call it quits when I shipped him off the other
+day. Do you think he would? No fear. Not the 'Squid.' Indeed,
+considering the bother I had wangling him out of serving that Kalgoorlie
+sentence of his, he was rather nasty. He asked me if I was trying to buy
+him off for fear he'd get me in the end. There wasn't much I could say
+to that under the circumstances, so I just let him go. Now the purser of
+the _Nawarika_ wires me from Cooktown to say that the 'Squid' slipped
+ashore at Cairns and failed to show up again before sailing time. Purser
+says he still has the hundred quid I gave him to slip Saunders when they
+put him off in the Solomons. I have turned the wire over to the police,
+but have asked them to sit tight unless Saunders shows up in this
+section again. I hate to drag the old fire-eater into a new mess,
+especially after all the trouble I had getting him out of the old one.
+So I hope he won't be fool enough to come mooching south again. Don't
+suppose he will, but--I'll be keeping an eye lifting just the same
+against the loom of a vitriol bomb on the weather skyline."
+
+Allen tapped his coat significantly at those last words, and that
+reminded him that there were two or three little things about
+"pocket-gunnery" he wanted me to coach him up on. Nailing a foot-square
+of discarded canvas to the swelling bole of a bottle tree down by the
+stream, we put in a half-hour of "by-and-large" practice at it. Allen,
+thanks to his natural gift for judging distance and angle, proved a very
+apt pupil.
+
+By way of return for his gunnery lesson, "Slant" volunteered to show me
+a few tricks of knife-throwing, in which he was reputed to have no equal
+in the Islands. "I'm about as much of a walking arsenal as you were the
+time you waited for me at the _Australia_, Whitney," he said with a
+grin, as he produced a broad-bladed dagger from a sheath slung
+unobtrusively on his right hip. "This knife, by the way," he went on,
+tilting it lightly across his forefinger, "is balanced especially for
+throwing. They are made in Lisbon, mostly for export to Brazil I
+understand, where they seem to go in for that kind of stunt a good bit.
+I bought it from the skipper of a Portuguese gunboat at Deli, who also
+taught me the principles of chucking it. First and last, I've had a lot
+of sport out of practising with it, and have an idea I would have an
+even break with the _Capitano_ himself when my hand's in. I was very
+grateful to old 'Squid' for handing it back to me the other day. I only
+hope he won't be forcing me to pass it on to him again."
+
+Allen's skill with the wicked-bladed _facon_ was decidedly impressive.
+If anything, he was a shade more accurate in planting the point of it
+than I was with a bullet from my pocket. Little luck as I had in
+throwing it, I was quite as fascinated with the appearance and "feel" of
+the formidable weapon as Allen had been with my target revolver in
+Sydney. "I trust you won't have to part with it again, to Saunders or
+anyone else," I said as I handed it back to him.
+
+Before he mounted for his ride back to town, I mentioned to Allen that
+Rona had left me in the lurch again the day before, and intimated that,
+unless she began to show more interest in the picture, I would have to
+consider packing up and going back to Sydney. As a matter of fact, the
+girl's perversity had already been responsible for effectually dampening
+down my first flush of enthusiasm, and I began seriously to doubt my
+ability to make a success of the picture when the way was clear to work
+at it. Allen begged me not to be discouraged, and assured me again that
+he would look up Rona himself on the morrow and see if he couldn't get
+some line on what she was sulking about. He also said he would see if
+the quarantine people couldn't be prodded along to get at the job of
+disinfecting the _Cora_.
+
+Rona still failed to show up on the following day, and in the evening I
+was unable to get 'phone connection with Allen's bungalow in an
+endeavour to learn if he had seen her. Dr. Butler, whom I got on the
+wire at the Quarantine Station, said that Allen had rung them up that
+morning, urging them to get a move on with the _Cora_. They had told him
+that they were planning to send a squad off before the end of the week.
+As word had just come to them, however, that men were seen climbing over
+the schooner that afternoon, they had decided to clean up the job in the
+morning. As long as the ship remained in her present condition, he said,
+she would continue a possible spreader of disease. She should have been
+attended to before. If I cared to go off with them, he added, he would
+pick me up at the landing at eight o'clock. I thanked him and told him I
+would be glad of the chance to look things over before going to work.
+
+I drove down early in the morning, taking Ranga with me on the chance
+that Allen and Rona might care to go off and plan a tentative grouping.
+A black boy cutting weeds with a sickle in front of Allen's bungalow
+told me that "white marster stop townside" for the night and had not yet
+returned. At the Mission I found Oakes a good deal perturbed. The day
+before, he said, Allen had called just after lunch, talked with Rona a
+few minutes, and then borrowed Yusuf and gone off for a ride. He had not
+returned at dusk, but during the night the horse, dangling a broken
+bridle rein, had come galloping back to his stable. The missionary was
+fearful the rider had been thrown and stunned, and had been lying all
+night on the road. He had sent out boys to search soon after daylight.
+He was not sanguine of an early report from them, as Allen on his rides
+always avoided the metalled main highways to save his horse's feet. No,
+Yusuf's knees showed no signs of his having stumbled. He was as
+sure-footed as a goat and as gentle as a kitten. Not in the least given
+to shying or bolting. Besides, the colt wasn't foaled that could unseat
+Hartley Allen. Of course, he must have struck his head against a
+low-hanging limb in galloping some bush path, but that was unlikely.
+Hartley had his wits too much on the alert to be caught like that. He
+was beginning to be just a bit suspicious of foul play. Had I heard that
+"Squid" Saunders had left his steamer at Cairns and was believed to have
+sailed south in a stolen fishing-boat? He was just about to call up the
+Police Station and tell them of Allen's disappearance when I came.
+
+Rona had been off on one of her long walks the previous afternoon, Oakes
+said in answer to my inquiry, and was not yet up. He had spoken with her
+through her window, just after Yusuf came back, in the hope that she
+might be able to give him some hint of the road Allen had taken. The
+latter had not mentioned where he was going, she said. She herself had
+been "away inland"--Oakes had encountered her on his weekly round
+through the plantation villages. She was a tireless walker, and very
+restless--altogether a strange character. I did not disturb the girl, as
+I reckoned there was no use in taking her off to the schooner until
+Allen was along to talk our plans over.
+
+It would have seemed that this word of Allen's disappearance, taken in
+conjunction with the fact that men had been seen on the wreck of the
+_Cora_ the previous day, might have given me just a shade of preparation
+for what I saw as I followed Butler and the _Herald_ man over the
+schooner's side an hour later. But it was not so, probably because my
+mental faculties were at their dullest at so (for me) unwontedly early
+an hour. If the news had come to me in the afternoon, possibly I would
+have traced some connection between the two events, and so have been at
+least slightly braced and stiffened for the coming shock. As it was, I
+bumped into it all unset, and the staggering impact of it came near to
+bowling me over.
+
+It had been Dr. Butler's theory, propounded as the launch put away from
+the landing, that the figures descried on the _Cora_ the afternoon
+before were those of blacks or coolies, attracted to the hulk by the
+hope of loot. As a matter of fact, he said, they would doubtless have
+made quite a haul, as nothing but the ship's papers had been taken
+ashore on the day of her arrival. Considerable "trade" and all of the
+personal effects of her former officers had been left for removal after
+disinfection.
+
+As we came out into the bay the coast to the northward began to open up,
+and presently the wreck of the _Cora_, heeled sharply to port with the
+foremast over the bows, became visible against the deep green of the
+mangroves a couple of miles distant. Butler studied the hulk closely
+through his glasses as we closed it.
+
+"Looks as though I had another guess coming," he remarked finally,
+lowering the binoculars with a puzzled air. "Someone aboard her now.
+Seems to be jiggering the wheel. Can't be a pirate stunt, can it?
+Wouldn't be possible to drop a petrol engine into her, block up the hole
+and get off to the Islands on the quiet? But of course not. That's a
+drydock job--'count of the propeller and shaft."
+
+At a quarter of a mile he raised his glasses again. "Chap at the wheel's
+the only man in sight," he reported. "He don't seem to have spotted us
+yet. Must be deaf, not to hear the explosions of our exhaust. Ah,
+perhaps that accounts for it! He's an old cove--big shock of white hair.
+'Bout time he was getting his helmet on, though, with this sun beginning
+to bore into the back of his neck. Ahoy, there!..."
+
+But there was no reply. The lone white-haired figure was still jiggering
+at the wheel when the launch, nosing in cautiously in the up-boil of
+reversed propellers, slid past the _Cora's_ stern and the loom of her
+counter cut it off from our view.
+
+A moss-shiny Jacob's Ladder hung over the starboard side amidships,
+where a section of the "nigger-wire" had been cut away, doubtless when
+the labour-recruits were disembarked. Butler climbed up first, then the
+_Herald_ man (who had come off on the Doctor's invitation to see the
+ship made famous by the great exploit of the Hon. Hartley Allen), and
+then myself. Butler lingered at the ladder for a few moments, giving
+orders to his men about bringing the disinfecting paraphernalia aboard;
+so it was given to the newspaper man to be the first to go aft and
+discover that the moving, gibbering white-haired wretch lashed to the
+wheel of the schooner represented the sum total of the mental and
+physical remnants of the man whose doings he had been detailed to
+chronicle.
+
+The horrified reporter uttered no sound--simply froze and stood rooted
+to the deck in amazed consternation. It was as though the basilisk stare
+of the maniac's eyes had turned the flesh and blood of his rangy frame
+to stone. When he stirred finally, it was to tip-toe softly back two or
+three paces to where I, in turn, had frozen in my tracks. It was his
+hand on my shoulder and his white face thrust close to mine that broke
+my own trance. Then the both of us must have retreated another step or
+two, until we bumped into Butler, similarly petrified with horror.
+
+I am almost certain that not one of the three of us made any outcry, or
+even uttered a word, so paralyzing was the effect of the apparition at
+the wheel. The first sound I definitely recall as breaking in upon those
+muffled mowings from the cockpit was a booming gasp as Ranga's mighty
+chest sucked in a lungful of air, and then the big Malay's quiet "'Scuse
+me, Tuan," as he started to shove past between me and the deckhouse.
+
+The yellow giant had seen too many men, white and black, lose their
+minds and their lives on that reeking old schooner to let the snapping
+of one more brain, or the parting of one more life-line, ruffle unduly
+his solid Oriental composure. He had been fond of Allen, however, and I
+could see that he was shaken, though not, like the rest of us, unnerved.
+There was a rumble of concern and anxiety even in that respectful
+"'Scuse me, Tuan," as he started to push past the blockade the cowering
+forms of three lesser men had made in the narrow passage.
+
+Ranga's steadiness was good for the rest of us. Butler checked the Malay
+with upraised hand and, muttering something about his duty as a doctor,
+started aft, the _Herald_ man and I pushing in his wake. If it had been
+possible for the fear-distorted features of the wreck of "Slant" Allen
+to express extremer terror, that heightened degree was registered when
+Butler extended his opened clasp-knife to begin severing the lashings. I
+have no wish to attempt to describe that hell-haunted face. Indeed,
+there will be scant need of my doing so, for there can be few readers of
+this record who are not already familiar with its tortured lineaments.
+It seared itself into my brain with a white heat of intensity that left
+no room for any other image. At the moment it seemed as though it must
+be blazoned there as long as my body was quick with the spark of life,
+or at least until my reason recoiled at the horror of it and tottered
+from its throne. A little later, when the dread face itself had been
+hidden from my sight, a light seemed suddenly to flash out in the
+distance, and in groping toward it I found relief.
+
+The ghastly shadow of the Hon. Hartley Allen was standing wedged in
+between the wheel and the binnacle-stand, his wrists lashed to the
+spokes of the former and a maze of tangled line binding his knees to the
+latter. The lashing was a length cut from the taffrail-log-line, another
+piece of which had been used to secure a gag of wadded oakum. The only
+wound visible (save for the wrists chafed through to the white cords of
+their tendons in his desperate tuggings to tear free) was a
+half-inch-wide incision on the right inner side of the neck, evidently
+made by the point of a knife pressed in close to the swell of the
+jugular vein. As this cut was hardly more than a deep prick, it seemed
+probable that the knife had been used, not to inflict injury, but rather
+to compel the victim to remain quiet while he was being secured.
+
+As the wrist lashings fell away, Allen lurched savagely forward with a
+throaty "g-rrr" and did his best to claw Butler's throat with his
+fingers. His strength was spent by his night-long struggles, however,
+and Ranga easily smothered the attack in the crook of his interposed
+arm. The removal of the gag did not, as might have been expected from
+the way the chest had been labouring, release a frantic scream. The
+passages of the throat, although the neck revealed no evidences of
+having been choked--recently, that is,--appeared to be swollen almost
+shut. The windpipe would carry air to the lungs, but every effort to
+expel it violently seemed to clap a sort of automatic muffler on the
+vocal chords.
+
+Allen collapsed limply into Ranga's arms when his leg lashings had been
+cut, but he would not swoon. The dread of the damned continued to stream
+from his staring and unbelievably dilated eyes; those hoarse heavings of
+throat-throttled shrieks continued to issue from his gaping mouth; every
+time a hand or foot was freed, he continued to strike or kick with it to
+the limit of his pitifully drained strength.
+
+Butler said that the only hope of saving the man's mind, and probably
+his life as well, was to rush him to the hospital and put him under an
+opiate as quickly as possible. Ranga picked up the tortured body
+carefully, as he might have handled a struggling kitten, and passed it
+down to the launch. Butler had the forethought to have us all sprayed
+with the disinfectant before we went over the side, so as to minimize
+the chances of our carrying off any plague germs.
+
+Just as the launch was about to shove off, Ranga begged the coxswain to
+hold on for a moment, and went clambering back up the latter. He ran
+aft, picked up something from the deck, and came back tucking his little
+Malay flute into the waistband of his dungarees. He had dropped it in
+the cockpit, he explained.
+
+About all I can recall of the run back to the landing was the
+interminable number of times the _Herald_ man insisted on telling us
+that he had been talking to Hartley Allen all the while the latter had
+been shifting into his jockey togs for the Planters' Handicap, and of
+how Butler, each time, replied: "And he slept in my pajamas all the time
+he was in quarantine." Possibly I said equally trivial things; but I
+don't recall them. I was conscious of a great pity for the plight of the
+man for whom I had come to have a genuine liking, and a dull sort of
+wonder as to how the tragedy might have happened and who was responsible
+for it. But the haunting horror of that fear-stricken face hung like a
+curtain in front of my mind, dimming or blanking everything behind it.
+
+At Butler's suggestion, he--with Ranga to help--took a carriage at the
+landing and drove direct to the hospital with Allen, while the _Herald_
+man and I went in my trap to the Police Station to report to the Chief.
+The latter had recently come to his present job from Charters Towers,
+where he had made something of a name for himself by breaking up a gang
+of outlaws who had long been doing pretty much as they pleased in that
+rough and ready bonanza town. He was a chap of great determination,
+energy and courage, but of little subtlety--rather the type of a
+Western American sheriff than a city police chief. I had met him at the
+Club two or three times, and liked him for his steady eye and open
+straightforwardness.
+
+The Chief was a little impatient at the _Herald_ man's repetitions of
+the togs-shifting episode, and possibly also of my own wooden silence;
+but he got to the salient facts readily, and was no less forward with
+his deductions therefrom.
+
+"'Squid' Saunders beyond a doubt," he pronounced decisively. "His sloop
+was sighted twice between here and Cairns, the last time only fifty
+miles to the north'ard. He could have landed night before last easy. Any
+of the lagoons running back into the Caradarra Swamp would hide his
+sloop. That would have given him all day yesterday to scout for Allen.
+Why the schooner I don't quite twig. But the 'Squid' was always adding
+devilish little embroideries to his jobs, and leaving a man to rot on a
+plague ship has all of his ear-marks. Never mind, I've had two launches
+patrolling the north coast for him since yesterday morning. He must have
+landed before they got there. But they'll nab him if he pulls out with
+the sloop again, and if he doesn't, _I'll_ nab him. I hate to do it with
+a white man, but I'm going to put Rawdon's 'nigger-chasers' on his
+trail. I've got 'Squid's' old suit of clothes--the one he threw away
+when Allen bought him a new outfit--stowed away here, and I fancy a
+sniff of it will be enough to put them on the scent with. If I don't
+miss my guess, Mr. 'Squid' Saunders will be enjoying our bed and board
+again before another twenty-four hours has gone by."
+
+The Chief dropped his professional manner for a few moments as we arose
+to go. "Allen was a good friend of yours, Mr. Whitney," he said, laying
+a kindly grip on my shoulder. "I don't wonder that you're a bit dazed by
+the thing. Rather puts a damper on the picture, I'm afraid. Going up the
+hill now, are you? Good--a bit of a rest will steady you no end. Ring up
+this evening and we'll give you the news. It won't be long before we
+have our man."
+
+The _Herald_ man, with the Chief's approval, rushed off to the telegraph
+office to dispatch his wire. I drove round to the hospital to pick up
+Ranga and inquire for news of Allen. Butler came down to see me in the
+reception-room and reported that it had taken an astonishing quantity of
+morphine to have any effect upon the patient, but that he was at last
+beginning to grow quieter. His heart action was very irregular and there
+was no saying yet what turn things might take. He asked me to let Ranga
+remain at the hospital for a day or two. They were short of orderlies as
+a consequence of the smallpox epidemic, and the big Malay was a very
+useful attendant on account of his strength, quietness and good sense.
+As they were trying to avoid the necessity of putting Allen in a
+strait-jacket, they wanted someone in the room able to handle him if he
+became violent again on coming out from his opiate. I told him to keep
+Ranga as long as he was needed.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XV
+
+                                THE FACE
+
+
+The Chief of Police's allusion to the picture had started a nebulous
+idea in my head, but it took it several hours to crystallize. Driving
+alone up the hill, my mind gravitated dully to the matter of the
+identity of the perpetrator of the unspeakable outrage. I found myself
+speculating as to whether or not the Chief of Police, had he known of
+Rona's previous attacks upon Allen, would have been as ready as he was
+to attribute the guilt to "Squid" Saunders. And would he--had he known
+of them--been able to trace any connection between Rona's repeated
+attempts to induce Allen to go off to the schooner with her and the fact
+that the crime had been committed there? And didn't it look just a
+little as though Rona's whole strange plan for having a picture painted
+was only a subterfuge to open the way for a carefully plotted revenge?
+And yet, if she had done all this, she surely must have had--or thought
+she had--a good reason for doing it. But had not Oakes established a
+clear alibi for the girl when he met her "away inland" the same
+afternoon men had been reported to have been seen on the schooner?
+Probably, but not certainly. Oakes himself had said that she was "a
+great walker" and "very restless."
+
+It was conceivable that the girl might have doubled back and waylaid
+Allen on the road. Or perhaps she had met him by appointment. He had
+admitted that he was becoming increasingly subject to her will. But how
+could she have induced him to go off to the schooner, and how had they
+gone? No boat had been sighted along the beach (we had looked for one
+through Butler's glasses on our return to the landing), and none was
+reported missing from the harbour. The Chief had inquired on that latter
+point while we were with him at the Station.
+
+And how had Rona, or anyone else for that matter, been able to get the
+better of such a man as Allen, fully armed and on the alert as I knew
+him to have been, and noted for his resourcefulness in emergency? That
+train of thought reminded me that we had found no arms on Allen when we
+released him. His right coat-pocket was empty, and so was the
+knife-sheath on his right hip. But his pocketbook, containing a
+considerable amount in notes, had not been taken.... It was all too much
+for my tired brain, which, ready enough to suggest questions, was quite
+incapable of grappling with them. When I drove into the home clearing I
+was wondering whether the broken glass I had noticed in the bottom of
+the cockpit was that from the whisky bottle Allen had told me Rona had
+thrown at him the morning Bell gave up the fight.
+
+I was horribly tired, both in mind and body, and hoped that, with a
+glass or two of absinthe to relax my nerves, I might be able to sleep at
+least through the heat of the noonday. Shifting into my pajamas,--after
+telling Suey, my China boy, that I would not want lunch and not to
+disturb me until I sent for him,--I crawled under the mosquito-net and
+tried to drop off. But it was no use. No sooner would I begin to doze
+than the expiring images of my thoughts would shuffle up and sharpen
+with a steel-clicking suddenness into the dread likeness of The Face,
+with its dilated eyes boring me to the spine.
+
+At the end of a couple of hours of fevered tossing, I gave it up, threw
+off my pajamas, stepped to the low back-window ledge and took a header
+into the cool green pool below. The Face dissolved as the thrill of the
+refreshing embrace of the water ran through my blood, but only to return
+when, after donning a fresh suit of drills, I began a restless pacing of
+the floor of the big living-room--my studio. Always it flashed a pace or
+two ahead of me, floating backward as I advanced upon it and swinging
+with me at the end of the room. I could not wheel swiftly enough to lose
+it, and it made no difference whether my eyes were opened or closed. I
+tried it both ways.
+
+It was in the course of an experimental lap I was trying with my hands
+over my eyes that I bumped into the big rectangle of canvas I had
+prepared in advance against the day I should be ready to start work on
+"The Saving of the Black-birder." Ten seconds later I was pawing over my
+colours with feverish haste. The idea swimming in my head had
+crystallized. It was, in effect: _Put The Face on canvas and it will
+cease to haunt and harrow your mind_. That sounded reasonable. Certainly
+The Face couldn't be in two places at once, and if I once got it
+anchored to the canvas I could cover it up when I wanted to get away
+from it. It would all depend upon how faithfully I did my work,
+something told me. If the face on the canvas was a replica of the other
+to a hair, to a line, to the fear in the hell-haunted eyes, then the
+phantom face would enter into it and become subject to my control. If
+not--then I would never know sleep nor peace while I continued to live.
+
+No artist can ever have approached a task under empire of the flaming
+intensity I threw into this one. I was painting to save my reason,
+perhaps my life. That is not a figure of speech. I mean it quite
+literally, for I am convinced to this day that I stumbled upon the only
+path that would have led me clear of complete mental and physical
+collapse.
+
+There was a rather remarkable coincidence in connection with the way I
+started to work. Nothing told me that those first nervous slashes of my
+brush signalized the beginning of a picture the fame of which was
+destined to reach the outposts of the civilized world before the year
+was out. All thought of "The Black-birder" was erased from my mind. I
+had no idea of a picture in my head. I was not even beginning to work
+upon a figure. I was only conscious that I was going to put all I had
+into the task of reproducing--recreating, if that were possible--with
+coloured pigments a phantom of my brain--a face--The Face.
+
+I had no thought, I say, of beginning a picture. I sketched nothing in,
+not even the outline of the haunting shadow I was going to try to
+capture. A very few minutes after I began squeezing out colours onto my
+palette I was smearing them upon a patch of the big six-feet-by-ten
+expanse of woven cotton in front of me. The coincidence I have mentioned
+became apparent some weeks later, when I discovered that, of all the
+sixty square feet of canvas before me, the something less than one
+square foot upon which I concentrated my paint and energies for the next
+thirty hours chanced to be in exactly the place it _had_ to be for the
+result of my effort to assume its proper place in a somewhat intricate
+composition. I will tell of that in due course.
+
+Save for the strain of the terrible tension under which I worked, the
+task to which I had set myself proved absolutely the simplest I ever
+attempted. It seemed that I could not go wrong. It was not like painting
+a face from memory, nor yet like painting one from a model. It was more
+like colouring a photograph, for the image, terrible as life, was right
+there on the canvas at the end of my arm. At first, as I tried to
+visualize it at shorter range than the five or six feet at which it had
+been floating, it was a bit hazy; but presently my intense concentration
+of mind had its reward. The dreadful phantom drew nearer, increased in
+detail, and finally sharpened into clear focus at the tip of my brush.
+After that I became just a meticulously faithful retoucher, working in a
+trance.
+
+It was toward the middle of the afternoon when Suey came in to ask if I
+was going to be home for dinner. He was becoming used to my queer ways,
+and, when I failed to take any notice of his reiterated query, came over
+and touched me on the shoulder. I "came out" with a start, but gathered
+my wits quickly. I told Suey that I should probably be working steadily
+for the next day or two and would want nothing to eat until I was
+finished. If he would bring me a bowl of cracked ice every hour and see
+that no one was allowed in to bother me, it would be all I should want
+of him. He replied with a laconic "Can do," and backed out toward the
+kitchen as though I had asked for curry-and-rice for dinner, or ordered
+something else equally rational and matter-of-fact.
+
+I settled back into my spell of tranced concentration with scarcely an
+effort, working swiftly and surely, with never a pause. The "drawing"
+was all done for me, and even in the matter of colours there was no
+hesitation. Exactly the proper shade or tint drew my brush like a
+magnet; and always it was applied with telling effect.
+
+The sunset shadows of the western hills were driving their black wedges
+across the satiny sheen of the light-flickering levels of the waving
+sugar-cane when I became aware that a sound I had been conscious of for
+some time had suddenly changed and intensified. If my mind had tried to
+catalogue the clear notes that had been floating in through the north
+window, it was probably to credit them to a certain bell-bird friend of
+mine who was in the habit of ringing his vesper chimes from a leafy
+chapel in the big bottle tree toward the end of the afternoon. But there
+was nothing bird-like in the quick staccato of eager yelps that had been
+responsible for bringing me, with ears and interest a-cock, out of my
+trance. "Dogs closing in for a kill," I muttered to myself, realizing
+that it had been the distant baying of hounds on a hot scent that I had
+confused with the more imminent chiming of my Austral bell-ringing
+neighbour. The sounds came from a long way off--probably from somewhere
+in the dense bush beyond the farther borders of the cane fields. It was
+a northerly hauling of the wind that brought them down to me so clearly.
+The air had been charged and electric all day, and the breaking up of
+the trade wind indicated that a hurricane was mustering its forces
+somewhere up among the Islands. I had not looked at the barometer on the
+veranda, but knew that it must be registering a considerable fall.
+
+The crack of a single shot drifted down the wind as the yelping reached
+its climax. Then all was quiet in the distance, with only an occasional
+cackling guffaw of a "laughing jackass" ripping across the silence that
+brooded nearer at hand. I didn't know what there was to hunt in that
+particular neck of Queensland, but thought it might be kangaroos or
+dingoes. It wasn't of enough interest to waste time in speculating upon
+it, just then in any event.
+
+Daylight had given way to twilight, and twilight to moonlight, before I
+stopped work again, this time to respond to an insistent ringing of the
+telephone bell. Oakes' deep voice came excitedly over the wire. "I
+thought you would be interested to know that Rawdon's dogs tracked down
+'Squid' Saunders this afternoon," it said. "He has just been brought in.
+Bullet through his shoulder, but not a serious wound. The report went
+around that he had confessed to the attack on Hartley Allen, and the
+town went wild. Only the Chief's nerve prevented a lynching, and there
+may be trouble yet. Never saw the people so excited." In response to my
+inquiry about Allen, Oakes said that he had been drugged to sleep early
+in the afternoon, and that there was no use trying to forecast what turn
+things would take until he came out.
+
+"That clears Rona, at any rate," was my thought as I drained a glass of
+iced absinthe and picked up my brush again. I found it just a shade
+harder materializing The Face than it had been at first, but managed it
+at the end of a minute or two of close concentration. Save for an
+occasional pause for a sip of absinthe, I worked steadily on through the
+night.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+To make clear what transpired the following day, it will be well to set
+down at this point a few things which I only learned in a conversation
+with the Chief of Police after the last act of the drama was played to a
+finish and the curtain rung down. Contrary to the understanding of Dr.
+Oakes, and all the rest of the people of Townsville with the exception
+of the Chief of Police and a couple of his assistants, "Squid" Saunders
+had _not_ confessed. From what he _had_ said in the presence of all his
+captors, however, it was easy to see how the story had originated. He
+admitted quite freely to Rawdon, after the latter had called off his
+dogs and was lending a hand to plug up the puncture in "Squid's"
+shoulder, that his one purpose in returning had been to settle his
+account with "Slant" Allen. He also said that he would rather be strung
+up straightaway than to be sent back to West Australia and begin, at
+sixty, serving out a twenty-odd-year sentence.
+
+That was about all Saunders said at the time of his capture, but later,
+after expressing himself to the Chief of Police to similar effect, he
+went a little further. He averred frankly that curiosity had always been
+one of his most pronounced characteristics, and, while he entertained
+only the kindliest feelings for whoever it was that had been responsible
+for tying up "Slant" Allen and leaving him alone to meditate upon his
+past, he couldn't help wondering about the identity of a man able to
+pull off such a cleverly thought-out and executed piece of business.
+Might he not suggest to the Chief that the latter try to find some
+trifle that this bright-minded and quick-handed cove had left behind on
+the schooner, and see if those sharp-nosed--yes, and sharp-teethed--dogs
+of his couldn't be put on the owner's trail. They appeared a very likely
+lot of hounds, especially that big black-and-tan brute with a chewed
+ear, who had broken away from the ruck and fastened his teeth in the
+"Squid's" calf.
+
+This all struck the straightforward, open-minded Chief as entirely
+reasonable. It was only fair to Saunders, too, and since saving him from
+the mob that afternoon the Chief had come to take a sort of proprietary
+interest in his prisoner. Going off to the schooner in the morning he
+found a small fragment of red rag in the cockpit, which, though it was
+greasy and dirty, did not show signs of exposure to the weather, and
+must, therefore, have been left comparatively recently. It was a
+six-by-eight-inch piece of flowered red calico, of the kind used by the
+natives of all parts of the South Seas for waist-cloths. Even if he
+wasn't able to locate the particular _sulu_ from which it was torn, the
+Chief reckoned that it would give the dogs something to go by.
+
+Rawdon's "nigger-chasers" were of a foxhound-bloodhound cross that the
+old ex-bushranger had bred especially for the purpose of chivvying down
+runaway blacks from the sugar plantations. The swart sextette displayed
+a very encouraging interest in the greasy rag the Chief brought them to
+sniff; so much so, indeed, that they were far from drained of enthusiasm
+at the end of a bootless day's nosing up and down the coast for tracks
+that gave back the same ingratiating aroma. It looked quite good enough
+to warrant going on with the game the following morning, Rawdon
+pronounced, as he started back on foot for his kennels on the southwest
+outskirts of town. (The old chap had some kind of a theory about its
+being destructive to a hound's keeness to tote him around on wheels:
+also, he had stumbled upon many trails where he least expected them,
+even in the town.)
+
+Rawdon was striding a couple of blocks ahead of his two helpers when,
+crossing the town end of the main westerly highway to the hills, the dog
+he was holding in leash--the big black-and-tan with the chewed ear, by
+far his keenest-nosed hound--broke away and set off up the side of the
+road in full cry. As there was no hope of trying to overtake him on
+foot, Rawdon waited for the other dogs to come up and catch the scent,
+cautioning his men to hold them well in leash and not to hurry until he
+rejoined them. Then he ran back a quarter of a mile to the Police
+Station to summon the Chief and get a horse.
+
+This was about seven o'clock in the evening of Wednesday, the day after
+we had found Hartley Allen bound to the wheel of the _Cora Andrews_.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the moment the big black-and-tan hound tore his leash out of Rawdon's
+hand and started to burn up the footpath beside the westerly hill road,
+I had been streaking a small patch of canvas with coloured pigments for
+something like thirty hours in a desperate endeavour to drive a phantom
+out of my brain. I was near to the end of my labours and--I could sense
+it already--close to victory. I had made a hard fight for it and I
+deserved to win. Using absinthe sparingly--as a fuel and a food rather
+than as a stimulant--and drawing upon my nerves for everything the drug
+would not provide, I had kept going steadily and was finishing strong.
+
+There had been but one interruption since the night before. Early in the
+forenoon Captain "Choppy" Tancred had called up to say that he had
+brought his new command to anchor in the harbour the previous evening,
+and that, as he had a good twenty-four hours' loading to do, he hoped
+that we could find time to foregather for a bit of a yarn in the course
+of the day. Would I come down and have lunch with him at the hotel, or
+would he drive up to me? He would rather prefer the former, as the
+barometer was down and he ought to remain where he could get off to his
+ship in a hurry if it came on to blow. I made the best excuse my
+wandering wits could frame, and hung up. The old boy's voluble protests
+were still clicking in the receiver as I returned it to its hook.
+
+I had a hard time materializing my "model" again after that break, and
+it was fifteen or twenty minutes before I was sure enough of it to
+resume work. For a while, in the back of my brain, there was a flutter
+of apprehension that old "Choppy" would take it into his head to come up
+anyhow, and I was desperately afraid that I might not be able to
+"connect" again after another interruption--that I would fail to focus
+The Face at the one moment of all when I most needed it. There would
+have been comfort in that thought twenty-four hours earlier, but by now
+a desire to finish the portrait for its own sake seemed to have entered
+into me.
+
+But my fears were groundless. "Choppy" was properly rebuffed, and had no
+intention of poking in where he "wasna weelcom'." (He told me so himself
+later.) There was no further interruption, save the negligible one of
+Suey and the cracked ice, sharp on every hour. As the sunset faded and
+the twilight flooded the valley with luminous purple mist, I was
+finished--or nearly finished. The Face was all but complete on the
+canvas now, and all but erased from my brain. It had taken an intense
+effort of concentration to hold it while I put the last touch on that
+writhen lip, as it curled back in a snarl from the bared teeth. But I
+did it. And now--just a stroke in that whorl of iris to accentuate the
+abnormal dilation, to fix the horror in that ghastly stare! Slowly the
+image sharpened in my brain. Again the fear-haunted eyes held my own.
+Now! I was just darting my delicately poised brush forward when the
+sound of voices from the veranda arrested the colour-daubed tip a hair
+short of the blurring eye its touch would have made a hopeless smudge.
+"Maskey--no can do!" came in Suey's brusque _pidgin_; and then,
+following a sudden scuffle and the sharp click of the latch, a familiar
+chirrup floated to my ears. "Let me in, Whit-nee! Hur-ree, ple-ese,
+Whit-nee!" was what it said.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVI
+
+                            A SUDDEN VISITOR
+
+
+As a rider reins in his stumbling horse, so did I rein in my stumbling
+nerves. It was now or never, I told myself. If those final touches were
+not given before I stirred from my tracks, they would never be given. I
+closed my eyes and my ears--not with my hands but by a sheer effort of
+will--and then, inch by inch, as though I were dragging it by the
+throat, brought the phantom prototype back and forced it to merge with
+the face on the canvas. The tip of my brush flashed twice, thrice. Then
+I relaxed the tentacles of my will, and as the phantom face, receding,
+blurred to blankness, it left behind, where a wisp of green-smeared
+camel's hair had touched the canvas, an expression of hell-haunted
+terror streaming from the unnaturally dilated eyes of the _completed_
+picture-face.
+
+I was breathing heavily, like a coolie who throws down his back-breaking
+burden at the end of a hard climb, when I tossed aside my brush and
+palette, but no wretch of a human pack-mule ever knew the depth of
+relief that was mine. A carrier could only experience the physical
+satisfaction of feeling his back was freed of a load: mine was the
+spiritual ecstasy of knocking off the shackles that had threatened to
+bind my soul. And now I was free to rush to the arms of the "Green
+Lady"! No more need of rationing my absinthe. I spilled the remaining
+contents of the bottle at my elbow in the bowl of half-melted cracked
+ice, and wolfed it greedily over the tilted brim.
+
+"Ple-ese, Whit-nee, I have the great hur-ree." Again came the
+click-clack of the imprisoned latch and the thud of a knee or shoulder
+against the door.
+
+"One moment, Rona!" Steadied and alert, I set down the emptied bowl,
+threw a hastily-snatched couch-cover over the canvas so that the space
+upon which I had worked was hidden, and stepped to the door. Already I
+felt the exaltation and relief of having banished the dread phantom. And
+the picture face on the canvas--how easy it was to blot out! The hanging
+corner of an old steamer-rug....
+
+Rona pushed in eagerly as I swung back the door, Suey relaxing his
+restraining grip and backing away noiselessly at my reassuring nod. All
+the old verve showed in the girl's high-flung head and flashing eye.
+Sullenness, depression, sadness alike were gone, replaced by an air of
+eagerness, of suppressed excitement. She was still wearing the baggy
+_holakau_ the lady missionaries had wished upon her, but with it--looped
+over her breasts and under her shoulders _sarong_-fashion--was the
+peacock shawl, outlining softly the lithe curves of shoulder and hip and
+flowing clingingly in folds of amber and scintillant opalescence below
+her knees.
+
+"Whit-nee, I come to make the good-bye," she gushed cooingly, catching
+her breath. "Tonight I take boat go Seengapo. Whit-nee, I come here to
+tell you I ver-ree sor-ree I make you troubl' 'bout the pick-yur. I
+tella you lie, Whit-nee. I cannot--make--the pick-yur. Bel-la, he say--"
+
+At that instant a strange thing happened. Two or three times since she
+entered the room, Rona's eyes, as though drawn there irresistibly, had
+wandered from mine to what could have appeared to her no more than a
+corner of plaid rug hanging over a broad blank of tightly stretched
+canvas. She had done this again as she started to speak, and it was a
+slight widening of her eyes that caused me to turn and follow her
+glance. The hastily-flung rug was slowly slipping back off the easel.
+The fringed corner hanging down in front was rising. Possibly a draught
+from the open door had started the movement, or perhaps the swishing
+blows a wind-lashed tree was dealing the side of the house. Whatever was
+the cause, the effect was that of an invisible hand slowly drawing up a
+curtain.
+
+Rona's tongue framed the sentence that was in her mind, but the
+words came brokenly as her puzzled wonderment increased. As her
+double-syllabled rendition of Bell's name fell from her lips the
+accelerating slide of the curtain quickened to a run, and, with a flirt
+of green fringe, the masking corner disappeared over the top of the
+frame. The Face--"Slant" Allen's hell-haunted face, tortured and
+terrible--glared out at her from the broad white field of the canvas.
+
+There was sheer amazement in the down-drop of the girl's lean jaw and a
+suggestion of terror in the gasp with which she filled her deflated
+lungs. But the piercing "_ey-yu_" with which that air was forced out
+again was a battle-cry. Fortunately, I was standing a couple of paces
+nearer the canvas than was she; but even with that handicap in my favour
+it was a near squeak. I caught the gleam of a flashing blade and a quick
+grab sunk my crooked fingers deep into the flesh of a thrusting arm.
+Hurling the arrested figure back toward the door, I stooped and picked
+up a knife--that beautifully balanced Portuguese throwing-knife that
+Allen and I had been flinging at the swelling bole of the big
+bottle-tree the previous Sunday. To this day I do not know whether Rona
+thought she was attacking a reincarnation or a ghost, or was only bent
+on destroying an uncannily life-like portrait that awakened savage
+memories.
+
+I swished the fallen rug from under the easel and rehung it--evenly this
+time--before turning to confront Rona, where she was readjusting--with
+raised elbows and twinkling thumbs--the hitch of the peacock shawl in
+the opposite corner of the room. She had scrambled to her feet again,
+but gave no sign of returning to the attack. Her eyes were snapping with
+anger and excitement, but I did not have the feeling that she
+entertained any especial personal resentment against me for the rough
+handling I had given her.
+
+"So it was you after all," I said slowly, fingering the tapering blade
+of the tell-tale knife.
+
+Her lips moved as though in reply, but if she said anything coherent it
+was drowned in the roar of a sudden gust of wind that buffetted the
+bungalow at that moment. I turned to the girl again after closing the
+north windows. Her eyes were fixed on vacancy now, and her head, with
+the clean-cut chin slightly elevated, was turned sideways in an attitude
+of listening. As the banging of the trees died down my own duller
+tympana registered a new vibration--and yet not quite new--something
+that I had heard very recently. Ah, now I had it! The baying of a hound,
+very near and very eager. A red-hot scent beyond doubt, I told myself.
+But why were Rawdon's "nigger-chasers" running at that hour, and into
+the teeth of a rising hurricane? There was questioning in both our
+glances as the girl's eyes met mine, but in hers certainly no hint of
+fear.
+
+Before either of us spoke a firm, quick step sounded from the back of
+the house, and a moment later, following a light tap on the door, Ranga
+entered from my bedroom. If he was surprised at Rona's presence, or at
+her somewhat dishevelled appearance, he gave no sign of it. Nor was
+there about me--now that I was holding the knife behind my
+back--anything to suggest to the Malay that he had stumbled upon a
+situation in the least out of the normal.
+
+Tuan "Slant" was sleeping heavily, he said, and so he had snatched the
+opportunity to come up for some of his own Borneo tobacco and a change
+of clothes. They had nothing in the hospital large enough for him. Tuan
+"Slant" was growing stronger in body, but--he finished by tapping his
+temple and shaking his head dubiously.
+
+A heavier broadside of the gathering storm shook the house again, this
+time sending a shudder through its stout frame and wringing a vibrant
+_ping_ from the tautened "hurricane cables" that guyed its windward
+corners. Out of the heart of that blast came the bell-mouthed baying of
+the nearing hound. He was still sounding his clear bugle notes as he
+swung in through the gate from the road, but down the driveway, with the
+incense of the burning trail conjuring visions of an imminent quarry in
+his brain, he began tearing his throat with harsh, savage yelps of
+eagerness. I was looking for his charge to come against the closed front
+door, but a sudden shower of claw-spurned gravel rat-a-tat-ing against
+the glass of the French windows told that he had wheeled in his tracks
+and was circling to the rear of the house. A yell and a clatter of
+saucepans from the kitchen, a scramble of slipping claws upon the
+hardwood floor of the back hallway, and in from the open door of my
+bedroom--drooling-fanged, bloody-eyed and bloody-minded--came dashing
+that black bolt of canine fury, closing on his cornered quarry for the
+death-grapple.
+
+Ranga, on entering, had moved a step or two aside from the door, a
+survival doubtless of his training at sea, where an idle man blocking a
+companionway or a ladder is liable to be taught manners by a rap on the
+head. Rona was still in the corner to which I had hurled her. I was at
+the opposite corner, near the big canvas and twenty feet or more from
+the girl. The flying hound tried to check himself at the doorway, but
+the polished floor gave him no grip for his claws. Down on his haunches,
+with forefeet poked rigidly ahead, he slid the full width of the room,
+tobogganing on a smooth-running Samoan mat for the last half of the
+distance.
+
+With the certainty of Rona's guilt fixed in my mind by her possession of
+Allen's knife, I had no doubt, from the moment the hound's baying
+indicated it had turned into the clearing, that it was hot on her trail.
+But even so, the brute's entry by the bedroom door had been so
+unexpected and so swift that I had not stirred from my tracks to the
+girl's defence when the snarling animal, shooting across the room,
+brought up against the wall close beside her. Even Ranga, leaping
+forward instantly as he had, was scarcely past the middle of the floor
+when the beast regained its balance and bearings almost at the girl's
+feet. Drawing back into the angle of the walls and crouching low like a
+cornered cat, Rona awaited the attack, while Ranga, barehanded, and I
+with the throwing-knife rushed in to her aid. Without an instant's
+hesitation, the savage beast spun to a full right-about and, brushing
+the girl's advanced knee as though it was no more than the piano stool,
+launched itself full at the throat of the yellow man.
+
+Ranga's counter was swift, sure and terrible. He might have been
+fighting bloodhounds barehanded from childhood, for all the surprise and
+dismay he showed at the sudden attack. Where my own instinct (if I had
+not tried to side-step the charge completely) would have been to grapple
+for the brute's throat from beneath, he simply struck--or rather
+grabbed--down from above. The impact crushed the snarling beast to the
+floor, but when Ranga raised his arm again he was gripping his
+struggling canine adversary by the scruff of the neck. Or rather, I
+thought it was the scruff. In reality his grip was a bit more inclusive.
+
+Holding the floundering black form at arm's length with no more effort
+than if it had been a terrier, Ranga suddenly tightened his hold. I saw
+the hound's red-lidded eyes grow slant and elongated like a Chinaman's
+as the skin of its scalp was drawn backward in the relentless vise
+closing from behind; then a grinding snick cut short an unearthly scream
+of pain, and the hound was dangling limp and lifeless with a crumpled
+spine at the end of a gibbet of knotted yellow muscle. Ranga tossed
+lightly aside what a moment before had been a flying bolt of wrath, and
+where the great head doubled under against a flowered chintz
+window-curtain I saw the sprawling outline of a tooth-torn ear,
+doubtless the scar of a fight with a luckier ending.
+
+In its strangely terrible tenseness, the electrically charged silence
+that succeeded has no parallel in my experience. Not a word was spoken.
+The only sound was the banging of the wind-wrenched trees against the
+house and the nearing mutter of the thunder in the north. The
+significance of the fact that it was Ranga the dog had been trailing was
+lost upon neither Rona nor me, nor yet upon the big Malay himself. The
+latter met my questioning glance steadily for a moment, but it was the
+girl's piercing stare of fierce concentration that drew and held his
+troubled black eyes. While one might have counted fifty those two stood
+and (as I have since understood) communed with eye and mind. It was a
+sudden thunder-clap that broke the connection and checked the interflow
+of thought. Ranga had not winced at the blinding flash and
+close-following crash, but Rona's higher strung nerves fluttered for an
+instant, and the wire was down. But Ranga's words indicated that the
+message was about complete.
+
+"Yes, I did it, Tuan," he said quietly, turning toward me as though
+answering my unspoken question. "It had to be, Tuan, and--yes, I did
+it."
+
+It was not until afterwards I recalled that it was to Rona I addressed
+my protest. "But 'Slant' swore to me that he did not kill Bell; that he
+was in no way responsible for his death, first or last."
+
+A spasm of passion twisted the girl's face to the seeming of an ape's as
+she caught the drift of my words, and her reply was almost a scream.
+"Not ke-el Bel-la? 'Slan' do worse than ke-el. He--"
+
+The chorus of the leashed pack that checked her words came from so close
+at hand that it made itself heard above the now unbroken roar of the
+storm. There was the clang of shod hoofs on a metalled road, too, and I
+thought I could distinguish the shouts of men. The hunt was closing in
+for the kill.
+
+"I think I go now, Tuan. I like the better to fight outside." Ranga's
+voice was as quiet and controlled as when he had told me the news from
+the hospital a few minutes before; but there was the lust of battle in
+his flashing eyes, eagerness for action in the quick heave of his chest.
+
+There was no time to debate and decide the question as to who had
+committed the outrage upon Hartley Allen, or of what justification
+there might have been for it. One thing only was clear to me, and that
+was that I was not going to throw either Rona or Ranga to the dogs--no,
+nor to the law either--if there was any way of avoiding it. My mind--as
+was always the case when I had fasted long and drunk absinthe
+sparingly--worked with lightning swiftness.
+
+"Don't fight unless you have to," I said, stepping closer to Ranga as
+the wind and thunder threatened to drown my voice. "Follow down the
+stream over the falls. Jump won't hurt you--plenty of water at the
+bottom. That'll throw off the dogs. Then follow the path by the flume
+down to the sea. The rain'll kill your trail for the dogs. It ought to
+be starting any minute now. Wait for me on the pier by the old sugar
+mill. I'll come for you in a boat as soon as I can."
+
+Baring his teeth in a quick grin of comprehension, the big fellow
+wheeled and started for the front door. I caught his arm and checked him
+just in time. "This way!" I shouted. "Through my bedroom window. Beat
+it! _Lekas!_"
+
+Again that intelligent tooth-flash of understanding. Ranga's
+foreshortened bulk was making a blurred blot against the blue-green
+lightning flash playing across the rear bedroom window as I turned to
+answer a heavy banging at the front door. Everything considered, I have
+always felt that I got away fairly well with the situation with which I
+now found myself confronted. It was Harpool, the Chief of Police, who
+staggered into the room, bracing back against the push of the still
+rising wind. The flutter of the lightning revealed two or three horses
+in the driveway, and three or four men following a bunch of howling dogs
+around the corner of the house.
+
+I was on the point of opening up at the Chief with a facetious sally
+about the way he was sending his hounds around to frighten my lady
+visitors, when I chanced to glance to the corner where Rona had been,
+and lo--I had no lady visitor! The girl was gone, but whether under the
+couch or out of one of the windows I could not guess. So I only gaped
+rather stupidly and said nothing, leaving the Chief to open the attack.
+I was glad the face on the canvas was covered, and only wished there had
+been time to throw something over the crumpled remnants of the big
+black-and-tan.
+
+"I am quite satisfied it isn't you we want, Mr. Whitney," Harpool began,
+with a shade of embarrassment, I thought. "But the fact remains that
+Rawdon's hounds have followed a live scent straight to this house, and I
+have every reason to believe they are on the trail of the man who tied
+up Hartley Allen. Perhaps you can explain--"
+
+"I think I can," I cut in, anxious to gain time for the fugitive, but
+realizing that no end would be served by trying to conceal his identity.
+"You're right that it was a hot scent. Just a few degrees too hot for
+your canine deputy there in the corner. It's the end of _his_ trail, I'm
+afraid."
+
+The Chief strode over to the limp corpse and turned it with his foot.
+"Who killed this hound?" he demanded angrily, regarding me suspiciously
+for the first time.
+
+"Not I, Chief," I replied jauntily; "but can't you guess? You can see
+for yourself that he hasn't been shot--or clubbed--or poisoned. Well,
+then--look at that neck. Do you know of more than one man in these parts
+capable of snapping a bloodhound's spine between his thumb and
+forefinger?" (I added that little thumb-and-forefinger touch with malice
+aforethought, for I wanted to impress upon Harpool--for whatever it
+might be worth--that it was no old broken-down of a "Squid" Saunders
+that he was going to try to run to earth out there in the darkness.)
+
+The Chief's honest eyes opened with amazement as the answer dawned upon
+him. "You don't mean the big Malay?" he ejaculated incredulously. "Why,
+he has been tending Allen like a sister for two days. Everyone in the
+hospital has been speaking about his devotion."
+
+"No other," I answered. "Ranga came up from the hospital less than half
+an hour ago to get a shift of togs. Five minutes later that hound came
+tearing in through the back entrance and flew at his throat--right here
+in my studio. You see the result. That fellow can drop a horse with his
+fist--a dog is no more than a flea to him."
+
+"I can hardly believe it," said the Chief, shaking his head; "but the
+fact remains that if the hound went for him, he's our man. I hope we
+won't have to shoot him.... But Rawdon will never stand by and see his
+dogs pinched out like that. This fellow was his best hound by a mile.
+Drive him crazy when he finds it's been dished. Gawd, that neck might
+have been run over by a steam tram! What in hell--"
+
+A bedlam of howls and yells and savage oaths rising from the rear of the
+house at this juncture broke in upon the Chief and caused him to bolt on
+the double through the door of the corridor leading to the kitchen. The
+unearthly racket, with the rattle of pistol shots spattering through it,
+made me certain that Ranga had run afoul of the hunt at his first jump.
+Shuddering at the thought of the terrible fight that must ensue, I
+pushed on after Harpool, reaching the further end of the corridor just
+in time to catch his reeling form as he staggered back from a bullet
+that had burned his scalp the instant he opened the kitchen door.
+Astride the sill of a kicked-in window sat old Rawdon, his bearded face
+distorted with fury and pain, coughing, sneezing, cursing, and firing
+impartially at all parts of the long, low room. Under the sink, almost
+at Rawdon's feet but quite out of pistol range, crouched Suey, blinking
+blandly and rubbing his almond eyes. He it was who was the author of an
+unpremeditated diversion which was the only thing in the world that
+prevented Ranga being nabbed at the outset.
+
+The late black-and-tan, in following Ranga's trail, had entered the
+kitchen by snapping his way through the light screen door. To prevent
+his lines being thus penetrated a second time, the foxy Celestial, when
+he heard the main pack rallying to the attack, closed and bolted the
+heavy outside door of his domain and, with a little surprise packet in
+his hand, took station beside the little swinging window above the sink.
+Waiting with true Oriental restraint till the clamouring enemy was
+compactly bunched upon the porch outside, Suey gently raised the screen
+and emptied the contents of a can of red pepper into their midst. The
+paprika appeared to have been pretty fairly divided between three of the
+most oncoming of the dogs and their equally forward master. The hounds
+quit for the night, then and there, but the old bushranger's fighting
+spirit urged him on to make the best stand he could with his automatic.
+Considering the way he was being racked with coughs and sneezes, and
+that he only blazed away at the creak of an opening door his streaming
+eyes could not locate, his shot that welcomed the Chief was by no means
+uncreditable. It cut a neat furrow through Harpool's stubby pompadour
+and even drew a drop or two of blood.
+
+The Chief's fervent swearing stayed Rawdon's murderous hand just as he
+had finished fumbling a fresh clip of cartridges into his emptied
+"thirty-eight" and was about to start fusillading anew. Roaring mad as
+he was, his first thought was for the dogs. "Get a wet rag round the
+muzzles o' Dingo an' Jackaroo 'fore you let 'em inter this 'ell 'ole,"
+he growled between sneezes. "Our bloke's somew'ere in this 'ere 'ouse,"
+he went on, laving his smarting eyes at the water-tap of the sink above
+Suey's jack-knifed form. "Don't let 'im slope by the front door, Chief,
+now we've got 'im in 'is 'ole."
+
+"Sloped already," snapped Harpool laconically, adding that most of the
+sloping had been done while Rawdon was setting his dogs on a "bally
+Chink cook." In a few terse sentences the Chief explained the way things
+stood, giving it as his opinion that their man would be trying to follow
+the stream right across the plantation and down through the belt of bush
+to the mangrove swamps. The loss of the big black-and-tan was so great a
+calamity for the old bushranger that it had the effect of sobering
+rather than further exciting him. His red rage burned white and flamed
+inwardly rather than outwardly. "I'll know 'ow to even up for 'im
+killin' Starlight w'en I gets that bloody wombat in a patch o' dry bush.
+Nice bit o' a torch that greasy 'ulk o' 'im'll make. Come along! We'll
+'ave a better chance o' makin' a quick bag if we get 'im in sight 'fore
+the rain starts."
+
+There were still left two dogs with undamaged "noses." Fearful that
+these, if they took the bridle-path down the right side of the creek,
+might pick up Ranga's trail where he would have left the stream at the
+pool, I made bold to suggest a plan calculated to carry them wide of
+that danger point. "Why don't you ford here," I said, "and push straight
+across the plantation to the end of the big loop the stream makes round
+the nigger village? Your man will be all of an hour making that point if
+he wades by the stream. You can make it through the cane in twenty
+minutes and be waiting there to bag him."
+
+The Chief was inclined to favour the plan--until Rawdon cut in
+sarcastically with: "An' wot's to pervent the bloody bloke's givin' us
+the slip a 'undred times 'tween 'ere an' there? One hound down each side
+o' the stream--that's the only way to be sure o' clappin' our 'ooks
+inter 'im."
+
+That was sound reasoning of course--from Rawdon's standpoint,--and I
+didn't dare urge my plan any further. Ten minutes later, when a sudden
+eager baying came down the wind from the direction of the waterfall, I
+felt sure my worst fears were realized. It was, therefore, with only the
+faintest hopes of success, that I pulled myself together to take the
+first step in making good my promise to pick up Ranga at the pier of the
+old sugar mill.
+
+The priceless Suey had crawled out from under the sink as the sounds of
+the hunt grew faint, and turned to tidying the kitchen as though
+cleaning up after a pack of bloodhounds was just a pleasant little
+incidental of the day's work. When I ordered him to get me out a fresh
+bottle of absinthe he did not even forget the cracked ice. I told him I
+should probably be away for most of the night, and that if Rona showed
+up in the interim to see that she was made comfortable till my return.
+"All lightee girl-ee. Otha fell-ee too much peppa can have," he said
+decisively. I told him to do what he liked to Rawdon, but to give the
+Chief a shake-down if he asked for it.
+
+Quaffing a couple of glasses of raw absinthe, I filled a flask, pulled
+on a pair of riding-boots and a raincoat, and pushed out onto the
+veranda. The wind had not increased greatly in force, but the lightning
+and thunder were flashing and crashing almost simultaneously overhead,
+and the first big drops of rain were beginning to spatter. The moon was
+hidden behind a dense pall of black cloud, so that it was by the
+incessant flicker of the lightning that I sized up the three
+saddle-horses tied at the side of the driveway and picked the rangy
+waler of the Chief as the likeliest rough-weather beast. I had no
+compunction to taking him, as the bunch would be breaking away anyhow as
+soon as the sagging bottom of the cloud overhead dropped its contents on
+them. I preferred not to have my own saddle-horse left standing in the
+town if it could be avoided. There would be enough tell-tale posts on
+the course I was going to try to negotiate without deliberately planting
+another one.
+
+The cane fields in the valley were glistening with the opening volleys
+of the rain as I spurred across the clearing, stabbing the night with
+silver gleams in the lightning flashes as the bayonets of massed troops
+throw off the rays of the sun. The wind was behind me as far as the main
+road; then side-on, but broken by the wall of the thick-growing trees. I
+put the waler at top speed, anxious to cover all the distance possible
+while the footing was good. I was halfway to town before the storm let
+go in real earnest, and from then on it was about as much of a swim as a
+ride, especially after the hillsides began to spill off on the lower
+levels. My mount was a sensible beast, evidently no stranger to tropical
+cloudbursts. He took the initiative readily when I ceased to urge him,
+and kept plugging right on through the storm at a good steady
+business-like jog. Nothing but my good fortune in getting a jump on the
+rain prevented my going out in this first lap of my race, as all of the
+four bridges I had to cross must have washed away within a very few
+minutes from the time I put them behind me. Indeed, one of the two
+horses I had left in the driveway, after both had broken away as I had
+anticipated, was drowned in trying to flounder through an open crossing.
+
+The worst of the terrific downpour was over as I rode into the town, but
+the wind--as was to be expected--was blowing with increased force.
+Everyone had been driven indoors by the rain, so that it was in an empty
+street I dismounted and left my horse, knowing that he would be pawing
+at his own stable door within a very few minutes. The rest of the way to
+the landing I covered on foot. As I had feared, the creek was empty of
+launches. I would have to see what could be done at the Burns, Phillip
+offices, which, busy with manifests and other odds and ends of business
+incident to an imminent steamer sailing, were still lighted up. It was
+an alternative I was very reluctant to resort to, as I had been hoping
+that my visit to Captain Tancred might be managed on the quiet. Just as
+I turned to go a red light, bobbing past the outer end of the jetty,
+caught the tail of my eye, and, on the off chance that it might be a
+craft I could hire, I held on at the steps. Smartly handled in the nasty
+cross-lop, a small but powerful steam launch bumped in alongside the
+landing stage.
+
+"Can I get you to take me off to the _Mambare_?" I demanded of the
+uniformed youth who came bounding up the steps.
+
+"Glad to do it, sir. This is her launch," was the cheery reply. "Just in
+for clearance papers. Be back in a jiffy. Climb aboard and make yourself
+comfy in the cabin." Then, as an apparent afterthought: "You're sailing
+with us, aren't you? Can't take off visitors at this hour. No way to get
+back. Getting under way at midnight." He had so little doubt that I was
+a belated passenger, perhaps delayed by the rain, that my nod was quite
+sufficient to reassure him. Five minutes later we were shoving off for
+the run back to the line of lights where the _Mambare_ tugged at her
+moorings.
+
+The sea was white with foam outside the jetties, but with waves and wind
+almost dead astern the sturdy little launch made very comfortable
+weather of it. It was by no means as bad as it had been coming in, said
+the young officer, who turned out to be a freight clerk. As the gangway
+was already raised and the launch had to come in anyway, we remained
+aboard her and were hoisted right up and swung in to the chocks on the
+_Mambare's_ boat-deck. My companion hurried at once to his office to go
+over his pouch of papers, while I, locating it without asking anyone for
+directions, went forward to the Captain's cabin under the bridge.
+
+The faint shadow of constraint on Captain Tancred's face as I entered
+disappeared the instant his ready mind divined I had come to him for
+help. "So they're after ye at last, lad," he said, sympathy and
+satisfaction queerly blended in his deep voice. "Weel, noo, tell me a'
+aboot it. I ken we'll be findin' a way oot for ye."
+
+I told him all that he needed to know as quickly as possible, making a
+point, however, of omitting to state that the man I wanted him to
+smuggle away to the Islands had confessed to committing the outrage upon
+Hartley Allen. "Slant" was an old friend of "Choppy's," and I felt sure
+that the latter, far from being a witting party to helping the man who
+had attacked him escape from justice, would undoubtedly lend every aid
+to placing him where he would receive his just deserts. Luckily, the
+quixotic old Scot was not a man to ask searching questions. He was
+plainly disappointed that it was not I who was fleeing the law, but
+there was ready consolation in the fact that a friend of mine, in very
+sore straits, might be saved from being torn to pieces by a pack of
+bloodhounds if he was picked up at a certain point on the north coast
+before morning.
+
+We located the cove of the old sugar mill on the chart without
+difficulty, and in his bulky volume of "Sailing Directions" found the
+comforting assurance that it afforded especially good shelter in a
+northerly blow. There was no surf, it was stated, and the shore was
+almost steep-to. This was all in our favour. He was sailing at midnight,
+the Captain said. The hurricane was central over the New Hebrides, so it
+was only the tail of it flirting across the Great Barrier--nothing he
+would dream of sticking in harbour for. Doubtless he would be able to
+find an excuse to heave-to off the cove, while I piloted the launch in
+to get our man. Then, if I didn't care to return and take a pleasure
+voyage with him to Insulinde and the Straits, I could drop off and make
+the best of my way home.
+
+The Captain had just finished telling me how he had made a point of
+bringing his old launch crew with him from the _Utupua_--"the lads I use
+for speshul wark, ye ken"--when the freight clerk who had brought me off
+entered the cabin with a number of papers and letters. On the top of the
+pile was a red envelope marked "Rush." "Choppy" tore the letter open at
+once. The up-flop of his grizzled side-burns at the sudden flexing of
+the jaw muscles at their roots gave me warning of the coming jolt.
+
+"We'll nae be gettin' under wa' the nicht, Ryerson," he said quietly to
+the freight clerk. "Will ye be sae guid as to bid the Chief an' the Mate
+to step this wa'. Mair carga the morrow," he added by way of
+explanation. To the Chief Engineer, when he came, the Captain merely
+countermanded an order for steam on the capstan at seven bells, and
+warned him to keep the pressure in the boilers high for fear the steamer
+might part a mooring cable if the wind increased. The Mate he ordered to
+be ready to handle a consignment of silver bullion and ingot copper that
+would come in a tug from the _Moresby_ as soon as she arrived from the
+south in the morning. He also told him to have the crew of the steam
+launch called away at once, so as to put "yon gentleman" ashore as
+quickly as possible. If the Mate was lively about it, "Choppy"
+suggested, he might find that the fires of the launch had not yet been
+drawn from her trip to the landing. If so, that would save time in
+getting up steam.
+
+Not until all of this was ordered did he turn to me with: "The de'il's
+ain luck, lad. Nae gettin' awa' afore eight bells, noon, the morrow.
+Shipment frae Broken Hill catchin' up wi' us in the _Moresby_."
+
+"That means that the game's up and you're sending me back because
+there's no hope of doing anything?" I asked in dismay.
+
+"Nae, nae, lad," he soothed. "No' so fast. Just a wee bit o' a shift o'
+program, that's a'. True I'm sendin' ye ashore in the launch, but when
+she comes back I'm hopin' tae find oor mon in yer place. Do ye ken noo
+wha' I'm drivin' at?"
+
+"Do you mean to send the launch all the way round from here?" I demanded
+in astonishment; "and then to keep him aboard here in the harbour for
+ten or twelve hours before you sail? Isn't that asking for trouble both
+ways? Even if the launch stands up against the gale outside, aren't you
+done for if they come off from town and make a search of the steamer?"
+
+Old "Choppy's" blue eyes twinkled merrily at the latter suggestion. The
+police never did seem to have any luck in searching his ships, he
+laughed. As for the launch--it was new, its engine was unusually
+powerful, and it would have "Pisco" at the wheel. "Pisco," he explained,
+was a Chilean who had been with him for years, and had never been known
+to fail at a pinch. He thought that combination ought to win out. I
+didn't mind a bit of slap-banging off the point, did I? That settled it.
+If he was willing to risk his own launch and his own career to save _my_
+friend, it was not for me to hang back. Fifteen minutes later we had
+been lowered over the side and were rounding under the _Mambare's_ fine
+clipper bows into the teeth of the gusty norther. It had been agreed
+that I should pilot "Pisco" to the rendezvous and deliver my man into
+his care. "Choppy" undertook to do the rest.
+
+What the hard-bit old sea-dog had characterized as a "bit o'
+slap-banging" off the point proved to be a frontal attack upon as
+ruffianly a bunch of headseas as it was ever my lot to face in anything
+smaller than a ninety-ton schooner. Stoutly built and over-engined as
+she was, the launch was quite equal to the task of driving her nose
+through the waves, but--not being built for submarine service--proved a
+dismal failure at getting rid of the solid green water that deluged her
+as a consequence. Knot by knot, cursing fluently in picturesque _roto_
+Spanish the while, "Pisco" rang down the engine, until finally the
+pugnacious little craft ceased tunnelling the bases of the seas and
+contented herself with boring neat round holes in their curling crests.
+By this method she shipped no more water than her scuppers could put
+back where it came from. The only fear now was that enough spray might
+splash down her squat funnel to quench the fires, and to minimize the
+chances of this, the resourceful "Pisco" made the lookout stand so that
+his broad chest would receive and deflect the heaviest rushes of the
+threatening flood. Fortunately, the distance to be run head-on to the
+seas was comparatively short. Once round the point the alteration of
+course brought the wind and the waves on the starboard beam, and though
+she now just about rolled her side-lights under, it was fairly quiet
+going compared to the buffeting outside.
+
+I gave "Pisco" his course for the first leg in by the lights of the big
+sugar central, and then, as we opened up the inner bay, gave him a
+bearing on the notch--barely guessable against the overcast west--where
+the old cartroad grade pierced the brow of the cliff. The clouds were
+racing overhead and the baffling cross-gusts on the surface would have
+made it bad business for a sailing craft. But for a launch the task was
+a comparatively simple one. The loom of the old mill was discernible
+against the darker opacity of the cliff at a couple of hundred yards,
+and the right-angling lines of the pier at half that distance. As the
+latter was sure to have been built of the eternally-lasting _jarra_, I
+knew that it would be as solid and serviceable as the day it was
+abandoned.
+
+I had not thought it best to risk dampening Captain Tancred's enthusiasm
+by confessing that I thought it was a good ten-to-one against my man's
+turning up at the rendezvous. Indeed, I could see no grounds whatever
+for hoping that Ranga had shaken the pursuit--already at his heels--and
+won through to the appointed place. Nothing short of a miracle could
+have compassed it, I told myself. It was on the off chance that the
+miracle had been wrought that I was keeping my promise.
+
+"'Bout half a point to sta'boa'd, Tuan. Way nuf now! Steady!" That deep
+rumbling voice from the darkness was a welcome surprise. "Pisco,"
+heeding the quiet directions, brought his launch alongside the broad
+solid flight of steps as neatly as he would have laid her up to the
+_Mambare's_ gangway in broad daylight.
+
+Ranga was coming down the steps--with a slowness which I attributed to
+the fact that they were probably very slippery--when I heard a thud on
+the deck behind me, such a sound as a heavy, soft bundle thrown down
+from above might have made in striking. A second or two later there was
+an ejaculation of astonishment somewhere aft, probably from "Pisco," I
+thought, as the words were Spanish. I did not try to puzzle out the
+purport of them at the moment, as my attention was occupied with Ranga,
+who seemed to be hesitating at the last moment about coming aboard.
+Twice or thrice he drew back his foot from the rail, as though uncertain
+of his balance. And when the great bulk of him finally did surge
+forward, it was with a lurch that took all my strength to check it and
+prevent his reeling on across the narrow bow and over the other side. He
+steadied himself slowly, with a great intake of breath. "Sorry--make
+trouble,--Tuan. Now--I go aft."
+
+"I am leaving you here, Ranga," I said quickly, for I was getting
+nervous about a movement of lights I had observed along the flume in the
+rear of the big sugar mill. "Captain Tancred will look after you on the
+steamer, and put you off wherever you want to go. He also has some money
+for you. Good luck!"
+
+The big fellow took a long shuddering breath, and when he spoke it was
+as though he had rallied himself from a spell of faintness by sheer
+force of will. "Some day, Tuan--I pay you back--for all you do. So
+long." He turned with painful deliberation and started to edge along
+aft. I was a bit surprised that he had not grasped my extended hand, but
+could not be sure that he had been aware of it in the dark. It did not
+occur to me until afterwards that he had not used his own hands on the
+rail of the stairway in descending, and that he had seemed to shoulder
+his way back to the cockpit rather than to grope. I waited until his
+swaying shoulders ceased to blot the blinking of the phosphorescent seas
+astern, and then swung off to the stairs.
+
+"All clear!" I called softly to "Pisco," as I felt the solid step
+underfoot. "Shove off when you're ready. _Buena fortuna!_"
+
+It was doubtless "Pisco's" ejaculation in Spanish a few moments before,
+lurking in the back of my mind, that prompted me to speed the spirited
+coxswain in his own tongue. On the heels of that "_Buena fortuna!_" the
+words he had spoken flashed up in my memory. "_Cristo! Porqué la
+muchacha?_" It could hardly have been a sarcastic dig at Ranga's
+hesitancy in stepping aboard, I reflected as I mounted the
+slippery--astonishingly slippery--steps. He would not have expressed it
+quite that way in that case. A sudden slip in a slimy patch at the head
+of the steps put an end to conjecture for the moment, and when I
+regained my feet the answer was written across the cabin doorway of the
+turning launch. The lamp inside had--purposely--been turned very low,
+and the blurred silhouette of the figure that came groping out to where
+Ranga had collapsed on a cockpit transom might easily have been that of
+any one of old "Choppy's" true and tried launch crew. But wet amber silk
+reflects a deal of light, and there was only one peacock shawl in the
+world--or in that neck of the world at least.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVII
+
+                             DOWN THE FLUME
+
+
+The lights had disappeared from the flume as I turned to go, and, rather
+than take the chance of another fall, I decided to use my small electric
+torch in finding a solid footing. The lacquered crimson reflection of
+the fluttering disc of light instantly revealed the cause of the
+slipperiness I had encountered. The whole end of the pier was
+criss-crossed with thick trails of blood, with great spreading pools
+here and there where, whoever shed it, had stood or sat. The blood on my
+hands and raincoat, where they had come in contact with Ranga's reeling
+frame, proved beyond a doubt that he was badly hurt. That explained his
+unsteadiness on his feet, and also the fact that he had avoided shaking
+hands with me. Very likely, indeed, his hands were unfit to use. Tired
+to the verge of exhaustion though I was, my blood leaped at the thought
+of the battle royal the splendid fellow must have fought--and won. I was
+expecting to come upon traces of the fight at any moment as I picked my
+way in past the ruined mill to the foot of the old grade leading to the
+top of the cliff.
+
+As I left the planking of the pier behind two sets of footprints
+appeared in the wet, firm earth of the path at the side of the road.
+Both were made by bare feet, but the larger ones--plainly Ranga's--were
+broken and irregular, and saturated with blood. There could be no doubt
+that his feet, like his hands, were frightfully torn. The small prints
+pressed very close to the side of the large, indicating that Rona was
+either supporting the wounded giant or being supported by him. From the
+fact that the smaller impressions were deeply indented, I figured that
+the former was the case--that she was helping him. The girl, evidently,
+was not badly hurt--perhaps not at all.
+
+Where the path I was following joined the bridle-road at the brink of
+the cliff, the trail of blood turned off down the foot of the flume
+toward the big sugar mill. The battle royal must have been fought
+somewhere in the depths of the dense tropical growth that filled the
+rocky fissure in the cliff followed by the flume. What grim secret the
+black hole held would have to wait for the coming day to reveal. My way
+home led in the opposite direction, and there was some question in my
+mind as to whether or not I had the strength for the full course.
+
+Fortunately for me the flume had been built along ridges and high
+ground, so that the trail following it had not been exposed to heavy
+flooding in the torrential rains of the early evening. I found it hard
+and firm underfoot for the most part, and by no means hard to follow
+without resorting to my electric torch. It would have been very easy
+going had I not been so nearly all in, but even as it was, by using my
+absinthe sparingly as I had done while painting, I managed to keep
+plugging steadily on toward home.
+
+At one time something very near a panic seized me for a while, when the
+thought flashed through my mind that the great quantity of Ranga's blood
+soaked up by my boots and my clothes would undoubtedly leave a trail
+that Rawdon's hounds, should they chance to nose into it, would be quite
+justified in mistaking for that of the Malay himself. Even if I
+succeeded in holding the beasts off with my revolver, my presence there,
+and in such a state, would call for a lot of explaining. If the Chief
+once became suspicious, I told myself, it would undoubtedly upset my
+plans to get Ranga away, to say nothing of involving both myself and
+Captain Tancred in a serious scrape. I was in a miserable state of funk
+until the cheering thought entered my head that Ranga had probably
+killed not only the dogs, but probably Rawdon and the Chief as well.
+That reflection reassured me immensely, and, buoyed in mind and body, I
+trudged on confidently to the foot of the waterfall.
+
+I had noticed from time to time along the way that the flume, in its
+less inclined stretches, was overflowing its sides. The reason for this
+became evident when I reached the intake, at the side of the pool under
+the falls, where I discovered that the gate, usually only partly raised,
+was wide open. A flow of more than double the normal was rushing out of
+the rain-swollen stream and into the flume.
+
+I was too tired to speculate upon how this might have happened. It was
+touch-and-go with my tottering knees all the way up the steep, slippery
+path to the top of the cliff; but, with three or four breathing spells
+and the last of my absinthe, I managed it, and came out at last upon the
+greensward rimming the bathing-pool under my bedroom window. It was
+comparatively quiet here, now that the roar of the falls was deadened by
+distance, which was doubtless the reason that I heard for the first time
+a racket from the other side of the plantation that must have been going
+on right along. It was rather a lucky thing that I _did_ hear that noise
+before I turned in. Had I not done so, it is hardly likely that it would
+have occurred to me that it might be a wise precaution to remove my
+boots before entering the house, and then to strip off and burn
+carefully in the kitchen range everything that I had been wearing. It
+was all I could do to keep awake until the irksome job was over, but,
+since it was evident from the ki-yi-ing and cursing that was floating
+down the wind that Ranga had not made a clean sweep of Rawdon and his
+pack, I reckoned that it well might be the means of preventing
+unpleasant complications.
+
+My arduous climb up from the old sugar mill had served a useful purpose
+in one respect. The hard physical exercise had sweated the poison of the
+absinthe out of my system and relaxed the near-to-breaking tension my
+nerves had been under for thirty-six hours. I fell into a good normal
+hard-workingman's sleep the moment the mosquito-net closed behind me.
+And the best of it was that, when a pandemonium outside awakened me a
+little after sun-up, I tumbled out upon my feet in full possession of
+all my faculties. This was a mighty fortunate circumstance, for the
+rather delicate situation with which I was confronted called for
+something better on my shoulders than the usual "absinthe-holdover"
+head.
+
+Harpool and Rawdon, it appeared, had experienced a beastly night. Losing
+a hot scent that had been picked up at the foot of the waterfall
+immediately after leaving the bungalow, they had been forced to take
+refuge in one of the labour villages during the deluge. Dragged out by
+the bloodthirsty Rawdon before the rain had ceased to fall, they had
+spent the night "working" the fringes of the bush in the hope of
+stumbling upon the trail of the elusive fugitive. The net result of this
+was the drowning of two more hounds and the driving of the baffled
+bushranger to the verge of distraction. Returning, dead beat, in the
+early dawn, they had encountered, at the intake of the flume, a scent so
+strong that even the paprika-dosed noses of Suey's victims followed it
+readily. Swarming up the cliff in full cry, the hunt came on to whirl in
+a mad war dance round the bungalow and put a period to my morning
+slumbers.
+
+The maniacal Rawdon was the worst difficulty, and I honestly believe
+that only the Chief's restraining presence saved me from the necessity
+of winging him with a revolver bullet to prevent his setting fire to the
+bungalow. That "bloody wombat" had dodged him once from that shack and
+he wasn't going to take chances on its happening again. The Chief and I
+finally induced him to leave his "ring of death" intact round the
+bungalow and come in and search for himself. That gave me a chance for a
+quiet word with Harpool, whom I did not want to have push on to town for
+fear he would start a search that might extend to the _Mambare_. Indeed,
+he admitted he was afraid that his man might have doubled back to
+Townsville and got off to the Singapore boat, which had doubtless sailed
+at midnight. He had lost a badly-wanted counterfeiter a fortnight ago
+that way. The skippers never seemed very keen to co-operate in a search
+of their ships. Too many little smuggling games of their own probably.
+
+I suggested to Harpool that he have a bath, a change of clothes--my togs
+were about his size--and a snack of early breakfast. Afterwards--since
+his horse was gone--I would drive him down in my trap. In the meantime
+he could ring up the Police Station and give any orders he thought
+desirable by 'phone. (This latter suggestion I made in full knowledge of
+the fact that the line must be down for over a mile. I had seen myself
+where uprooted trees were responsible for wide hiatuses.) If it was in
+any way possible without arousing his suspicions, it was my intention to
+detain Harpool until I was sure the _Mambare_ had sailed.
+
+The Chief fell in with my suggestion readily, and felt so much bucked up
+after a bath and a couple of whiskies-and-soda that he did not appear
+seriously upset when the telephone turned an irresponsive ear to him.
+Like the straightforward gentleman he was, he accepted at once my
+assurance that Ranga had not entered the house again, and took no hand
+in Rawdon's wild scrimmages, which carried him from cellar to garret
+with no other result than the brushing of a bit more of the bloom off
+"Honeymoon Bungalow" with the soles of his hobnailed boots. Madder than
+ever after his vain search, he surlily refused my invitation to remain
+for a cup of the coffee that his Chink friend of the night before was
+already preparing in the kitchen, and slogged off down the road,
+followed by three draggled hounds and two cursing helpers. I was a good
+deal cheered by the thought that it was unlikely that any of them would
+be getting through to town, without swimming, for another twelve hours
+at least.
+
+Before he left Rawdon turned over to the Chief the little piece of red
+rag he had been using to put the dogs on the scent with. It was at this
+time that Harpool told me of "Squid" Saunders' suggestion, and of the
+visit to the schooner in search of a clue. I did not tell him that I
+recognized the rag as one which Ranga had used to wrap his little Malay
+flute in, and that it had undoubtedly been left there the morning the
+big fellow helped carry Hartley Allen to the quarantine launch. It was
+interesting, however, to know that Ranga was absolutely guiltless of the
+outrage to which he had confessed. I thought I could just conceive how a
+well-guarded passion for the girl might have prompted that chivalrous
+attempt to shield her from suspicion; but why had Rona herself committed
+the ghastly crime?--and how? It was many months before I was to have an
+answer to those questions, and they came from the lips of the last
+person from whom I could have expected them.
+
+Direct and straightforward as ever, Harpool was visibly impressed by my
+suggestion that Ranga had probably remained hidden near the fall until
+the pursuit had passed, and after returning to the bungalow and finding
+it dark, had retraced his steps and adopted the desperate expedient of
+trying to escape the dogs by riding down the flume. That reminded him
+that they had found the gate of the intake closed when they first
+reached it, and that it had occurred to him at the time that the
+fugitive might have done this so that he could walk down the bottom of
+the flume without risk of being carried away by the water. This would
+account for the patch of scent the hounds found at that point. The Chief
+said that he was for pushing along the path by the flume, but that
+Rawdon scouted his theory, insisting that their man had jumped back into
+the water and gone on wading downstream. The hound-master had carried
+his point, but, to be on the safe side, they had ratcheted up the gate
+to its full aperture and turned a stream down the flume heavy enough, he
+was afraid, almost to carry the sugar mill into the sea. And that
+reminded me (though, obviously, I could not speak of it) that I had not
+heard the roar of the mill's machinery when I paused at the brow of the
+cliff. There was no doubt it was hung up for some reason. Was it
+possible that Ranga had made his escape after coasting right down into
+the crushing gear? But of course not. He would never have been able to
+get away unpursued, even if he had survived.
+
+I welcomed for two reasons Harpool's suggestion that we ride down the
+flume and investigate as soon as breakfast was over. It would keep him
+away from town until the _Mambare_ had sailed for one thing, and, for
+another, it would give me a chance to fathom the mystery that lay at the
+end of that trail of blood leading down into the rift in the cliff. It
+seemed probable to me that both Rona and Ranga, after the former had
+overtaken him--probably at the foot of the fall--had started down the
+flume on foot. Whether there would be any indications of what had
+befallen when the water overtook them remained to be seen.
+
+The gate was still wide open when we rode along beside the intake, but
+halfway down to the coast we met a man from the mill who said that he
+was going up to shut the flow off so that a break near the lower end
+could be repaired. The wires were down from the storm, he said, making
+it impossible to 'phone directions to the plantation office. The break
+was a bit of a mystery, he added. Flume opened right out. There were
+indications that some large animal--perhaps a bullock--had been carried
+down--probably washed in at the upper end while the stream was at flood.
+Funny part of it was, though, that there was no trace to be found of the
+bullock below the break. Must have been washed right on into the sea.
+
+Harpool pushed on eagerly after hearing that significant piece of news,
+and we reached the head of the first steep pitch at the top of the cliff
+some minutes before the water had ceased to flow. As I did not care to
+have the Chief discover the trail of blood leading down to the sea for a
+while yet, I proposed that we tie our horses here and walk down the top
+of the flume on a narrow board that evidently had been placed there for
+the use of workmen when repairs were necessary. It proved ticklish
+going--both on account of the incline and the elevation,--but nothing to
+trouble seriously a man with a sure foot and a steady head. Harpool, who
+was up first, led the way, I following closely.
+
+If the power of the flying bolt of water in the bottom of the flume had
+been impressive on the occasion of my first visit, it was a vast deal
+more so now, both on account of the greatly increased volume of flow and
+because of my certain knowledge that a human being--perhaps two of
+them--had gone down that chute, where I had been assured that a team of
+bullocks could not hold a man--and survived.
+
+The foot-wide board on which we were walking was nailed to the left side
+of the flume. The top of the right side was a rough line of unplaned
+two-inch pine planks. Harpool had only taken a step or two when he
+brought up short with an exclamation of surprise and horror. "Look at
+that top board on the other side!" he shouted; "raw, red meat all the
+way from here right out of sight round the bend at the bottom!"
+
+I looked, shuddered, shuffled my feet uncertainly, and brought my
+staring eyes back to the precarious footing. "Push on!" I implored
+quaveringly; "my head's beginning to swim as it is."
+
+The roar of violently falling water came to my ears as we rounded the
+bend at the lower end of the steep incline, and just ahead was the
+break. The whole right or seaward side of the flume had opened out and
+the flood was pouring to the rocks below in a spreading forty-feet-high
+cataract. The ghastly smear along the top ran on unbroken, right out to
+the end of a loose plank, which was kicking spasmodically under the
+impulse of the released stream of water shooting under it. The Chief,
+pointing to a ragged fragment of bloody cuticle, wedged in a joint of
+the line of boards on which we were standing, delivered himself of what
+I believe was his only approximately correct diagnosis of any feature of
+the whole affair.
+
+"The fact that piece of skin and toe-nail were torn off on this side of
+the flume directly opposite the bulge," he said, "would seem to indicate
+that the brake our man made of his right arm flung over the top plank of
+the other side must have finally brought him to a stop here. Then he
+must have doubled up crosswise of the flume, with his feet against the
+place where that skin is torn off and his back against the end of that
+plank that is sprung loose. When he straightened out that great rack of
+bone and muscle of his something had to give way, and it seems to have
+been the flume. Probably the force of the water, where his body
+deflected it against the side, was of some help; but it must have come
+jolly near to staving in his ribs where it drove into him at right
+angles."
+
+"Perhaps it did," I said. "We can't tell till we find him." I was not
+anxious to hurry up the search by any means; but I felt that it would be
+better to move on to a place where I could grow dizzy without the risk
+of plunging forty feet onto a pile of broken rocks. The Chief, with
+ready consideration, hastened forward, and my faintness passed quickly
+when I felt the solid floor of the crushing level of the mill beneath my
+feet.
+
+It appeared that they had knocked off early the previous evening for
+want of cane. At the time, the superintendent said, he thought the flume
+had been carried away by flood water. He had only evolved the bullock
+theory when he went out at daylight and found the blood and meat smeared
+along the planks. The bullock must have got wedged in finally, he
+thought, and the water had piled up behind it and sprung out the side.
+They had not found the carcass yet, but, as there was a very sharp slope
+down to an in-reaching neck of the cove, it was not impossible that the
+rush of water had rolled it right on into the sea. Neither Harpool nor
+myself thought it worth while to ask him if he had found any bullock's
+hair among the "meat."
+
+Going down through the silent mill to reach a lower level before
+doubling back to the foot of the flume, a weird sort of sputtery peeping
+caught my ear while we were traversing the boiling-room. Something
+vaguely familiar in the sound caused me to trace it to its source behind
+one of the big vats. The _virtuoso_ proved to be a lanky Australian
+sugar-boiler, whiling away the idle hour blowing across the holes in a
+queer little bamboo flute. One of the blacks had found it in the last
+run of the _bagasse_--the crushed cane--a while ago, he explained.
+Someone must have dropped it in the flume. Funny thing that it had been
+so slightly crushed in coming through the rollers. He gave it to me
+readily when I told him that I was a collector of primitive musical
+instruments. Said he had a much better one--made in Germany and all
+bound with brass--in his home in Maryborough. I took it on the off
+chance that I might some day be able to give it back to Ranga. I knew
+how greatly he was attached to it, and, since flutes like that were only
+made in one little pile-built village on the coast of Ambon, how hard a
+time he would have to replace it.
+
+I played up the superintendent's "washed-into-the-sea" theory for the
+Chief's benefit as long as I could, but finally he circled round and hit
+the double trail of footprints that led down to the end of the old pier.
+The idea that Ranga had ridden the flume alone was so firmly rooted in
+his mind however, that he agreed at once with my suggestion that the
+smaller prints must have been made by an idle boy from the hung-up mill,
+who had perhaps trailed the blood on his own account, in the hope of
+getting the bullock meat. As I myself had made a point of keeping on the
+grass to the side of the path, my trail of the night was not discovered.
+
+"The poor devil must have thrown himself over here and been finished by
+the sharks and 'gators," Harpool shouted up to me from where, at the
+foot of the steps of the old pier, he stood beside the black-filmed pool
+that had drained from Ranga's wounds as he steadied himself for a few
+moments before lurching over to the bow of the launch. The Chief also
+said something more about coming back with a boat next day and searching
+the beach for anything that might remain. I didn't follow him very
+closely, for, just at that moment, a trim clipper bow slid out past the
+end of the southern point. Knowing a certain old brass-cylindered
+spy-glass would be training landward from the bridge that followed, I
+opened and closed my arms swiftly in a surreptitious wave of farewell.
+Good old "Choppy" must have been standing very close to the
+whistle-cord, for his reply came instantly. The wind carried the toots
+that must have sprung from the heart of two woolly steam-puffs in the
+opposite direction, but I caught the message just the same. "All's
+well!" was what old "Choppy" signalled in answer to my wave. His
+"puff-puff" talk was a deal easier to understand than his English.
+
+I was no longer in Australia when the _Mambare_ returned from her maiden
+voyage to Singapore, so her skipper's report came to me in Paris by
+letter. He had put both of my friends ashore in Macassar, he said, safe,
+sound and comfortably heeled for "siller." He had become much attached
+to both of them in the course of the voyage, and couldn't thank me
+enough for putting him in the way of giving them a bit of a lift. He
+trusted I wouldn't fail to command him whenever another opportunity of
+the kind presented itself.
+
+The night that I sent Rona and Ranga off from the pier of the old sugar
+mill in the _Mambare's_ launch marked the beginning of one of the
+strangest and most picturesque friendships the Islands ever knew;
+picturesque in the striking background the strongest and most
+terribly-scarred man in the South Pacific made for the hauntingly
+appealing beauty of the most interesting woman, and strange--more than
+passing strange--in that there was none who could say that their
+relations were ever other than those of mistress and servant.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVIII
+
+                            THE MASTERPIECE
+
+
+The third day after the _Mambare_ sailed found me southbound for
+Sydney, with Paris as my ultimate objective. The thought that a
+striking--possibly a great--picture might be painted about the face I
+had already done came to me the first time I threw back the veiling rug
+and encountered poor Allen's terror-haunted eyes staring back into my
+own. In deciding to finish the work in Paris I missed whatever chance I
+might have had of doing something really worth while. That I did finally
+complete a picture that was striking, arresting--something to set the
+tongues of the art world wagging for many a day--was due to the effort I
+had already made--The Face.
+
+With small chance of being able to do anything for Hartley Allen--at
+that time believed to be permanently insane,--there was no reason for my
+remaining longer in Townsville. As nothing that the good Chief of Police
+had learned--or ever did learn, so far as I know--was calculated to
+connect me with his failure to run Ranga to earth, he, naturally made no
+objection to my leaving. The whole affair was a complete mystery to him.
+The disappearance of Rona was rated only as a minor mystery. The amusing
+part of it was that it never occurred to the dear man to connect the
+two. The last thing that I fixed my glass upon as my southbound boat
+steamed out of the harbour was a confused mass of wreckage, blurring
+darkly against the mangroves a few miles north of the town. It was all
+that the late storm had left of the grounded labour schooner, _Cora
+Andrews_.
+
+Missing the P. & O. boat by twenty-four hours at Melbourne--too late to
+overtake it by train to Adelaide,--I found the next sailing was a
+_Messageries Maritime_ steamer. Rather than wait a week for the next
+Orient liner, I booked for the French boat. This was all against my
+better judgment, especially in the light of the fact that I had work
+ahead. The one most effective influence I had known in keeping my use of
+absinthe at a point where it was not entirely beyond my control was the
+scathing if unspoken contempt of men of my own race for another of that
+race addicted to the insidious Latin habit. The nearest thing to a clean
+break-away I had ever made up to this time came after a stony-faced
+Cockney steward on a transatlantic Cunarder, who had put my
+whisky-drunken cabin-mate to bed one night as a matter of course,
+slammed the door with a snort when he surprised me pouring absinthe into
+cracked ice the following afternoon. In France, in French colonies, on
+French steamers--wherever the tri-colour flapped, in short--that
+restraining contempt was non-existent. There one found palliation,
+indulgence, even encouragement. That was the reason I had always become
+so abject a slave of the "Green Lady" during my sojourns in Paris, in
+Algiers, in Saigon, in Noumea. With no one to remind me of my shame, I
+forgot it, sinking ever lower and lower the while. This time, it had
+been my plan so to occupy myself with work on my picture in Paris that I
+should be able to keep my absinthe appetite just about where I had
+managed to hold it during the last six months in Kai and Australia. It
+is quite possible I might have kept to this program had I caught the P.
+& O. from Melbourne, or had the sense to wait for another British boat.
+As it was, five weeks of _dolce far niente_ were too much for me. By the
+time we reached Suez, I was seeing so green that the desert banks of the
+Canal looked like verdant lawns to me, and at Marseilles they took me
+straight from the ship to the hospital, pretty well all in mentally and
+physically. As my case presented some interesting complications of
+malaria and tropical anaemia, the doctors took a good deal of interest
+in it. Under the circumstances, I was dead lucky to get out of their
+hands at the end of a month.
+
+Thoroughly disgusted with the world in general and myself in particular
+on the day I was discharged from the hospital, it was a toss-up for a
+few hours as to whether I should jump out for the Islands by the first
+boat, or push on to Paris. That I finally plumped for the latter was due
+more to the fact that there was no east-bound sailing for a couple of
+days, than to any faith that remained in my ability to get on with the
+picture. Considering all this, it seems to me that the effort I finally
+did pull myself together for was fairly creditable in its results.
+
+It was The Face itself--after I had unpacked and set up the canvas in a
+studio that a former friend kindly placed at my disposal--that was
+responsible for finally jolting me into action. Even at the end of ten
+weeks, Hartley Allen's tortured features seemed as real to me as on the
+night I had finished transferring them from my burning brain to the
+canvas. It struck me then--as it seemed to strike the public later--as
+the nearest thing to flesh and blood ever flicked off the tip of an
+artist's brush; and I felt that I had only to daub in some kind of an
+_ensemble_ around it to have a work that would at least give Parisian
+art circles something to talk about for a while.
+
+It seemed to me that the most effective thing to do would be to make
+Allen, lashed to the schooner's wheel, the central and dominating figure
+on the canvas, and to have the other figures the creatures of his
+imagination--the phantoms conjured up by his reeling brain. These would
+include Bell, Rona, Ranga and a background of plague-stricken niggers.
+It was not to be--as we had planned the "Black-birder"--an attempt to
+portray some incident of the voyage. The "phantoms" were to be done in
+greys and blues, filmy and indistinct, to differentiate them from the
+solider flesh of the maniac tied to the wheel. It was not an uneffective
+conception, had I been up to carrying it out--which I wasn't.
+
+By a remarkable coincidence, as I have already mentioned, The Face was
+in exactly the right place to fit into the _ensemble_ I had planned.
+This was a good omen and I derived no little encouragement from it.
+Fearful of the effect that terror-stricken gaze might have upon my
+models, I stuck an opaque square of paper over the distorted features,
+with the intention of leaving it there until the rest of the picture was
+finished. This was a wise precaution, as the sequel proved.
+
+The model whom I chanced to secure to pose for Allen's figure was an
+especially fortunate choice. He had recently finished spending six or
+eight hours a day lashed to a hollow canvas cross in connection with a
+mural decoration at some cathedral--Sacré Coeur, I believe it was,--so
+he stood up rather well under the strain being triced to the property
+steering-gear I had contrived to borrow from the _Folies-Bergère_, where
+the "marine" _revue_ in which it had figured was just over. Considering
+the fact that I had never done anything but seascapes and was notably
+weak in anatomy, my work on this figure was far from being as bad as
+might have been expected. It was not seriously out of drawing, and, even
+with The Face covered up, one was conscious of an unmistakable
+suggestion of agony in the tensely-strained limbs and back-drawn torso.
+From the artistic side, I would undoubtedly have done better to have
+trimmed down my canvas and limited the picture to this single figure.
+This, however, never occurred to me until a long time afterwards. At the
+moment, my mind was quite incapable of running away from the track on
+which I had started it.
+
+Although I knew that one of the things that must have been in
+Hartley Allen's mind was Bell's face, as he had described it to
+me--pain-twisted, with the lower lip bitten clean through, and a bar of
+light from the cracked binnacle slashing across it,--I could not bring
+myself to attempt to dramatize the sufferings of my friend. (Indeed,
+even at that time I had a guilty feeling that I was not doing the decent
+thing in using that of Allen in a picture to be exhibited to the
+public.) All that I did in Bell's case, therefore, was a back view of a
+huddled figure, sitting on the rail of the cockpit, with a half-empty
+whisky bottle rolling on the deck behind. It was not destined to draw
+much attention or comment one way or the other, for which I was duly
+thankful.
+
+Ranga, as a consequence of being unable to find a model that would do
+him justice, I finally omitted. Rona came near to elimination for a
+similar reason, but in her case fortune, in the end, was more kind. It
+may be remembered that there was a so-called Hindu dancer leading the
+Oriental ballets at the _Comique_ about this time. She was really an
+Eurasian half-caste--the daughter of a British "Tommy" and a Mahratta
+girl, born in Poona. With little of Rona's beauty of face and
+winsomeness of manner, she was still possessed of the same flaming
+temperament and a figure that might have been poured from the same
+mould. It was the lithe, sinewy, serpentine shape of her that caught my
+eye when I chanced to drop in at the _Comique_ for a matinée of
+_Marouf_, and (as she was still a few strokes short of the crest of the
+wave of popularity on which she rode for the next season or two), I had
+little difficulty in persuading her to give me a few sittings. She
+insisted she was doing it for art's sake, but it was really vanity that
+brought her into line. Also, as transpired shortly, she had a very sharp
+weather eye for the main chance. In any event, the picture proved both
+her immediate making and her ultimate undoing. The advertising she got
+out of the fact that her living, breathing likeness had been painted
+into the most talked-about picture at the spring _Salon_ of the _Société
+Nationale des Beaux-Arts_ doubled and trebled her salary several times
+in the course of the next year. But it was also a reproduction of that
+same picture in a Vienna art journal that was directly responsible for
+luring to Paris the young Serbian ex-prince who chopped the girl to
+pieces with a curved Arabian scimitar--a part of her dancing toggery--as
+she was dressing to go on at a gala night of _Aïda_.
+
+It had been my original intention to paint Rona issuing from the
+companionway, just as Allen had seen her rush out on the morning Bell
+died. This, however, was far from meeting with the approval of Keeora
+(that was what she called herself at the time; it was only in her
+hey-day that she was known as Kismeta), who insisted upon breaking in
+full length or not at all. I was so sodden with absinthe by this time,
+so sick of the whole job, so anxious to get quit of it for good, that I
+raised no objections. The flighty thing proposed a sort of near-aerial
+posture on the deck-house that was something like a cross between the
+wing-footed Mercury and one of Puck's getaways in Midsummer Night's
+Dream. Rather than lose the girl outright, I let her have her own way.
+Steadied by two or three convenient guy-wires and puffing contentedly at
+one of my hemp-doped cigarettes, she held her painful pose with a
+fortitude truly Oriental. I can see yet the queer little heart-shaped
+pucker that dented the muscle-knotted calf of her leg when she swung up
+to the tips of her toes.
+
+I fancy it must have been a certain appeal the audacious minx made to my
+physical senses that prodded on my flagging energies. Everything that
+was left in me I devoted to making her absurd conception effective on
+its own account. To make it so as an integral part of the picture was,
+of course, out of the question. It is still a matter of a good deal of
+wonder to me that I succeeded as well as I did. The pirouetting figure
+on the _Cora's_ deck-house might just as well have symbolized _Peter
+Pan_, or _The Spirit of Spring_, as _Rona Rampant_; but the fact
+remained that it was exceedingly pleasing to the eye. In this connection
+I thought an American tourist--from somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon
+Line by his accent--expressed himself rather well. I overheard the
+remark on my first and only visit to the _Salon_. "If that little filly
+doan leave off kickin' up so neah them buck niggahs," he drawled,
+"things ah suah fixin' fo' a lynchin' pa'ty. By cracky, if she doan look
+good enuf to eat!"
+
+It was "them big buck niggahs" that were responsible for bringing my
+labours to a sudden end. I had managed to round up a half-dozen hulking
+Senegambians from the docks at Havre to pose for my plague-stricken
+Solomon Islanders, and for the first two or three days things went very
+well. I was striving for a sort of Doré-esque effect, by painting a
+tangled bunch of blacks writhing in the half-light of the shadowed waist
+of the schooner. The lazy brutes found lolling round on the studio floor
+a deal more congenial work than humping cotton bales, and I was getting
+on very encouragingly considering my wretched condition, when one of the
+prying rascals, taking advantage of a moment when my back was turned,
+turned down a corner of the patch that hid the face of the man lashed to
+the wheel. What damage was wrought was inflicted on such flimsy
+furniture as chanced to be in a direct line of flight from the "models'
+throne" to the door. Fortunately, the canvas was well to one side. The
+Senegalese, it seems, have a raw, red terror of the "Evil Eye."
+
+That little episode brought to an end my work with models. I simply
+blocked in my plague-stricken blacks in a rough sort of way and let it
+go at that. The effect was hardly as crude as one would think. The
+remark of the Southern gentleman I have quoted proved that a man not
+unfamiliar with niggers could at least distinguish of what the tangle in
+the waist was intended to be made up.
+
+I have definite recollection of only one further occasion on which I
+tried to work. The interval in which I had anything approximating
+command of my normal faculties had dwindled to a half-hour or so in the
+afternoon, and I quickly found that I was utterly unable to concentrate
+my mind sufficiently for connected effort even then. On the occasion I
+have mentioned, I knocked off dead after discovering that I was trying
+to decorate Keeora's brow with the wreath of maiden's hair fern that had
+crowned the aviating "Green Lady" in her flight of the night before. I
+chucked in my hand complete after that, and had the whole monkey-show
+packed off to the Selection Committee. As might have been expected, the
+picture nearly caused a riot in that temperamental bunch of "pickers,"
+but, in the end, The Face won the day with them, just as it did with the
+public.
+
+Of the furore created by "_Hell's Hatches_" in the _Salon_ it will
+hardly be necessary for me to write. Most of the excitement it stirred
+up was traceable to the haunting horror of the face of the wretch tied
+to the wheel; the rest was due to its name, which only suggested itself
+to me at the last moment. Perhaps the fact that everyone was baffled
+from the outset in trying to discover the _motif_ of the bizarre thing
+also contributed to the impulse of the whirlpool of morbid curiosity
+with which it was engulfed. And who could blame them for failing to
+discover any connection between a tied-up maniac, a hunched-up drunkard,
+a kicking-up dancer and a bunch of tangled-up niggers? The avalanche of
+surmises would have been highly diverting had not my sense of humour
+already fallen a victim to the apathy that was rapidly settling upon my
+mind and body.
+
+My outstanding recollection of the whole affair is of a highly effective
+by-play staged by that keen little publicist, Keeora, who had become a
+bit piqued over the slowness of the Press to broadcast the identity of
+the lady dancing on the deck-house. Utterly indifferent, I had avoided
+the _Grand Palais_ not only on the opening day of the _Salon_, but also
+during the week that followed, when it was reported that the _Avenue
+Alexander III_ was at times blocked with the throngs striving to get
+within sight of the most intriguing picture shown in years. My telephone
+was disconnected; telegrams and letters by the stacks lay unopened; a
+pile of newspapers were unread. Growing more sullen and sodden day by
+day, I had eyes for nothing but the green bottle at my elbow and the
+constantly replenished glass of cracked ice by its side. All the rest of
+the world was one soft, verdant tunnel--nothing else. I had been
+drinking steadily for days, afraid to face the reaction that must
+inevitably follow the first break in the continuity of the flow of the
+life-saving trickle of green.
+
+In a way, I suppose, it is Keeora I have to thank for the fact that,
+when I finally left my room in the _Continental_, it was to be headed
+for the _Grand Palais_ instead of to _La Morgue_. I am quite convinced
+that nothing short of the violent eruption of hysteria that soulful lady
+brought off outside my door would have induced me to open it, and
+probably no one else in Paris could have been equal to just that kind of
+an outburst. In passionate French-Cockney, Keeora told how, after
+failing for days to reach me by 'phone and telegraph, she had at last
+come in person to bear me to the _Salon_ to share with her our common
+triumph. That didn't move me greatly, but when she swore that she was
+going to stay until she "jolly well croaked, G'bly'me," unless I let her
+in, something inside of my head snapped and I gave way. (I always was
+like that with hysterical women.) When I opened the door I discovered
+that she was dressed in some Mogul princess sort of a rigout, and
+accompanied by an Italian _Marchesa_ and two or three lesser satellites.
+Between them and my valet they got me dressed and down to a waiting
+carriage.
+
+To get away from the mob at the main entrance, they took me around to
+the _Avenue d'Antin_ side of the _Grand Palais_, where Keeora pointed
+out with glee that the _Salon_ of the _Société des Artistes Français_,
+which had opened a week or two previous to that of the _Beaux-Arts_
+outfit, was almost deserted. "_Et tout, mon cher Monseer W'itney, por
+raison de--de la grand success de 'Aykootillys don fur.'_"
+
+"And what might they be?" I asked dully, rather fancying some new sort
+of epidemic had broken out.
+
+"Madame means to say '_Ecoutilles d'Enfer_,'" began the _Marchesa_
+politely; "eet--eet ees--"
+
+"Eat your bloomin' 'at!" cut in the lady impatiently, indignant that
+anyone could be so stupid as to have her Parisian interpreted to him.
+"Don't you twig me, old cock? That's wot them French Jo'nnys calls
+'Ell's 'Atches."
+
+The picture was extremely well hung, both for position and light; though
+whether this had come about as a consequence of a reshuffle after it had
+turned out to be the main drawing card, I did not learn. There was a
+roped-off area in front of it, and through this a number of perspiring
+attendants were feeding the crowd, working hard with tongue and hand to
+keep the chattering line in motion. Keeora called my attention to a
+woman who had fainted and was being carried out on a stretcher. "Bowls
+'em over just like that right along," she giggled. "Six of 'em squealed
+and keeled back just w'ile I was 'angin' on 'ere yustidy. But it ain't
+_me_ wot gets 'em," she hastened to explain; "it's that crazy bloke at
+the w'eel, wiv 'is bloomin' eyes borin' right through your chest an'
+raspin' up an' down your spine. Don't see wot you wanted to put _'im_ in
+for any'ow."
+
+At a word from Keeora's sedulous satellites, the attendants opened up a
+line through the mob and cleared a space in front of the picture. Then,
+assuring herself with a critically comprehensive glance that the setting
+was all correct, she rushed in, threw her arms around my neck, kissed me
+smackingly on both cheeks, French-fashion, and began declaiming in her
+best Parisio-Whitechapel how I had earned her undying gratitude and
+affection (_mon amours eternel_) in making her the central figure in the
+greatest work of art of modern times. It was all extremely well
+done--from Keeora's standpoint, that is. She had a solid phalanx of
+reporters massed in the background, as a consequence of which, after the
+next morning, there was no chance for anyone to remain longer in
+ignorance of the fact that the nymph hot-footing around the coamings of
+"Hell's Hatches" was Keeora of the _Comique_. The following Saturday the
+management came round voluntarily to her hotel with a new contract worth
+several thousand francs a week to their rising _danseuse orientale_.
+
+For myself, groggy in head and knees as I was, the experience was rather
+trying. Breaking away from her stranglehold at the first opportunity, I
+told Keeora to keep her "eternel amours" for those who wanted them, and
+bolted. There was some pretence at pursuit, but, with the real magnet
+drawing in the other direction, I finally managed to elbow clear.
+Hailing a cab in the _Champs-Elysées_, I returned to my hotel.
+
+But the interruption, as I have said, was a fortunate one. It checked my
+downward slide dangerously near the point where a crash was due. I was
+far from being out of the woods yet, but the interval of comparative
+lucidity had given me enough courage to try to pull up. Unloading all
+the firearms I had about my suite and giving them to my man, I told him
+to go away for the night and not to return until noon of the following
+day. Then, as restrainedly as I could, I drank during the first three or
+four hours of the evening, before allowing myself to go to sleep. The
+crisis--the dread reaction I had feared to face--I knew would come on
+awakening in the morning. It arrived on schedule--two hours of teetering
+on the edge of hell and cursing myself for putting the guns beyond my
+reach. Even with the _absintheteur's notorious_ dread of cold steel, I
+fingered Hartley Allen's Portuguese throwing-knife a long time before
+mustering up the courage to drop it out of the street window. That gave
+me a new idea, and I held lengthy debate with myself about following the
+knife to the pavement. If I had been on the fourth floor instead of the
+second, I might have tried it. As it was, fifteen feet to a glass
+marquee didn't look good enough. But at last I won through--just. It was
+a sorry looking figure that shivered back at me from the mirror after I
+had got up my nerve to ring for a pot of black coffee at seven; but I
+was off the toboggan, at any rate, with my face set unflinchingly toward
+the one place in the world where I felt there was at least a fighting
+chance for me to pull up again. I had arrived at the end of the day of
+which I had dreamed so long--"My Day," I had called it. Paris had come
+fawning to my feet--and brought me Dead Sea Fruit. I was going back to
+work out my own salvation in the Islands.
+
+I had a rather trying time of it, getting packed up and away on such
+short notice; but I simply did what I could and let the rest go. Putting
+Paris behind me was the thing. It took all that was in me to do it, but
+I caught the Brindisi Express from the P.L.M. station that night.
+
+My last act before leaving the hotel was to sign a paper brought there
+by a well-known art dealer, with whom I had talked by 'phone earlier in
+the day. It authorized him to sell to the highest bidder a painting in
+oil known by the name of "Hell's Hatches," delivery to be made
+immediately after the closing of the spring _Salon_ of the _Société
+Nationale des Beaux-Arts_. It also provided that he should receive a
+liberal commission for his services. It must have been something like a
+month later that he collected ten per cent. on three hundred thousand
+_francs_ less about five hundred paid some second-rate artist for
+executing a slight alteration in one of the figures. It was a petty
+Sultan from Morocco (high card with Keeora at the moment) to whom the
+picture was knocked down after a spirited run of bidding with an Irish
+distiller and a Chicago soap-maker. The buyer's only condition was that
+the man lashed to the wheel should be changed to a _burnoused_ Arab.
+That would tend to give the picture an atmosphere more in keeping with
+his desert palace, he said; also, he wanted the _efrangi's_ face covered
+up. The eyes made him jumpy.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIX
+
+                               AFTER ALL
+
+
+I had not planned by what route I should go to the South Seas, and it
+was only because an Orient-Pacific liner chanced to be the most
+convenient connection at Brindisi that I went by Australia instead of by
+India and Singapore. I was rather glad, on the whole, that I was going
+to have an opportunity to learn something at first-hand of Hartley
+Allen--or, Sir Hartley, as he had become since I left Australia. That
+much I had been able to gather from an item I had read in _The Times_
+shortly after my arrival in Paris. This stated that Sir James Allen,
+Bart., Agent in London for New South Wales, had just died of pneumonia.
+Being without male issue, it was understood that the title would pass to
+his younger brother, formerly a well-known racing man, and more recently
+in the public eye through his heroic action in navigating a labour
+schooner full of plague-stricken blacks through the Great Barrier Reef
+to Queensland.
+
+Nothing was said in the local item of the outrage aboard the _Cora
+Andrews_, but the day following a dispatch from Sydney stated that Sir
+Hartley Allen was recovering his health and strength at a sanitarium in
+the interior, from which, however, it was not expected that he would be
+in a condition to be discharged for several months. The shock to his
+nervous system from the mysterious attack upon him in Townsville three
+months previously had been so great that only time could obliterate the
+traces of it. He had not yet been allowed to see any of his old friends,
+but the correspondent affirmed on good authority that Sir Hartley's
+reason, so long despaired of, had been fully regained.
+
+From the fact that the attack was still spoken of as "mysterious," I
+took it that Allen, for some reason of his own, had refrained from
+revealing the identity of the person who had left him to die lashed to
+the wheel of the _Cora_. What that reason might be, was one of the
+things I hoped to learn when I should see him in Australia.
+
+Hartley Allen was still in a sanitarium in the Blue Mountains, I learned
+on my arrival in Sydney, but of late there had been little news of him.
+He was believed to be getting stronger, slowly but surely, though no
+hope was held out that he would appear in the saddle again for at least
+another season. It was unlikely that I would be permitted to see him,
+but there would be no harm in trying. I should, of course, communicate
+with his physicians, not with Allen himself.
+
+By a lucky chance, in wiring the head of the institution where Allen was
+under treatment, I stated that I was a former friend of his from the
+Islands. A reply arrived the same day, telling me to come on at my
+earliest convenience. The eminent nerve specialist in charge of the case
+drove down to meet me at the train. It was very fortunate indeed, he
+said, that I had mentioned in my telegram that I had known Sir Hartley
+during his residence in Melanesia. He had failed, very stupidly, to
+recognize my name as that of the famous artist who was about to paint
+Sir Hartley's picture when the attack upon him occurred. As a
+consequence, he was about to wire a refusal to my application, when he
+recalled that news from the Islands was the one thing in which his
+patient had shown any great interest. Accordingly, he had asked Sir
+Hartley himself if he cared to see a certain Roger Whitney, lately
+arrived in Sydney. The eager interest manifested by his patient was the
+most encouraging symptom the latter had shown since his mind had
+cleared. If I would carefully refrain from introducing any subject
+calculated to excite Sir Hartley nervously, he was confident that my
+visit would be productive of nothing but good. It was even possible,
+should it prove convenient to me, that he would want me to remain for
+several days. Sir Hartley was quite sound in brain and body. What he
+needed was increased vigour of both, and to this end he would have to
+develop a greater interest in living than he had yet shown. It was just
+possible there was something on his mind....
+
+After leaving my coat and bag in the reception-room, the doctor led me
+out across a bright solarium. We would find Sir Hartley out of doors, he
+said, probably playing polo. He seemed to hate the very thought of
+having a roof over him, even to sleep under. It was a strange sight that
+met my eyes as we came round the corner of the veranda. In the shade of
+a grove of blue-gums and stringy-barks a wooden horse had been erected,
+saddled with a light pigskin, and provided with snaffle and curb reins
+running back from the angling bit of board that served as "head."
+Astride the saddle, in the famous short-stirruped "Slant" Allen seat,
+booted, spurred, and in immaculate whites, slashing smartly at
+grass-stained and dented bamboo-root balls that were alternately tossed
+in and chivied by a pair of bare-footed youngsters, was a familiar
+figure. Save for the white hair (which I had already seen) and the
+absence of the former coat of tan, he did not, from a distance, appear
+greatly changed. It was not until his eyes met mine at close range that
+I was conscious of the weary listlessness which, like a bed of ashes,
+smothered the coals of his old fire.
+
+Allen had just poked away the first of two successively thrown balls in
+a sweet-running dribble, and sliced off the other in a sharp-angling
+"belly cross," when he raised his eyes and caught sight of the doctor
+and me coming down the steps. Swinging a bit uncertainly out of the
+saddle, he came toddling in a swaying childlike trot across the grass.
+His grip was firmer than I had expected, and the thought flashed through
+my mind that this was the very first time I had ever shaken hands with
+him.
+
+"I've been wondering when you were going to turn up, Whitney," he
+exclaimed eagerly. "There's something I've been waiting to talk to you
+about." He spoke in generalities while the doctor lingered, saying that
+he had given up his old idea of returning to the Islands, and that,
+instead, he was hoping to get away before long to a back-blocks station
+he owned and ride the boundaries for a year or two. But when the
+specialist, evidently assured that his experiment was getting under way
+properly, quietly excused himself, Allen led me over to the wooden horse
+and launched at once into a subject which had doubtless occupied his
+mind for many days. From ancient habit he leaned, as he spoke, now on
+the hollow pigskin of his "pony," now on the flexible Malacca handle of
+his polo mallet.
+
+"You're the only man in the world I can talk to about this now,
+Whitney," he said with a queer new quaver of weakness in his voice. "I
+suppose that's because you're the only person I ever talked to about
+it--before. I take it, Whitney, that you had no great difficulty in
+making up your mind as to who was responsible for--for my night of
+contemplation on the _Cora_?"
+
+"Well," I began evasively, "I had such grave doubts about Ranga's guilt
+that I went to some little trouble to get him away. Mostly old 'Choppy'
+Tancred's work, though."
+
+"Good old 'Choppy'!" said Allen with an appreciative grin; "on hand at
+the right time as usual." Then, with serious interest: "But the
+girl--how did she manage to get clear?"
+
+"Just turned up and helped herself to a place in the launch I was
+sending Ranga off in," I replied, a bit worried at my failure to lead
+the conversation away from subjects "calculated to excite Sir Hartley
+nervously."
+
+"And you were also convinced of _her_ innocence, I suppose," he said,
+eyeing me with a strange smile across the leather-bound handle of his
+mallet.
+
+"On the contrary," I answered; "I knew that she was guilty. I had taken
+your throwing-knife away from her the same night. I knew that Ranga was
+quite innocent, even though the police, through a silly ball-up, tracked
+him down with their dogs."
+
+"Then why did you let the girl go?" he pressed.
+
+"Because I thought I knew Rona well enough," I replied evenly, "to feel
+sure that she wouldn't have done--what she did, unless she was convinced
+in her own mind that she had a good reason for it." It was a stiff jolt
+for a sick man, that; yet, for the life of me, I couldn't have made an
+evasive answer.
+
+But there was a smile of untold relief on Allen's face as he leaned over
+and laid his hand on my arm. "You were right, Whitney," he said in a
+voice that trembled with the depth of its fervour. "You were right. She
+_did_ have good reason. I ought to have seen it all along."
+
+"I don't quite understand," I said, greatly puzzled. "Do you mean that
+all you told me about your--your having nothing to do with Bell's death
+was not true?"
+
+"Not at all," he replied, with unexpected vigour. "Everything that I
+told you that afternoon at the _Australia_ was true--according to my
+understanding of the moment, I mean. But later my understanding
+broadened a bit, you must know. A chap doesn't spend a night tied up
+alone with the spirits of three or four white men, and Gawd knows how
+many blacks, without coming to comprehend some things that have eluded
+him before. I didn't go all the way off my chump till well along toward
+morning, you see; and I was broadening my understanding all the time."
+
+"I was never able to make out," I remarked somewhat irrelevantly, "how
+the girl managed to get the best of you the way she did."
+
+"Oh, that," he said lightly, in a voice that indicated he rated it as a
+negligible incidental to the "broader understanding" that had come to
+him as a consequence. "Well, I suppose you have a right to know if you
+are interested in that phase of the affair. I simply got tired of
+holding out against the girl, that was all. Her relentlessness wore me
+down. It was not long after our return to Townsville that I realized
+that her picture stunt was only a blind. She counted on it to get me
+away to the schooner, where she could finish me off on the scene of--of
+my offence. I won't need to tell you that hit me jolly hard. Training
+out Yusuf and making a clean-up for Doc Oakes' mission with him helped
+while it lasted; but I gave up as soon as that was over and there was
+nothing to do but wait and brood. Since I knew she'd have her way in the
+end, I told myself that the sooner it was over the better. That was the
+reason I finally consented to go off to the schooner with her when she
+waylaid me on the north road, the day after I paid you my last visit.
+
+"She must have planned the whole thing in advance for the place at which
+she intercepted me was at the point where the road ran nearest to the
+wreck of the _Cora_. As it was low tide, we were able to walk on the
+sand to within fifty yards of the heeling hulk. Careless of consequences
+as I was, I readily enough consented to her suggestion that I wade the
+remainder of the way, carrying her in my arms. For the rest, it was more
+or less of repetition of her little coup at Kai. She pinched the knife
+from my belt while I was wading out with her, keeping it carefully out
+of sight while we were walking round the deck of the schooner. I missed
+it presently, but thought it had fallen from its sheath while I was
+clambering over the side. Leaning over to look for the knife in the
+water, I felt the point of it on my neck. Same old place--just over the
+jugular. Trick she learned from the Malays.
+
+"I told her to hurry up and get the job over. She coolly replied that
+this wasn't the place she had had in mind for it, and would I mind
+coming aft to the cockpit? Confident that she knew how to do the thing
+with decency and dispatch, and heartily glad to get life's fitful dream
+over anyhow, I went. Just like a lamb to the slaughter, Whitney. It
+sounds foolish, but I assure you that's just the way it happened. The
+idea was so fixed in my mind that a plain every-day throat-cutting was
+all she was figuring on, that I let her get three or four hitches of the
+log-line around my shoulders before it occurred to me that she might
+have a few refinements in pickle. I started to put up a fight at that,
+trying to force her to use the knife straightaway. Do you think she
+would do it? No fear. She wouldn't deviate from her set program by a
+hair. Rather than risk having the joint jolted into my jugular so that I
+would bleed to death quickly and painlessly, she dropped the knife and
+used both hands on the log-line. We had a hell of a tussle, Whitney, but
+she wore me down. Those three or four well-thrown hitches she had to
+start with were too much of a handicap.
+
+"When she finally had me bound fast, she sat down on the rail of the
+cockpit to recover her breath. I tried to argue with her, pointing out
+the certainty that I would be seen and rescued in the morning if she
+left me as I was; whereas, if she would cut my throat then and there, it
+would finish things for good and all. I also reminded her that dead men
+tell no tales; that she would be much less likely to get into trouble
+herself if there was no one to bear witness against her. (Fancy a man
+having to rack his brain for arguments like that, just to get his throat
+cut, Whitney.) The girl admitted the soundness of my contentions, but
+declared she was willing to run all the extra risk for the sake of
+cleaning up the job 'good an' propa.' (One of Bell's expressions, that,
+wasn't it?)
+
+"Then--I must have begun losing my nerve a bit, I think--I told her I
+had never yet been able to twig why she had a grudge against me at all;
+said I'd only done for Bell what I'd be jolly glad to have another man
+do for me under similar circumstances, and probably a lot more twaddle
+along the same line. She listened for a while, as though she rather
+enjoyed hearing me rattle on in that vein. Then she got up and
+disappeared down the half-open companionway. When she came back on deck
+she had an empty whisky bottle in her hand, probably one of a stack left
+in my cabin. This, with some effort on her part and much to my further
+discomfort, she wriggled under the lashings about my chest until she
+seemed satisfied it was held securely. Then, binding a filthy gag of
+oakum in my mouth, she stood off and looked me over critically. 'I
+the-enk you will twe-ig ver-ee much pu-retty soon, Mista "Slan',"' she
+finally chirruped with a knowing nod of her head. Without once looking
+back, she stepped to the side, jumped over, and waded ashore. I never
+saw her again--in the flesh, I mean. It took a deal of squirming to
+shake that bottle out. The satisfaction of hearing it break when it hit
+the deck was the only comforting thing that happened in the whole
+night."
+
+"And you say that you understand why she did it?--that you believe she
+was justified?" I exclaimed incredulously, shuddering at the horror of a
+cold-blooded cruelty that even Allen's deliberately matter-of-fact
+recital could not obscure.
+
+"Most assuredly," he replied with an enigmatic smile. "I'm just a bit
+surprised that you don't see it yourself, Whitney. It seems to me that a
+chap like you ought not to miss a point like that. But then, you haven't
+had a night alone on the _Cora Andrews_ to broaden your understanding
+like I have."
+
+"What was it?" I asked bluntly, completely mystified and not a little
+awed.
+
+"Just this," he answered, growing suddenly serious. "That bottle I
+shoved along to Bell the night he died had been partly emptied--by me,
+of course. Well, the first thought that entered the girl's head, when
+she came across it on the deck near his body, was that he had been
+drinking from it. In spite of all my assurances to the contrary, it
+seems that she was never able to rid her mind of that idea. That was--"
+
+"But couldn't she see _why_ you offered him the whisky?" I interrupted.
+"What if he did drink some of it? She must have known it was the one
+thing that would have saved his life."
+
+"Ah, that is just where you miss the point, Whitney," he cried. "And
+that was just where I always missed it until--she showed me the way to a
+broader understanding. Don't you see that Rona realized that keeping
+away from whisky, as he had sworn he would, had come to mean more to
+Bell than even a new lease on life? Well, she did. But, even so, one
+would hardly have expected her to fall in with the idea. And yet, don't
+her actions prove that she even did that? Whitney, I've never come
+across anything comparable to the straight physical passion of those two
+for each other. And, if anything, hers was the hotter flame of the two.
+There must have been something of the impetuousness of her rages in her
+loving,--for.... Well, the most maddening of all the thoughts I tried so
+long to stifle in Kai was the one that those frequent welts and
+abrasions appearing on Bell's neck and cheeks and arms were not from the
+bites of no-nos or mosquitoes. And yet, loving his body like that, she
+loved his soul enough more to be willing to give up the body that the
+soul might pass in peace. It was because she thought I had intervened to
+destroy that peace of soul, Whitney, that she--well, the effect of it
+was to pave the way to my broader understanding."
+
+
+                                THE END
+
+
+              WOODS & SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, LONDON, N. 1.
+
+
+
+
+                           Transcriber Notes:
+
+Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_.
+
+Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.
+
+Throughout the document, the [oe] ligature was replaced with "oe".
+
+Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of
+the speakers. Those words were retained as-is.
+
+Errors in punctuation and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected
+unless otherwise noted.
+
+On page 34, "dispayed" was replaced with "displayed".
+
+On page 67, "skin-kicking" was replaced with "shin-kicking".
+
+On page 74, an apostrophe was added in 'Slan'.
+
+On page 102, "Ulupua" was replaced with "Utupua".
+
+On page 159, a period was added after "he was going through".
+
+On page 176, "its" was replaced with "it's".
+
+On page 188, a quotation mark was added before "On the off chance".
+
+On page 203, "at the botton" was replaced with "at the bottom".
+
+On page 205, "twentyfive" was replaced with "twenty-five".
+
+On page 233, "back of the easel" was replaced with "back off the easel".
+
+On page 238, "in no may" was replaced with "in no way".
+
+On page 241, "ejaculted" was replaced with "ejaculated".
+
+On page 246, "Marbare" was replaced with "Mambare".
+
+On page 282, "firsthand" was replaced with "first-hand".
+
+On page 285, "listnessness" was replaced with "listlessness".
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Hell's Hatches, by Lewis Ransome Freeman
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44632 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44632 ***</div>
+
+<h1>HELL&#39;S HATCHES</h1>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="center">NEW FICTION</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">THE CURTAIN</span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>By Alexander Macfarlan</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="i0">THE SYRENS</span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>By Dot Allan</i></span>
+<br />
+<span class="i0">OLD MAN&#39;S YOUTH</span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>By William de Morgan</i></span>
+<br />
+<span class="i0">THE PURPLE HEIGHTS</span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>By M. C. Oemler</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="i0">HAGAR&#39;S HOARD</span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>By George Kibbe Turner</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="i0">THE VILLA OF THE PEACOCK</span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>By Richard Dehan</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="i0">IN CHANCERY</span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>By John Galsworthy</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="i0">SNOW OVER ELDEN</span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>By Thomas Moult</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="i0">EUDOCIA</span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>By Eden Phillpotts</i></span>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="cnobmargin">LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN</p>
+<p class="cnotmargin">21, Bedford Street, W.C. 2</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<div class="image-center">
+<img src="images/illo_003.jpg" width="423" height="700"
+alt="HELL'S HATCHES
+
+BY
+LEWIS R. FREEMAN
+Author of &quot;In the Tracks of the Trades,&quot; etc.
+
+[Illustration: 1921]
+
+LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN"
+title="HELL'S HATCHES
+
+BY
+LEWIS R. FREEMAN
+Author of &quot;In the Tracks of the Trades,&quot; etc.
+
+[Illustration: 1921]
+
+LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN"/>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="center">CONTENTS</p>
+
+<p>CHAPTER <span class="ralign">PAGE</span></p>
+
+<p>I <span class="smcap">A Reputation Questioned</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page1">1</a></span></p>
+
+<p>II <span class="smcap">Hard-Bit Derelicts</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page10">10</a></span></p>
+
+<p>III <span class="smcap">The Girl Herself</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page25">25</a></span></p>
+
+<p>IV <span class="smcap">&quot;Slant&quot; Allen Retires Again</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page38">38</a></span></p>
+
+<p>V <span class="smcap">A Ship of Death</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page50">50</a></span></p>
+
+<p>VI <span class="smcap">Compulsory Volunteering</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page65">65</a></span></p>
+
+<p>VII <span class="smcap">Rona Comes Aboard</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page80">80</a></span></p>
+
+<p>VIII <span class="smcap">I Leave the Island</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page93">93</a></span></p>
+
+<p>IX <span class="smcap">A Grim Tale of the Sea</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page106">106</a></span></p>
+
+<p>X <span class="smcap">Art and Suspense</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page124">124</a></span></p>
+
+<p>XI <span class="smcap">A Hero&#39;s Homecoming</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page142">142</a></span></p>
+
+<p>XII <span class="smcap">A Bad Man&#39;s Plea</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page180">180</a></span></p>
+
+<p>XIII <span class="smcap">The Scene of the Final Drama</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page193">193</a></span></p>
+
+<p>XIV <span class="smcap">Hell&#39;s Hatches Off</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page206">206</a></span></p>
+
+<p>XV <span class="smcap">The Face</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page220">220</a></span></p>
+
+<p>XVI <span class="smcap">A Sudden Visitor</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page231">231</a></span></p>
+
+<p>XVII <span class="smcap">Down the Flume</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page255">255</a></span></p>
+
+<p>XVIII <span class="smcap">The Masterpiece</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page268">268</a></span></p>
+
+<p>XIX <span class="smcap">After All</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page282">282</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1" id="page1"></a>[pg&nbsp;1]</span></p>
+
+<h1>HELL&#39;S HATCHES</h1>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I<br />
+<small>A REPUTATION QUESTIONED</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">&quot;Slant&quot; Allen</span> and I, between us, had been
+monopolizing a good share of the feature space
+in the Queensland and New South Wales papers
+for a week or more&mdash;he as &quot;the Hero-Ticket-of-Leave-Man&quot;
+and I as &quot;the gifted Franco-American painter
+whose brilliant South Sea marines have taken the Australian
+art world by storm&quot;&mdash;and now that it was definitely
+reported that he had left Brisbane on his way
+to connect with the reception the boyhood home from
+which he had been shipped in disgrace five years before
+had prepared for him, I knew it was but a matter of
+hours before he would be doing me the honour of a call.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">He simply <i>had</i> to see me, I figured; that was all there
+was to it: for with Bell and the girl dead (that much
+seemed certain, both from the newspaper accounts of
+the affair and from what I had been able to pick up
+in the few minutes I had been ashore during the stop
+of my southbound packet at Townsville) I was the only
+living person who knew <i>he</i> was not the hero of the
+astonishing <i>Cora Andrews</i> affair, the audacious daring
+and almost sublime courage characterizing which had
+touched the imagination of the whole world; that, far
+from having <i>volunteered</i> to navigate a shipload of
+plague-stricken blacks through some hundreds of miles
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page2" id="page2"></a>[pg&nbsp;2]</span>
+of the worst reef-beset&mdash;and likewise the most ill-charted&mdash;waters
+of the Seven Seas on the off chance of saving
+the lives of perhaps one in ten of them, he had been
+brought off and forced to mount the gangway of that
+ill-fated schooner at the point of a knife in the hands
+of a slender slip of a Kanaka girl.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">To be sure, two or three of the blacks who were hanging
+over the rail at the end of that accursed afternoon
+may have been among the survivors (for it could have
+been only the strongest of them that had been able to
+fight their way up to the air when Bell chopped open
+the hatches they had been battened under ever since the
+<i>Cora&#39;s</i> officers had succumbed who knows how many
+hours before); but, even so, their rolling, bloodshot eyes
+could have fixed on nothing to have led them to believe
+that the greasy shawl of Chinese embroidery the girl
+appeared to have thrown affectionately over the shoulder
+of the belated passenger in the leaking outrigger concealed
+the diminutive Malay <i>kris</i> whose point she was
+pressing into the fleshy part of his neck above the
+jugular.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">No, there could be no doubt that I was all that stood
+between &quot;Slant&quot; Allen, &quot;Ticket-of-Leavester,&quot; beachcomber,
+black-birder, pearl-pirate and (more or less incidentally
+to all of the foregoing) murderer, and the
+Hon. Hartley Allen, second son of the late James Allen,
+Bart., racing man, polo player and once the greatest
+gentleman jockey on the Australian turf. Pardon for
+the comparative peccadilloes&mdash;a &quot;pulled&quot; horse or two,
+a money fraud in connection with a &quot;sweep,&quot; and the
+rather rough treatment of a chorus girl, who had foolishly
+asked for &quot;time to consider&quot; his proposal that she come
+to him <i>at once</i> from the Queensland stockman who was
+only just finishing refurnishing her George Street flat&mdash;which,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page3" id="page3"></a>[pg&nbsp;3]</span>
+cumulatively, had been responsible for his being
+packed off to &quot;The Islands,&quot; was already assured, and
+it looked as though more was to come&mdash;that his &quot;spectacular
+and self-sacrificing heroism&quot; was going to wipe
+out the unpleasant memories that had barred him from
+sporting and social circles even before the law stepped
+in. A sporting writer in that morning&#39;s <i>Herald</i> had
+speculated as to whether or not he would be seen again
+riding &quot;Number 1&quot; for the unbeaten &quot;Boomerang&quot;
+Four, with whom he had qualified for his handicap of
+&quot;8,&quot; still standing as the highest ever given an Australian
+polo player; and the racing column of the latest
+<i>Bulletin</i> had devoted a good part of its restricted space
+to a discussion of the possibility that the weight he had
+put on in his years of &quot;easy life in &#39;The Islands&#39;&quot;
+might force him to confine his riding to steeplechases.
+Of the record which had made the name of &quot;Slant&quot;
+Allen a byword for all that was desperate and devilish
+from Port Moresby to Papeete, from Yap to Suva, little
+seemed to be known and nothing at all was said. But
+then, that old beach-combers&#39; maxim to the effect that
+&quot;What a man does in &#39;The Islands&#39; don&#39;t figure in St.
+Peter&#39;s &#39;dope sheet,&#39;&quot; was one from which even I myself
+had been wont to extract no little solace.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">With nothing but my fever-wracked and absinthe-soaked
+(I may as well confess at the outset that I was
+&quot;in the grip of the green&quot; at this time) anatomy standing
+between, on the one hand, and Allen more despicable
+than even I, who was fairly familiar with the lurid
+swath he had cut across Polynesia, had ever dreamed
+he could be, and, on the other hand, an Allen who might
+easily become more the idol of sporting (which is, of
+course, the real) Australia than he had ever been at
+the zenith of his meteoric career as a turfman and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page4" id="page4"></a>[pg&nbsp;4]</span>
+athlete, it was plain enough that he would not&mdash;nay,
+could not&mdash;ignore for long my presence in a city that
+was standing on tiptoe to acclaim him as a native son
+whose deed had done it honour in the eyes of the world.
+It was something like that the <i>Telegraph</i> had it, I
+believe.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Where a word from me (and Allen would know that
+my friendship for Bell, to say nothing of the girl, would
+impel me to speak it in my own good time) would dash
+him from the heights to depths which even he had not
+yet sounded&mdash;there were degrees of treachery which
+&quot;The Islands&quot; themselves would not stand for&mdash;it was
+only to be expected that a man of his stamp would make
+some well-thought-out move calculated to impose both
+immediate and eventual silence upon me. If we were
+still &quot;north of twenty-two&quot; I would have had no doubt
+what form that &quot;move&quot; would take, and even here in
+the heart of the Antipodean metropolis&mdash;well, that I was
+leaving no unnecessary loop-holes of attack open was
+attested by the fact that I was awaiting his coming wearing
+a roomy old shooting jacket, in the wide pockets of
+which a man&#39;s fingers could work both freely and unobtrusively.
+I had shot away a good half-dozen patch
+pockets from that old jacket in practising &quot;unostentatious
+self-defence,&quot; and when a man gets to a point
+where he can spatter a sea-slug at five paces from his
+hip he really hasn&#39;t a great deal to fear from the frontal
+attack of anyone&mdash;or anything&mdash;that hunts by daylight.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Yes, though I hardly expected to have to shoot Allen,
+at least on this first showdown, I was quite prepared to
+do so if he gave me any excuse at all for it; indeed, I
+may as well admit that I was going to be disappointed
+if he did not furnish me such an excuse. There need
+be nothing on my conscience, that was sure, for, if the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page5" id="page5"></a>[pg&nbsp;5]</span>
+fellow had had his deserts according to civilized law,
+he would have been put out of the way something like
+twenty times already. I had heard him make that boast
+himself one night in Kai, just before he went under
+Jackson&#39;s table as a consequence of trying to toss off
+three-fingers of &quot;Three Star&quot; for every man he claimed
+to have killed. Moreover, I had a sort of a feeling that
+old Bell would have liked to have seen his score evened
+up that way, for he, more than almost anyone I could
+recall, had marvelled at what he called the tricks I had
+tucked away in my &quot;starboard trigger pocket.&quot; But&mdash;I
+may as well own it&mdash;my principal reason for hoping
+for a decisive showdown straightaway was that I felt
+sure I could see my way through an affair of that kind,
+even with so cool and resourceful a hand as I knew
+Allen to be. As an absinthe drinker, what I dreaded
+was to have the crisis postponed, knowing all the while
+that during only about from four to six hours of the
+twenty-four would I be fit in mind or body to oppose
+a child, let alone a man who, for five years and among
+as desperate a lot of cut-throats as the South Pacific had
+ever known, had lived up to his boast that he drew the
+line at no act under heaven to gain his end.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It had struck me as just a bit providential that Allen
+almost certainly would be coming to see me in the early
+afternoon&mdash;the very time at which, physically and mentally,
+I would be best prepared for him. It varies somewhat
+with different addicts of the drug, but with me
+the &quot;hour of strength&quot;&mdash;the interval of the swinging
+back of the pendulum, when all the faculties are as much
+above normal as they have been below it during the preceding
+interval of depression&mdash;was mid-afternoon. From
+about ten in the morning I was just about my natural
+self&mdash;just about at the turn of the tide between weakness
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page6" id="page6"></a>[pg&nbsp;6]</span>
+and strength&mdash;for three or four hours; but from
+about three to five, when the renewed cravings began to
+stir and it had long been my custom to pour my first
+thin trickle of green into the cracked ice, I was preternaturally
+alive in hand and brain. The rigorous restriction
+of my painting to these brief hours of physical
+and spiritual exaltation must share with my colours
+the credit for the fact that I had already done work that
+was to win me a niche distinctively my own as a painter
+of tropical marines. How much absinthe&mdash;or the reaction
+from absinthe&mdash;had to do with my earlier successes
+was conclusively proven by the way my work at
+first fell off when those colourful years I was later to
+spend with the incomparable Huntley Rivers in the
+Samoas and Marquesas began to bring me back manhood
+of mind and body and to rid me&mdash;I trust for good and
+all&mdash;of the curse saddled upon me in my student days
+in Paris. But that is neither here nor there as regards
+the present story.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had ascertained that Allen&#39;s train was to arrive
+from Brisbane at ten in the morning, and that he was
+to be taken directly from the station to the Town Hall
+to receive the &quot;Freedom of the City.&quot; Then, out of
+consideration for the fact &quot;that the hero&quot; (as the
+<i>Herald</i> had it) was &quot;still far from recovered from the
+terrible hardships he had endured as a consequence of
+his unparalleled self-sacrifice,&quot; the remainder of the day
+was to be left at his disposal to rest in. The further
+program&mdash;in which His Excellency the Governor-General
+himself was to take part&mdash;would be arranged only after
+the personal desires of the &quot;modest hero&quot; had been
+consulted.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A &#39;phone to the gallery where my Exhibition was
+on&mdash;or an inquiry of almost anyone connected with the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page7" id="page7"></a>[pg&nbsp;7]</span>
+show at the Town Hall, for that matter&mdash;would apprise
+Allen that I was staying at the <i>Australia</i>, and there I
+knew he would come direct the moment he could shake
+himself free from his entertainers. Someone was to
+take him off to lunch, to be sure, but&mdash;especially as it
+was reported that he was already dieting to get back
+to riding weight&mdash;I felt sure this would not detain him
+long. &quot;It will be about three,&quot; I told myself, and left
+word at the office that any man asking for me around
+that hour should be brought straight to my rooms without
+further question. I also &#39;phoned Lady X&mdash;&mdash; and
+begged off from showing her and a party of friends from
+Government House my pictures at four, as I had promised
+a couple of days previously. Being borne off to the
+inevitable and interminable Australian afternoon teas&mdash;or
+to anything else I could not easily shake myself
+free from very shortly after five&mdash;was one of the worst
+ordeals incident to the spell of lionizing that had set in
+for me from the day of my arrival in Sydney. What
+did I care for Sydney, anyhow? Paris was my goal&mdash;gay,
+cynical, heartless Paris, who took or rejected what
+her lovers laid at her feet only as it stirred, or failed to
+stir, her jaded pulses, asking not how it was made or
+what it had cost. Paris! To bring that languid beauty
+fawning to my own feet for a day&mdash;even for an hour,
+my hour&mdash;<i>that</i> would be something worth living&mdash;or
+dying&mdash;for. For many years I had been telling myself
+that (between three and five in the afternoon, of course)
+and now&mdash;quite aside from my nocturnal flights there
+on the wings of the &quot;Green Lady&quot;&mdash;it seemed that the
+end so long striven for was almost in sight.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I lunched lightly&mdash;a planked red snapper and a couple
+of alligator pears&mdash;in my room, and toward two o&#39;clock
+(to be well on the safe side) slipped into the old hunting
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page8" id="page8"></a>[pg&nbsp;8]</span>
+jacket I have mentioned, and was ready; just that&mdash;ready.
+My nerves were absolutely steady. The hand
+holding the palette knife with which (to kill the passing
+minutes) I began daubing pigments upon a rough
+rectangle of blotched canvas on an easel in the embrasure
+of the windows, might have adjusted the hair-spring
+of my wrist-watch, and the beat of my heart was
+slow and strong and steady like the throb of the engines
+of a liner in mid-ocean. If either hand or nerve inclined
+more one way than the other, it was toward relaxation
+rather than tenseness. Tenseness&mdash;with a man who has
+himself in hand&mdash;is for the moment of action, not for
+the interval of waiting which precedes it. My whole
+feeling was that of complete <i>adequacy;</i> but then, the
+sensation was no new one to me&mdash;at that time of day.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Exhausting the gobs of variegated colour on my
+palette, I went to a table in the bathroom and started
+chipping the delicately tinted linings from the contents
+of a packing case of assorted sea shells, confining my
+attentions for the moment to a species of bivalve whose
+refulgent inner surface had caught and held the lambent
+liquid gold of sunshine that had filtered through five
+fathoms of limpid sea-water to reach the coral caverns
+where it had grown. Powdering the coruscant scalings
+in a mortar, I screened them from time to time, carefully
+noting the gradations of colour&mdash;ranging from
+soft fawn to scintillant saffron&mdash;as the more indurated
+particles stood out the longer against the friction of
+the pestle. At this time, I might explain, I was in the
+tentative stage of my experimentation to evolve and
+perfect a greater variety of media than had hitherto
+been available with which to express in colour the interminable
+moods of sea and sky and sunshine. The value
+of my contribution to art&mdash;not yet complete after five
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page9" id="page9"></a>[pg&nbsp;9]</span>
+years&mdash;will have to be judged when I pass it on to my
+contemporaries and posterity. Of the part these colours
+played in my later and more permanent success (to
+differentiate it from the spectacular but transient spell
+of fame upon the threshold of which I stood at the moment
+of which I write), I can only say that had I been
+confined to the pigments with which my predecessors
+had been forced to express themselves, I should never
+have risen above the rating of a second or third class
+dauber of sea-scapes.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page10" id="page10"></a>[pg&nbsp;10]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER II<br />
+<small>HARD-BIT DERELICTS</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">With</span> Allen and his coming in the back of my
+brain, it was only natural that my thoughts,
+as I ground and sifted and sorted the golden
+powders, should turn to Kai and the train of events
+leading up to the ghastly tragedy of the <i>Cora Andrews</i>,
+so distorted a version of which had gone abroad as a
+consequence of the fact that Allen was alive and Bell
+was dead, and that I, so far, had not told what I knew
+of the circumstances under which the one and the other
+had been induced to board the stricken &quot;black-birder.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It must have been, I reflected, its comparative remoteness
+from all of even the least-sailed of the South Pacific
+trade routes that was responsible for making Kai Atoll,
+a barely perceptible smudge on the chart of the
+Louisiades, the unofficial rendezvous for the most picturesque
+lot of cut-throats, blackguards and beachcombers
+that &quot;The Islands&quot; had known since the days
+of &quot;Bully&quot; Hayes and his care-free contemporaries.
+Like had attracted like after the original nucleus gathered,
+safety had come with numbers, and at the time
+of my arrival no man whose misdeeds had not made
+him important enough to send a gunboat after needed
+to depart from that secure haven except of his own
+free will.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Among a score of hard-bit derelicts whose grinning
+or scowling phizzes flashed up in memory at the thought
+of that sun-baked loop of coral, with its rag-tag of wind-whipped
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page11" id="page11"></a>[pg&nbsp;11]</span>
+coco palms and its crescent of zinc and thatch-roofed
+shacks, only three&mdash;or four including myself&mdash;occupied
+my mind for the moment. Allen&mdash;reckless
+daredevil that he was&mdash;had come to Kai from somewhere
+in the Solomons for the very good and sufficient reason
+that it was the only island south of the Line at the time
+where his welcome would not have been either too hot
+or too cold to suit his fastidious taste. Bell had come,
+in a stove-in whaleboat, because Kai was the nearest
+settlement to the point where he put the <i>Flying Scud</i>&mdash;the
+trading schooner that was his last command, if we
+except the <i>Cora Andrews</i>&mdash;aground on Tuka-tuva Reef.
+The girl, who arrived with Bell in the whaleboat, came
+because he brought her. The tide-rips of Kai passage
+and the Devil&#39;s own toboggan were all the same to Rona&mdash;at
+this stage of the game, at least&mdash;so long as the
+big, quiet, masterful Yankee was bumping-the-bumps
+with her. And even afterwards&mdash;but let that transpire.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I, Roger Whitney, artist, formerly of New York and
+Paris, and, latterly, man-about-the French-colonies, with
+no fixed abode, had been landed at Kai by a French gunboat
+from the Noumea station. I packed myself off
+from that accursed hole because the suicide of a couple
+of officers in whose company I had been drinking
+absinthe at the <i>Cercle Militaire</i> for some weeks had reminded
+me altogether too poignantly of what I might,
+in the ordinary course of things, expect to be doing
+myself before long. A change of scene and, if possible,
+a modification of habits was the only hope. I would
+never have had the initiative to tackle even the first had
+not the feeling persisted that I was on the verge of
+doing something worth while with my painting. I went
+to Kai because the archipelago thereabouts was reputed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page12" id="page12"></a>[pg&nbsp;12]</span>
+to have the most gorgeous sky and water colouring in
+Polynesia.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Neither the promised beauties nor the reputed badness
+of Kai stirred me greatly in anticipation. With a bitter
+smile I told myself that every night I was seeing sights
+more lovely than anything my eyes were likely to rest
+on short of Paradise, while the Chamber of Horrors in
+which I awoke every morning was a veritable annex to
+the Inferno itself. No, it was out of the question that
+Kai could unfold in realities, whether to delight or
+shock, things to outdo those that were already mine in
+dreams that had themselves become more real than
+realities. Well, it turned out that I was only half right,
+or wrong, whichever way you want to put it. While, on
+the one hand, I found the bluff, open badness of Kai
+rather more refreshing than shocking; on the other
+hand, it was hardly more than a week before I was ready
+to swear that not the most ethereal houri that ever laid
+her cool green hand upon my fevered brow was of a class
+to run one-two-three with a flame-quivering slip of a
+nymph whom I had surprised at her bath in a beryline
+pool inside the windward reef. I began to pull myself
+together from that hour. Rona, the very sight of whom
+threw most men out of hand, had quite the opposite
+effect upon me. I knew she was not for me, and the
+thought that the world actually held such loveliness in
+the form of flesh and blood had a sort of reassurance
+about it, like the knowledge that one has an ample
+income from government bonds.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Because I had landed from the <i>Zelee</i>, and also,
+perhaps on account of my rig-out (especially the brimless
+Algerian sun-helmet), the &quot;beach&quot; of Kai put me
+down at once as a &quot;We-we,&quot; and, therefore, a creature
+quite apart. The only Frenchmen on the island were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page13" id="page13"></a>[pg&nbsp;13]</span>
+a couple of escapes from the convict settlement of New
+Caledonia, and because neither of them could ride or
+shoot or fight with their fists, they had no standing with
+the predominant Australian &quot;push,&quot; most of whom were
+more or less handy at all three. It was, indeed, the fact
+that, in spite of all my years in Paris and the French
+colonies had done to make a physical wreck of me, I
+still retained something of the quickness of eye and
+hand and foot which had conspired to make my Harvard
+record as an all-round-athlete one that only two or three
+men have equalled even down to the present day, that
+gave me such easy sledding in making my way with the
+&quot;best people&quot; of Kai.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It took just three minutes&mdash;the length of the first
+round of the &quot;friendly bout&quot; I fought with &quot;Heifer&quot;
+Halligan, ex-welter-weight champion of Victoria, at
+Jackson&#39;s pub one afternoon&mdash;to change Kai&#39;s openly
+expressed contempt for me to something very near respect.
+I thoroughly appreciated the attitude of that
+breezy lot of sport-loving rascals toward a Frenchified
+Yankee artist, especially one that did not appear to be
+a fugitive from justice, and so took the first opportunity
+to win a standing with them which would at
+least incline them to let me go my own way when I
+wanted to. Notwithstanding my wretched condition, I
+outpointed my chunky opponent a good three to one in
+that opening round; indeed, the &quot;Heifer&#39;s&quot; excuse for
+the foul which put me to sleep in the Second was that
+both his &quot;bloomin&#39; peepers&quot; were so nearly swelled shut
+he couldn&#39;t see &quot;stryght.&quot; But it was my swelling
+groin and battered hands, rather than &quot;Heifer&#39;s&quot;
+bruised optics, that came in for first attention from
+deft-fingered Doc Wyndham&mdash;once of Guy&#39;s, on his own
+admission. The next day I was waited upon by a delegation
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page14" id="page14"></a>[pg&nbsp;14]</span>
+sent from &quot;Jackson&#39;s Sporting Club&quot; to urge
+me to put myself in training for a go-to-the-finish with
+&quot;Shark-mouth&quot; Kelly of Suva, the Fiji open champ.
+My speed would dazzle a cow-footed dolt like &quot;Shark-mouth&quot;
+was, they said, and he would be easy picking
+for me. They further urged that we could clean up all
+the loose money west of the &quot;Hundred and Eightieth&quot;&mdash;what
+odds would Fiji not give in backing a fourteen-stone
+stoker against an artist that only weighed ten
+stone and looked half dished with the &quot;green&quot; besides?
+Moreover, I could keep the whole purse for myself; all
+they wanted out of it was the sport. God bless the
+scalawags, it was more than half true, that last.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The funny thing about it was that the project actually
+tempted me at the time, principally, I think, because
+there seemed a chance that the hard exercise of training&mdash;the
+very thing, indeed, that helped work the miracle
+a few years later&mdash;might effect me at least a temporary
+separation, if not a permanent divorce, from the &quot;Green
+Lady.&quot; I was still temporizing with &quot;delegations&quot;
+when the <i>Cora Andrews</i> dropped her hook in Kai
+Lagoon and gave us something else to think about.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">If the little cunning I had left with my fists won me
+the respect of the &quot;beach,&quot; it remained for my proficiency
+with the revolver&mdash;something which I had never
+allowed myself to grow rusty in&mdash;to give me real prestige.
+My father had been only less famous as a pistol
+shot than as a builder of steel bridges, and from my
+birth it had been his dream that I should carry on the
+tradition in both lines. If it had broken the old boy&#39;s
+heart when I turned my back on engineering for art&mdash;insisting
+on going from Harvard to Beaux Arts instead
+of to Boston &quot;Tec&quot; as he had planned&mdash;he at least had
+nothing to complain of on the score of my aptitude for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page15" id="page15"></a>[pg&nbsp;15]</span>
+the revolver. He admitted that I had bred true in hand
+and eye, even on the day that he called my &quot;art tomfoolery&quot;
+a throwback from my French grandmother.
+I have always thought that the one circumstance which
+prevented the Governor from cutting me off in his will
+when he finally had definite proofs of the depths to
+which I had sunk in Paris, was the fact that, on my
+last visit to the old home on the Hudson, I had beaten
+him, shot for shot, with his own pistols, and at his
+favourite distance.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">They were rather free with their gun play during
+my first fortnight at Kai, each little affair having been
+followed by one or two more or less ceremonious burials
+in the coral-walled cemetery on the south lip of the
+windward passage. It was merely as a precautionary
+measure&mdash;on the off chance that they should be tempted
+to draw me into something of the kind at a time when
+I might not be quite on edge for it&mdash;that I took early
+opportunity to uncover a trifle of what I had crooked
+in my trigger-finger. A casually winged gull or two,
+and a few plugged pennies (not a miss at the latter,
+luckily, even when they tried to spin them edge on
+to my line of fire) effected all that was necessary. After
+that, though they were continually sending for me to
+come down to Jackson&#39;s and shoot the wire off champagne
+corks (fizz, loot of some kind, was the freest flowing
+drink on the island at the time), or perform some
+other equally useful and spectacular gun stunt, not the
+roughest of the gang but took the most meticulous care
+not to press his invitation the instant it sank home
+to him that my mood of the moment wasn&#39;t of a kind
+calculated to blend smoothly with the free and easy
+spirit of a beach-combers&#39; carousal.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was hardly to be expected that they would ever
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page16" id="page16"></a>[pg&nbsp;16]</span>
+quite understand why a man who could &quot;blot out a
+cove&#39;s blinker as easy wiv his fist as wiv his gun&quot; (as
+I was told that &quot;Reefer&quot; Ogiston, penal absentee and
+pearler, put it one day) and who &quot;&#39;peared mo&#39; than
+comfitabl&#39; heeled fo&#39; coin,&quot; should be &quot;light an&#39; looney
+enuf tu go roun&#39; smearin&#39; smashed barnculs on sail
+cloth&quot;; and yet it was on that very score&mdash;or at least
+to their quick comprehension of what I was driving at
+in my pictures&mdash;that the &quot;beach&quot; of Kai rendered me
+a priceless service. Almost from the outset they began
+to &quot;twig&quot; my marines, to feel the living atmosphere I
+was striving to paint into them. They were all men
+who had lived by the sea, on the sea; yes, and not a
+few of them had worked under the sea. Well, when I
+began to see those deep-set, wrinkle-clutched eyes squint
+to a focus of concentration, and, presently, the quick
+heave of a hairy chest as the message of the canvas
+flashed home, I knew that I was on the right track.
+Nothing less than that would have given me the courage
+to go on working, as I had set myself to do, on a steadily
+decreasing allowance of absinthe, a certain supply of
+which, of course, I had brought with me from Noumea.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">So much for me and my relations to Kai at the time
+of which I am writing. Now as to Bell....</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Who is that tall, square-jawed chap who looks as
+though he was not quite sober?&quot; I had asked a day or
+two after I landed.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Yank&mdash;calls himself Bell,&quot; Jackson replied laconically;
+adding that he was &quot;not quite sober&quot; when he
+tried to take a cross-cut over Tuka-tuva Reef with the
+<i>Flying Scud</i>, that he was &quot;not quite sober&quot; when he
+hit the beach in a busted whaleboat, that he had been
+&quot;not quite sober&quot; all the time since, and that there was
+no doubt that he would still be &quot;not quite sober&quot; when
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page17" id="page17"></a>[pg&nbsp;17]</span>
+the time came for him to leave the island, whether he went
+out with the tide in an outrigger canoe or shuffled off up
+the Golden Stairs. &quot;Allus been pickled and allus goin&#39;
+to be pickled,&quot; Jackson continued; then, qualifyingly:
+&quot;Course I don&#39;t know he was pickled when he kum int&#39;
+the world, but I&#39;m willin&#39; to lay any odds that he&#39;ll be
+pickled when he shuffles out of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Just about all of which was, or proved to be,
+&quot;stryght dope.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">After quoting this terse summing of Jackson&#39;s, it may
+sound a little strange when I say that Bell was a gentleman&mdash;not
+<i>had been</i>, understand (that could have been
+said with some truth about a dozen or more of us at
+Kai), but <i>was</i> a gentleman. Though undeniably never
+&quot;quite sober,&quot; the fact remained that no one on the
+island had ever seen him &quot;quite drunk.&quot; And no matter
+how much liquor he had stowed &quot;under hatches,&quot;
+no one could say that it interfered either with his trim
+or his navigation. His even rolling gait was always the
+same, whether it was the glow of his eye-opening plunge
+at dawn that lighted his face, or the flush of twelve
+hours of steady tippling that darkened it at twilight.
+Nor was he ever known to omit that gravely courteous,
+almost &quot;old-fashioned,&quot; bow which, with the flicker of
+smile that was more of his eyes than his mouth, was
+the invariable greeting he bestowed upon friend and
+stranger alike. The mellow drawl of his &quot;It&#39;s suah goin&#39;
+to be a fine mawnin&#39;,&quot; had made it easier for me to
+weather dawns that&mdash;in my inflamed imagination&mdash;menaced
+monstrously in jagged lines like a cubist&#39;s nightmare.
+If drink had any effect on his speech, it was
+to incline him to reserve rather than garrulity. His
+temper appeared to be under quite as perfect control
+as his legs. Even when he broke &quot;Red&quot; Logan&#39;s jaw
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page18" id="page18"></a>[pg&nbsp;18]</span>
+with a swift short-arm jolt the time that sanguine
+Lochinvar tried to nip Rona off his arm as they passed
+on the beach in the twilight, they said that Bell hardly
+raised his voice as he &quot;guessed that&#39;d hold the varmit
+fo&#39; a while.&quot; And when, a few days later, Doc
+Wyndham told him with a grin that &quot;Red&quot; wouldn&#39;t
+be screwing a diving helmet on his block for some weeks
+to come, it was said there was real regret in the Yankee&#39;s
+voice as he hoped that the injury wouldn&#39;t be
+&quot;pumanant.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Yes, before I had been a week at Kai I felt that there
+was a little addition I could safely make to Jackson&#39;s
+comprehensive estimate. I knew that Bell had been born
+a gentleman, and&mdash;whatever lapses there may have
+been, or might be&mdash;I knew he was going to die a gentleman.
+And that also (had I put it on record) would
+have proved pretty nearly &quot;stryght dope.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">What stumped me at first was trying to reconcile the
+remarkable control Bell maintained over all his faculties
+in spite of his hard drinking with the fact (apparently
+fully authenticated) that he had run aground&mdash;through
+drunkenness&mdash;every ship he had ever commanded,
+beginning with a U. S. gunboat. He cleared
+up that matter for me himself one afternoon, however,
+by casually observing&mdash;at the moment he chanced to be
+watching me trying to transfer to canvas the riot of
+opalescence between the <i>lapis lazuli</i> of the barely submerged
+reef and the deep indigo where a hundred
+fathoms of brine threw back the reflection of the
+sinister core of cumulo-nimbus in the heart of a menacing
+squall&mdash;that the sea had always acted as a tremendous
+stimulant to him, especially when he trod a
+deck.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;If I could just have managed to cut out the whisky
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page19" id="page19"></a>[pg&nbsp;19]</span>
+at sea, all would have been smooth sailin&#39;,&quot; he said in
+his deep rich Southern drawl. &quot;On land&mdash;heah ...
+anywheah&mdash;kawn jooce is lak food to me; mah body
+convuts it into ene&#39;gy just lak an engine does coal. But
+with a schoonah kickin&#39; undah me&mdash;we&#39;ell, I guess
+theah&#39;s just one kick too many, something lak mixin&#39;
+drinks p&#39;raps. It suah elevates me good an&#39; plenty
+... and when I come down theah&#39;s natchaly some
+crash. My ship an&#39; I gen&#39;aly strike bottom at about
+the same time. But, s&#39;elp me Gawd&quot; (a tensing
+<i>timbre</i> in his voice) &quot;on mah next command&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was the one sure sign that Bell was beginning to
+feel the kick of his &quot;kawn jooce&quot; when he spoke of his
+&quot;next command.&quot; Unless that kick was beginning to
+carry a pretty weighty jolt behind it he knew just as
+well as everyone else on the beach did that he would
+never get his Master&#39;s Certificate back again, and that
+even if he did there was no house from Honolulu to
+Hobart that would trust a ship to a man who had
+already beached a half-dozen.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Kai was glib to the last detail&mdash;rig, tonnage, cargo,
+insurance, owner and the like&mdash;respecting the several
+merchant craft Bell had piled up in the course of his
+downward career; but the extent of local &quot;dope&quot; in
+the matter of the gunboat episode was to the effect that
+it happened &quot;up Manila-way,&quot; and that &quot;that was the
+bally smash that started him goin&#39;.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Personally, I took little stock in the naval part of the
+yarn&mdash;that is, at first. Then, one morning&mdash;it was the
+day after the tail of a typhoon had sucked up the end
+of Ah Yung&#39;s laundry shack and left everyone on the
+beach short of clothes&mdash;Bell came out in a suit of immaculate
+<i>starched</i> whites. It was the cut of the jacket
+and the way he wore it that drew and held my puzzled
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page20" id="page20"></a>[pg&nbsp;20]</span>
+gaze; that its shoulders were &quot;drilled&quot; for epaulettes
+and that its thin pearl buttons barely held in buttonholes
+that had been worked for something thicker and
+wider I did not notice till later. Steady-eyed, lean-jawed,
+square-shouldered, ready-poised&mdash;not even a flapping
+Payta <i>sombrero</i> could quite disguise, nor five years
+of heavy tippling quite obliterate, the marks of type.
+Then I understood why it was that Bell, all but down
+and out though he might be, was, and would remain
+to the last, a gentleman. There are things the Navy
+puts into a man that not even a court-martial can take
+away.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The only allusion Bell ever made to his remoter past
+was drawn from him a few days later, when&mdash;he was
+watching me paint again&mdash;I chanced to mention that I
+had spent a fortnight in the Philippines on my way south
+from Saigon to Australia. Glancing up at the sound
+of his sharp intake of breath, I saw his jaw set over the
+questions that leapt to the tip of his tongue, to relax
+gradually as a faraway look came into his wide-set grey
+eyes and a wistful smile of reminiscence parted his lips.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Did you heah the band play on the Luneta in the
+evenin&#39;?&quot; he asked eagerly, &quot;while the <i>spiggoties</i> in their
+<i>calesas</i> wuh racin&#39; round the circle, an&#39; the kiddies an&#39;
+theyah nusses wuh rompin&#39; on the grass, an&#39; the big
+red sun was goin&#39; down behind Mariveles beyond the
+bay? An&#39; did you know the Ahmy an&#39; Navy Club&mdash;not
+the new one ... the ol&#39; one ovah cross the moat
+inside the wall?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Put up there all my time in Manila,&quot; I replied.
+&quot;A very comfy old hangout, especially considering what
+the hotels were.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;An&#39;&mdash;did you&mdash;&quot; (he gulped once or twice as though
+the question came hard) &quot;did you evah heah them speak
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page21" id="page21"></a>[pg&nbsp;21]</span>
+at the Club of a chap called Blake ... Lootenant-Commandah
+Blake? He was a son of Captain Blake,
+who helped Sampson polish off Cervera, an&#39; a gran&#39;son
+of Adm&#39;al Blake. Ol&#39; naval fam&#39;ly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;You mean the man who pulled off that coup when
+Wood was cleaning up the crater of Bud Dajo? Some
+kind of a bluff on his own with one of the little old
+gunboats Dewey captured after the Battle of Manila
+Bay, wasn&#39;t it? Scared some Jolo Dato into giving up
+a bunch of our men he already had lined up against a
+wall to <i>bolo</i>, didn&#39;t he? Of course, I remember perfectly
+now. General X&mdash;&mdash;&quot; (mentioning the Military
+Governor of Mindanao by name) &quot;told me the yarn
+himself the night I dined with him in Zamboanga. He
+said no one but an old poker shark would ever have
+thought of the stunt, much less had the nerve to bluff
+it out. Incidentally he mentioned that the chap was
+the best poker player in the Navy, as he was also the
+speediest baseball pitcher ever graduated from Annapolis;
+that he had been missed almost as much for
+the one as the other since he dropped out of sight several
+years before. Some difficulty about&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Tryin&#39; to push Corregidor out of the entrance to
+Manila Bay with the nose of his gunboat,&quot; Bell cut in
+harshly, the hell in his soul glowing through his eyes
+as the glare of the coal-bed welters beyond a stoker&#39;s
+lifted furnace flap. That, and a single sob sucked
+through his contracted throat as the vacuum in his chest
+called for air, were the only outward signs of the intensest
+spasm of throttled emotion I ever saw assail a
+human being. Then the square jaw tightened, the cords
+of the muscular neck drew taut, and what would have
+been another body and soul racking sob was noiselessly
+absorbed in the buffer of a flexed diaphragm. The fires
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page22" id="page22"></a>[pg&nbsp;22]</span>
+of agony behind the eyes paled and died down like an
+expiring coal. The corrugations of the brow smoothed
+out as a smile&mdash;half amused, half wistful&mdash;relaxed the
+set lips. The old controlled Bell (I shall continue to
+call him so) was in the saddle again.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;So they still remembah mah ball-playin&#39;,&quot; he
+drawled musingly, his left hand digits gently massaging
+the bulbous swelling remaining after some red-hot
+drive had telescoped the middle finger of his right.
+&quot;Ye&#39;es, of co&#39;se they&#39;d miss mah wing in the Ahmy-Navy
+game at Ca&#39;nival time. But mah pokah&mdash;we&#39;ell
+I reckon a few of &#39;em did find mah pokah hand about
+as bafflin&#39; as mah baseball ahm. But it was straight
+deliv&#39;ry, tho&#39;&mdash;both of &#39;em. An&#39; they wouldn&#39;t be
+callin&#39; me a fo&#39;-flushah, etha. No, you didn&#39;t heah any
+of &#39;em say that, I&#39;m right suah.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A smile more whimsical than bitter twitched his lips
+twice or thrice in the minute or two he stood alone with
+his thoughts. &quot;So I&#39;ve sort o&#39; dropped out o&#39; sight
+to &#39;em?&quot; he said finally. &quot;We&#39;ell, I guess that was
+about the best thing to happen for all consuned. But,
+just the same, if you evah go back Manila-way I won&#39;t
+be mindin&#39; it if you tell &#39;em that, tho&#39; the ol&#39; wing&#39;s
+tuhn&#39;d to glass from long lack o&#39; limberin&#39;, an&#39; tho&#39;
+I don&#39;t play pokah down heah fo&#39; feah o&#39; bein&#39; knifed
+fo&#39; mah luck, I&#39;m still hittin&#39; true to fohm in mah own
+lil&#39; game of alterin&#39; the sea map with the noses of ships.
+I reckon they&#39;ll know the reason why.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There was another interval of silence, but, unlike the
+other, not charged, electric. Bell&#39;s blow-off through the
+safety-valve of frank speech had taken the peak off
+the pent-up pressure within, and when he spoke again
+it was merely to quote what the Governor of North
+Carolina had said about its having been a long time
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page23" id="page23"></a>[pg&nbsp;23]</span>
+between drinks. &quot;Great thust aggravateh, the Sou&#39;east
+Trade.&quot; Would I mind&mdash;ahem&mdash;hiking home with him
+and lubricating my tonsils with a drop of &quot;J. Walkah&quot;?
+That was simply his delicate way of pretending to ignore
+my slavery to absinthe, a habit which not even the most
+whisky-saturated sot of an Anglo-Saxon can ever quite
+forgive one of his race for falling a victim to. I
+wouldn&#39;t? &quot;We&#39;ell, <i>hasta manyanah</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">With a crunch of coral clinkers under his feet and a
+stave of &quot;Carry Me Back to Ol&#39; Virginny&quot; on his lips,
+Bell, disdaining the smooth path by the beach, swung
+off through the pandanus scrub on what he called a
+&quot;bee-line for home&quot;! He had a weakness for taking
+&quot;short-cuts&quot; on land as well as at sea. Never again&mdash;not
+even in the moment of his great decision&mdash;did he
+lift for me or any other man the &quot;furnace flap&quot; of iron
+reserve that masked the fires of his innermost soul.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Their saving &quot;sense of sport,&quot; which was the golden
+vein in the rough iron of the &quot;beach push&quot; of Kai,
+made it inevitable that they should have a substantial
+sense of respect for a man of Bell&#39;s stamp, and this
+might easily have ripened to an active popularity had
+not the American&#39;s quiet but inflexible reserve prevented
+their knowing him better. They suspected that he was
+no novice in handling the big Colt&#39;s that was flopping
+on his hip when he landed, they knew that there was
+a weighty punch behind his long arm, and they were
+frankly outspoken in their admiration of the manner
+in which he stowed and carried his booze. But what
+had impressed them more than anything else was the
+way in which he had taken the devil out of a vicious imp
+of a Solomon Island pony on the beach one morning.
+&quot;Hellish hard-handed,&quot; &quot;Slant&quot; Allen had said, as his
+steel-blue eyes narrowed down to slits in the intensity
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page24" id="page24"></a>[pg&nbsp;24]</span>
+of his interest and admiration; &quot;but a seat like he was
+screwed to the brute&#39;s backbone. Old cross-country
+rider&mdash;hundred to one on it. Man in a million in a
+steeplechase on a horse strong enough to carry the
+weight. Gawd, what a seat!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">All in all, indeed, there was only one thing the
+&quot;beach&quot; held against Bell, and that was Rona, or
+rather his possession of her. There was nothing personal
+in this, of course. They merely regarded the big
+American in the same light they had always regarded
+a man with a chest of pearls or anything else of value
+that their simple, direct natures made them yearn for
+the possession of. There was this difference, however.
+Where the &quot;push&quot; of Kai would have combined to a
+man to get away with a box of pearls or a cargo of
+shell, the annexing of a woman was essentially a lone-hand
+game, and&mdash;well, Bell was hardly the kind of a
+&quot;one-man job&quot; any of them cared to tackle. I feel
+practically certain that, but for the disturbance of the
+even tenor of Kai&#39;s way incident to the <i>Cora Andrews</i>
+affair, his &quot;rights&quot; in Rona would never have been
+challenged.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page25" id="page25"></a>[pg&nbsp;25]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER III<br />
+<small>THE GIRL HERSELF</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">As</span> for the girl herself, words fail me in trying to picture
+her, just as my brush and pencil (save perhaps
+for that one rough memory sketch, done at
+white heat while still gripped in the exaltation that first
+glimpse of her splashing inside the reef had thrown me
+into) have always failed. This is, I fancy, because, unbelievably
+beautiful though she was, there was still so
+much of her appeal that was of the spirit rather than
+the flesh&mdash;something intangible which had to be sensed
+rather than seen. She was compact of contradictions,
+physical as well as mental. So slender as almost to
+suggest fragility at a first glance, there was still not
+a straight line, nor an angle, nor a hint of boniness,
+from the arch of her instep to the tips of her ears.
+Again, pixie-like as she was in the dainty perfection of
+her modelling, there was yet a fairly feral suggestion
+of suppleness and strength underrunning the soft fluency
+of contour. The strength was there, too, held in reserve
+in the flexible frame like the power of a coiled spring.
+I saw her unleash it one morning when, impatient of
+the slowness of a clumsy Fijian who was launching a
+very sizable dugout for her, she yanked him aside by
+the hair of his fuzzy head and did the job herself. I
+can still see the run of muscles under the olive-silk skin
+of arm and ankle, and the bent-bow arch of her slender
+back, as she gave a last push to the cranky outrigger.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page26" id="page26"></a>[pg&nbsp;26]</span>
+Indeed, my mind is full of pictures like that&mdash;paddling,
+swimming, leaning hard against the buffets of a passing
+squall, with a lock of wet hair streaking across her glowing
+face and her drenched garments clinging to her lithe
+limbs; and yet, as I have said, the buoyant, flaming
+spirit of her always escaped my brush and pencil as it
+now eludes portrayal by my pen.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But the most baffling, as it was also the most fascinating,
+of Rona&#39;s contradictions was the combination she
+presented of inward intensity and outward calm. The
+fire of her was, perhaps, the first thing one was conscious
+of. Even I, with my blood thinned and cooled with the
+ice of absinthe, could never watch her movements without
+a quickening of my jaded pulses; to the sanguine
+combers of Kai the sight of her (whether the rippling
+undulations of arms and shoulders as she drove a canoe
+through the water, or the hawk-like immobility of her
+as she poised on a pinnacle of reef waiting for a chance
+to cast her little Dyak purse-net) was palpably maddening.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">So much for the flaming appeal of the girl in action,
+or suspended action, which was, of course, about the
+only way in which she was ever revealed to the &quot;beach.&quot;
+Now picture the same creature (as Bell&mdash;and occasionally
+myself, his only intimate friend on the island&mdash;so
+often saw her) seated cross-legged on a mat, her sloe-eyes,
+set slightly slant, fixed dreamily on nothingness,
+like a sort of reincarnated girl-Buddha. The sight of
+her thus never failed to awaken in my nostrils the smell
+of smouldering <i>yakka</i> sticks, and to set my ears ringing
+with the throb of temple bells.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">To my hyper-sophisticated (I will not say degenerate)
+senses this Oriental side of the girl made a subtle
+appeal that was like an enchantment. The passion to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page27" id="page27"></a>[pg&nbsp;27]</span>
+paint her&mdash;always burning within me when I saw her
+in action&mdash;never assailed me when she fell into one of
+those contemplative calms. Rather the peace of her
+soothed me like an opiate and made me content to sit
+and dream myself. It was the one thing (until I got
+the habit by the throat years afterward) that ever held
+my nerves steady when the &quot;absinthe hour&quot; drew near
+at the end of the afternoon. As long as Rona would
+continue to &quot;sit Buddha&quot; I had myself completely in
+hand, even till well on after sunset. But if she moved,
+or spoke, or even showed by her eyes that she was following
+Bell&#39;s words (it was he&mdash;less sensitive to this
+phase of her than I&mdash;who did most of the talking at
+these times), the spell was broken. The haste of my
+bolt for home was almost indecent. I have sometimes
+thought that a few months alone with Rona at this time
+might have effected very near to a complete cure in me&mdash;by
+a sort of involuntary mental therapeutic treatment
+on her part, I mean. But perhaps the other side of
+her&mdash;the &quot;unreposeful&quot; one&mdash;might have complicated
+the case.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Both the fire and the repose of Rona&mdash;the passion and
+the peace of her&mdash;were reflected in the olive oval of
+her face, the one by the full, sensuous lips and the sensitive
+nostrils, and the other by the smooth, low brow.
+The low-lidded blue-black eyes were &quot;debatable territory,&quot;
+now in the hands of one, now the other. So, too,
+that infallible &quot;gauge of temperament,&quot; whose dial is
+the pucker between the eyebrows. With Rona, this
+&quot;passion-pressure index&quot; was a corrugated knot of intensity
+or an olive blank according as to whether her
+inner fires were flaming or banked.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Bell knew little of the girl&#39;s origin and said less.
+&quot;Rona&#39;s <i>trousseau</i> consisted of huh peacock sca&#39;f an&#39; this
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page28" id="page28"></a>[pg&nbsp;28]</span>
+heah baby <i>bolo</i>,&quot; he said in his slow drawl one afternoon
+when he had borrowed the exquisite little dagger
+to show me how the Jolo <i>juramentado</i> executed his
+favourite belly-ripping stroke; &quot;an&#39; I reckon they&#39;ll
+comprise &#39;bout the sum total of huh mo&#39;nin&#39; at mah
+fun&#39;ral.&quot; That, and &quot;I guess Rona knows no mo&#39; &#39;bout
+mah past reco&#39;d than I do &#39;bout huhs,&quot; was all I recollect
+his ever having said on the subject. He was content
+to let it rest at that.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was old Jackson who told me that he had seen the
+girl at Ponape, where she had been brought by an &quot;owl-eyed&quot;
+(referring to horn-spectacles rather than to the
+almond orbs themselves, I took it) &quot;chink&quot; when he
+came back to the Carolines after buying bird-of-paradise
+skins down New Guinea-way. She was dressed &quot;Java-style&quot;
+at the time, and was said to have been picked
+up at Ternate or Ambon in the Moluccas. Although the
+wily old Celestial kept the girl practically under lock
+and key from the first, customers of his shop occasionally
+glimpsed her, and she them, it would seem. Among
+these was the Yankee skipper of the trading schooner,
+<i>Flying Scud</i>. The coming together of those two must
+have been like the touching off of a <i>ku-kui</i>-nut torch,
+Jackson opined, adding that he supposed I &quot;twigged
+that thar was no snuffin&#39; uv <i>ku-kui</i>, onst aflar.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Just how the sequel eventuated no one in Ponape save
+the old Chinaman knew, and he never told. With only
+half her copra discharged, the <i>Scud</i> was heard getting
+under way at midnight, shortly after which the silhouette
+of her, close-reefed, was observed to blot out the moon
+three or four times as she beat out of that &quot;hell&#39;s craw&quot;
+of a passage in the teeth of a rising sou&#39;wester. The
+girl was never seen in the Carolines again. Neither was
+Bell nor the <i>Scud</i>, for that matter, as it was but a few
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page29" id="page29"></a>[pg&nbsp;29]</span>
+days later that he attempted his disastrous short-cut
+across Tuka-tuva Reef.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The next morning the Chinaman waited on his customers
+with his neck heavily, obscuringly swathed in
+bandages. He kept these on for a fortnight or more,
+and when they were finally dispensed with replaced his
+loose shirt with a close-buttoned jacket having an unusually
+high-cut neck. Even the latter, however, could
+not entirely conceal a number of parallel red cicatrices
+which, beginning on his fat jowls, ran down, slightly
+converging, onto his puffy yellow throat. Jackson felt
+sure that the point where those red furrows came to a
+focus must have been &quot;fairish messed up.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On the beach of Ponape opinion was fairly divided
+as to whether the big, close-mouthed Yank had &quot;strong-armed&quot;
+the Chinaman and carried off the girl bodily,
+perhaps against her will, or whether she had made the
+get-away unaided, going off to the <i>Scud</i> on her own.
+In Jackson&#39;s mind there were no doubts.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I see them welts wi&#39; my own peepers,&quot; he said,
+&quot;an&#39; they wan&#39;t the marks uv a man. They wuz
+<i>scratches</i>. That lanky Yank don&#39;t scratch ... &#39;e
+<i>wallops</i>. But that gal&mdash;s&#39;y, did y&#39;u ever tyke a squint
+at &#39;er taloons? Them&#39;s the ans&#39;er. She kum to &#39;im;
+an&#39; she&#39;s stickin&#39; lika oktypus.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Again I must credit old &quot;Jack&quot; with handing me
+pretty near to the &quot;stryght dope.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Yes, I had indeed noticed Rona&#39;s wonderful fingernails;
+likewise the astonishing amount of care she lavished
+on them. One could not have helped noticing
+them. A quarter to half an inch long, meticulously
+manicured, and stained a maroon-brown (rather darker
+than the rich <i>sang du b&oelig;uf</i> of <i>henna</i>), she was always
+polishing them&mdash;those of one hand on the palm of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page30" id="page30"></a>[pg&nbsp;30]</span>
+other&mdash;even when &quot;sitting Buddha&quot; with dreaming half-closed
+eyes. I inferred the habit of letting them grow
+was acquired in the course of her association with the
+Chinese. She cut them just short of where they would
+begin to curl and be a nuisance. A fraction of an inch
+longer, and they would have been as useless as the tusks
+of an old boar that had curved back more than a half
+circle. As they were....</p>
+
+<p class="indent">One man&#39;s guess was as good as another&#39;s in the matter
+of Rona&#39;s racial origin. Kai, though agreeing that
+she came from &quot;somewhere Java-side,&quot; always spoke of
+her as a Kanaka, just as they did of all the rest of the
+&quot;beach&quot; women who were not palpably Jap, Chinese
+or white. I doubt very much, however, that she had a
+drop of real Polynesian blood in her veins. Flaring with
+temperament though she was, there was still nothing
+about her of the happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care sensuousness
+of the Caroline or Samoan, the only women of
+the Islands to whom she bore even the faintest resemblance
+in face or figure. If she had come from Marquesas-way&mdash;but
+no, not even an admixture of old
+Spanish pirate blood would have accounted for either
+the spirit or the body of Rona.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The girl&#39;s practice of wearing her <i>sulu</i> (Kai used the
+Fijian name for the inevitable South Sea waist-cloth
+which the Samoans call <i>lava-lava</i> and the Tahitians
+<i>pareo</i>) Malay-fashion&mdash;looped over the breasts and secured
+by a hitch under the left arm&mdash;indicated that her
+outdoor life at least had been spent somewhere in the
+Insulinde Archipelago. Her very considerable English
+vocabulary, however, and especially her fluency in
+&quot;pidgin,&quot; could hardly have been acquired save through
+some years of residence in the Straits Settlements or the
+Federated Malay States. I was inclined to favour Singapore,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page31" id="page31"></a>[pg&nbsp;31]</span>
+especially as she had once let slip something about
+a fling at <i>fan-tan</i> at Johore. But even had she been
+born in that amazing island melting pot, her unmistakably
+Hindu cast of features and mould of figure were
+hardly accounted for. The Madrassi Tamils of the
+Straits were coolies, and Rona radiated <i>caste</i> from her
+slender pink-tipped toes to her crown of indigo-black
+hair coils.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In my own mind I harboured the theory that the girl
+was a &quot;by-product&quot; of the harem of one of the innumerable
+petty Sultanates of Malaysia, among which
+I knew were to be found girls of all the tribes and races
+of the Moslem world. In no other way could I account
+for the flaming spirit and the physical perfection of
+her. Not even descent from that strange Hindu remnant
+of the lovely island of Lombok, just east of Java
+(a theory which I had also turned over in my mind),
+quite satisfied on both these scores. As to what sort
+of a centrifugal impulse might have operated to spin
+her forth to the clutches of the currents of the outside
+world, I had not speculated very deeply. But&mdash;well, I
+knew something of the strange currencies in which
+Malaysian potentates paid their debts to Singapore rug
+and jewel merchants!</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In spite of the increasing warmth of Bell&#39;s friendship
+for me, my way to Rona&#39;s confidence proved far
+from easy sledding. This was partly because I had
+got in bad at the outset by starting to sketch that
+capricious lady at her reef-side bath in the face of her
+very outspoken disapproval of anything so unseemly,
+and partly because she was slow in making up her
+mind that I did not necessarily classify with the predatory
+males against whom her whole life had unquestionably
+been an unrelieved defence. Obsessed by the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page32" id="page32"></a>[pg&nbsp;32]</span>
+desire to paint her, I had not improved my standing
+with the girl by asking Bell (after she had refused me
+pointblank) to intercede to get her to sit for me. Indeed,
+that <i>faux pas</i> on my part seemed to have put
+an end for good to any chance I might have had of getting
+her to pose. Rona was openly indignant that I
+should have presumed to regard her own decision as
+other than final in the matter, while Bell, though perfectly
+good-natured about it, was no less decided in his
+disapproval.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;No, sah, I&#39;m not fo&#39; it in the least, ol&#39; man,&quot; he
+drawled decisively. &quot;Lil&#39; Rona&#39;s &#39;bout the neahest
+thing to a true, lovin&#39; an&#39; lawful wife I evah had, awh
+evah will have, fo&#39; that mattah. So you must see that
+it doan quite jibe with mah sense o&#39; what is right an&#39;
+propah unda the ci&#39;cumstances fo&#39; me to aid an&#39; abet
+a proceduah that might culminate in huh appeahin&#39; on
+the wall o&#39; somun&#39;s bathroom as a spo&#39;tin nymph awh
+a wallowin&#39; mumaid. Nothin&#39; doin&#39;, ol&#39; man; not with
+mah blessin&#39;.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That ended it, of course. From then on I had to
+content myself with the hopeless &quot;sketches from
+memory,&quot; in not the best of which was I able to catch
+more than a suggestion of what I sought. I could not
+have failed more utterly had I set myself to do a &quot;character
+portrait&quot; of the &quot;Green Lady&quot; herself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But on the personal side it was not long before I began
+to make an appreciable gain of ground with Rona. First
+she ceased avoiding me when I dropped in for a mid-afternoon
+yarn with Bell; then she began to assume a
+sort of &quot;benevolent tolerance&quot; by coming and sitting
+on the mat as we talked; finally she started taking an
+active interest in the conversation, coming out of her
+Buddha-like trances every now and then to cut in with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page33" id="page33"></a>[pg&nbsp;33]</span>
+some trenchant comment in fluent <i>bêche-de-mer</i> jargon,
+or perhaps a shrewd question phrased in carefully chosen
+and enunciated English.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At last, one memorable afternoon, she came (quite on
+her own initiative, he assured me) with Bell to call at
+the little thatch-roofed, woven-walled hut I was calling
+home at the time, wearing in honour of the occasion her
+most treasured possession, the &quot;peacock&quot; shawl. It was
+this astonishingly fine piece of Cantonese embroidery
+which Bell had mentioned as having made up, with the
+little Malay <i>kris</i>, the sum total of the dower Rona had
+brought him. It was the first time I had had a chance
+to examine it at close quarters and I saw at a glance
+that, however it had come into her possession, it had
+once been a priceless thing, a real work of art, a treasure
+fit for the <i>trousseau</i> of a princess.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The body of the shawl was amber-coloured silk of so
+close a weave that it would have shed water as it stopped
+light. A rubber blanket would not have thrown a
+blacker shadow when held against the sun. Yet so sheer
+and fine was the fabric that a twist of it streamed from
+one hand to the other as brandy pours out of a flask.
+The peacock itself, done in a thousand tints and shades
+of delicate floss, was all of life-size in body and something
+more than that in tail. Stitching and matching,
+stitching and matching&mdash;you could almost <i>see</i> the artist
+growing old before your eyes as you thought of the years
+he must have bent above his glacially-growing masterpiece.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">With this rainbow-bright rectangle of shimmering
+silks worn folded over the shoulders in the ordinary
+way the peacock must have been considerably telescoped
+and distorted. It was doubtless for this reason that Rona
+always wore it Malay-fashion, as the Javanese women
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page34" id="page34"></a>[pg&nbsp;34]</span>
+wear their <i>sarongs</i>. This displayed the jewel-gay bird in
+all his pride, the bright breast swelling over Rona&#39;s own
+and the coruscant cascade of tail (you could almost hear
+the rustle of it) falling about her limbs like the feather
+mantle of an early Hawaiian queen.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I have said that this shawl <i>had been</i> a priceless thing.
+As a matter of fact it still was such. So lovingly had it
+been cared for, not only by Rona but by the many owners
+it may well have had before her (for Canton had done
+no such work as this for half a century at least), that
+not a corner was frayed, not a one of its countless thousands
+of stitches started. In texture it was scarcely less
+perfect than the day it was finished. The only thing
+wrong with it was that the colours were a good deal
+dulled, not by age (for the old Cantonese dyes are as
+deathless of hue as ancient Ph&oelig;nician glass), but by
+grease. This had happened, I suspected, largely during
+Rona&#39;s stewardship, for the <i>tiare</i>-scented coco oil she
+used so freely as a hair-perfume often found its way to
+her arms and shoulders&mdash;and so to the shawl. All the
+latter needed to restore it to its pristine freshness and
+refulgency was a good &quot;dry-cleaning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Even Rona does not dream of the brilliance of colour
+under that grease,&quot; I said to myself. &quot;Oh, for a can
+of naphtha!&quot; Then the fact that my benzine would do
+the same trick flashed into my mind. I was all but out
+of it, I reflected, with replenishment uncertain; but I
+could at least contrive to spare enough to make a start
+with. Pouring a teacupful of the pungent solvent out of
+the scant pint I found still on hand, I saturated a clean
+rag with it and, without a word of explanation to the
+girl, walked up to her and started washing the bird&#39;s
+face and hackle. For an instant she stiffened angrily,
+evidently under the impression that my solicitude for the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page35" id="page35"></a>[pg&nbsp;35]</span>
+embroidery was only a thinly veiled excuse for chucking
+her under the chin. (Indeed, she confessed to me later
+that &quot;gentlemen&quot; could always be counted on to employ
+such indirect methods of approach, and that she found
+them rather more difficult to combat than the straight
+cave-man stuff of the less sophisticated beach-comber).
+But as the first glad flash of brightening colour caught
+the corner of a suspiciously-lowered eye, the innocence&mdash;even
+the laudability&mdash;of my purpose shot home to her
+quick mind. With a twirl of thumbs and a twist of
+shoulders, she came out of the shawl as a golden moth
+spurns its cocoon, and, leaving it in my hand, darted
+over to a peg and purloined an old smoking-jacket to
+take its place.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Bath heem good, Whitnee,&quot; she chirruped, giving
+her slipping <i>sulu</i> a hitch with one hand as she thrust
+the other into an arm of the jacket. &quot;Makee heem first-chop
+clean. He too much dirtee long time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That she lapsed thus into &quot;pidgin&quot; was a sure sign of
+the girl&#39;s ecstatic excitement. Usually her English&mdash;especially
+when she had time to ponder and polish it in
+advance, as when she put questions&mdash;was much better
+than that.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Sopping gently to avoid pulling the delicate stitches,
+I managed to &quot;bath heem good&quot; from his saucy crest,
+down over the royal purple hackle, and well out upon
+his comparatively sober-coloured breast before my benzine
+came to an end. A slightly more vigorous dabbing
+beyond the embroidery line &quot;alchemized&quot; a patch of
+clouded amber to a halo of lucent gold, against which
+the bird&#39;s haughtily-held head stood out like the profile
+of a martyred saint on an old stained-glass window.
+Thus far would the precious contents of that teacup go,
+and no farther.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page36" id="page36"></a>[pg&nbsp;36]</span>
+Rona was in raptures. What though there was a
+blotchy high- (or rather low-) water mark where the dabbing
+had ceased near the base of the erupting splash of
+tail-feathers, what though the magic liquid had come off
+second best in its bout with an indurated gob of egg-yolk
+drooling across one wing, what though the worst of our
+Augean labours&mdash;the cleansing of the mighty green tail&mdash;had
+yet to be tackled&mdash;just look at the glory already
+wrought!</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Crooning with pleasure, the girl stroked and petted
+the renovated iridescence of the lordly neck&mdash;until I
+called her attention to the fact that the still unevaporated
+benzine was dissolving her finger-nail stain. It was an
+ill-advised remark on my part, for it turned her attention
+to the still unreclaimed tail and set her begging for
+&quot;just nuff fo&#39; one-piecee featha, Whitnee; he need it
+vehry ba-ad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">She had her way, of course, and would have finished
+my benzine then and there had not Bell come to my
+rescue. Laughing and muttering something about
+&quot;thustiness&quot; (not drinking whisky myself, I had none
+in stock), he took Rona by the arm and started off on
+the homeward path. Strutting and preening she went,
+the very reincarnation of the royal bird upon her bosom,
+the very living, breathing spirit of &quot;peacock-iness.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">She might just as well have finished the job&mdash;or rather
+the benzine&mdash;at once, though, for she got it all in the
+end. Every day or two&mdash;sometimes with Bell, sometimes
+alone&mdash;she began paying calls. Always she was in
+gala dress and always, after more or less &quot;finessive&quot;
+preliminaries, she made the same plea.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Just one mo&#39; featha, Whitnee,&quot; she would coo ingratiatingly,
+putting a long-nailed finger-tip on the
+&quot;eye&quot; of the particular quill next in line for renovation.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page37" id="page37"></a>[pg&nbsp;37]</span>
+&quot;Ple-ese, Whitnee.... &#39;Peakie&#39; has been one
+veh-ry good fella bird too-dayee. Pu-retty ple&#39;ese,
+Whitnee.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Of course that always got me, and incidentally the
+benzine&mdash;as long as it lasted. I had remarked to Bell
+once or twice how his soft Southern drawl was beginning
+to creep into Rona&#39;s English, and how fetching a
+combination it made with her &quot;pidgin-<i>bêche-de-mer</i>&quot;
+blend. Getting wind of this, the sly minx played the
+card to the limit. That &quot;one mo&#39; fetha, Whitnee,&quot; had
+me fated, and she knew it. I was completely out of
+benzine for three weeks, and at a time when I was in
+especial need of it in connection with my experiments in
+colour-mixing; but Rona&#39;s friendship was cheap at the
+price. When I finally got hold of a five-gallon can of
+naphtha from Suva (sent up to Bougainville by Burns,
+Phillip packet, where one of Jackson&#39;s cutters picked it
+up), the dry-cleaning the two of us gave old &quot;Peakie&quot;
+was the best fun I&#39;d had since I used to scrub my Newfoundland
+pup as a kid.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page38" id="page38"></a>[pg&nbsp;38]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IV<br />
+<small>&quot;SLANT&quot; ALLEN RETIRES AGAIN</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Although</span> &quot;Slant&quot; Allen had &quot;retired&quot; to Kai
+on three or four occasions previous to my arrival,
+his latest sojourn&mdash;the one which ended with his
+enforced departure on the <i>Cora Andrews</i>&mdash;began about
+a month after I took up my residence there. Two questions
+which Jackson asked of the man who told him
+&quot;Slant&quot; had landed on the beach the night before have
+always struck me as especially illuminative. One was:
+&quot;Did &#39;e fetch a &#39;awse?&quot; and the other&mdash;even more
+laconic&mdash;was: &quot;Gin, Kanak, Jap or Chinee this
+croose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">And equally illuminative was his comment when told
+that Allen had come across in a catamaran, bringing
+neither girl nor horse. &quot;Then &#39;e musta sloped in a &#39;ell
+uv a rush,&quot; said the old trader with finality.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Kai was frankly disappointed that &quot;Slant&quot; had come
+without his &quot;stable,&quot; for the &quot;beach race meets&quot; which
+had made his name a byword throughout the Islands
+were always productive (it was universally agreed) of
+no end of sport and excitement. Allen, it was claimed,
+had transported ponies about the South Seas by every
+known craft that plied their waters, from a steam packet
+to a Papuan head-hunting canoe. Once, in Fiji, he had
+even swum a horse across the flooded Rewa in order to
+get it to Suva in time to run for the &quot;Roku&#39;s Cup.&quot;
+Of course he won out. &quot;Slant&quot; always did that&mdash;by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page39" id="page39"></a>[pg&nbsp;39]</span>
+hook or by crook&mdash;whether with a horse or a woman.
+Thus Kai, in discussing Allen&#39;s advent.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was characteristic of that hard-hit bunch of &quot;gentlemen
+and sportsmen&quot; (a phrase often on the lips of
+the post-prandial speakers at their &quot;race-banquets&quot;)
+that they should hasten to tell me that Allen had once
+owned a Melbourne Cup winner&mdash;&quot;came jolly near riding
+the gelding himself, too&quot;&mdash;while the fact that he
+had killed more of his fellow-creatures than any man of
+twice his age in the South Seas was only a matter of
+casual mention. You had to credit the frank minded
+and mouthed rascals for running true to form in that
+touch of naïveté, though. To them the Melbourne Cup
+was the greatest thing in the world beyond any possible
+comparison: a human life was just about the least. But
+they were quite as careless about their own lives as of
+those of others, and that alone always raised them in my
+eyes far above the pettiness of lesser if more conventionally
+moral men.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Although there was not a horse on the island at the
+time of Allen&#39;s arrival, within a week he had wangled
+it somehow to have a bunch of Solomon ponies brought
+over from Malaite, and at the end of a fortnight had
+pulled off the first Kai &quot;Grand National.&quot; &quot;Slant&quot;
+called it that, he said, because, like the great Liverpool
+classic from which he borrowed the name, it was to be a
+steeplechase. The half-wild little beasts were brought
+over on the deck of a trading schooner, travelling in such
+restricted quarters in the waist that they had to be
+thrown and held down to let the foreboom go over every
+time she was put about.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A bit stiff in the knees but uncurbed of spirit, the
+vicious quartette clambered out on the beach, shook off
+the water soaked up during their swim from the schooner,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page40" id="page40"></a>[pg&nbsp;40]</span>
+laid back their ears and stood ready to fight all-comers
+with tooth and hoof. As a consequence, naturally, the
+preliminaries of the &quot;Grand National&quot; were more in
+the character of broncho-busting contests than speed
+trials, and it was in one of these that the mighty Bell
+had won the plaudits and the respect of the &quot;beach&quot;
+by breaking the spirit of a wild-eyed lump of a cayuse
+which had just managed to give the momentarily overconfident
+&quot;Slant&quot; a nasty spill.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The &quot;Grand National&quot; was run round the curve of
+the beach, with two &quot;water-jumps,&quot; the &quot;stonewall&quot; of
+the quay, and three hurdles in the form of old dugout
+canoes to be negotiated. Bell declined to accept a mount,
+and, in any event, his weight would have told prohibitively
+against him in competition with any one of at
+least a dozen lighter men, all of whom had had more
+or less actual racing experience.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen was the only one to go the full route at the first
+running of the &quot;National,&quot; all three of his rivals falling
+out at the water-jumps. When one of the defeated
+riders limped in and started to attribute &quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; win
+to the fact that he had picked the best-broken if not the
+speediest mount, that imperturbable sportsman cheerfully
+agreed to ride the race over mounted on any one of
+the ponies the judges cared to designate. Again he had
+a walkaway. It was all a matter of sheer horse-mastership;
+the speed of the beast had little to do with it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Finally, just to prove that the running was all on the
+square, &quot;Slant&quot; rode the race on each of the two remaining
+ponies, one of which had strained a tendon
+and rasped most of the hide off one side of him in trying
+to jump <i>through</i> the coral blocks of the quay instead of
+over them. We gave the laughing centaur a great ovation
+when he brought even the cripple&mdash;dripping blood
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page41" id="page41"></a>[pg&nbsp;41]</span>
+and sweat it was, but still responsive to the magic of the
+hand that imposed its will at the pressure of a bridle
+rein&mdash;under the wire a half-breach-length winner.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">And still more wildly we cheered him when &quot;Quill&quot;
+Partington&mdash;a broken-down and broken-out (from jail,
+I mean) newspaper writer, late of Melbourne and formerly
+of Calcutta and London&mdash;chivvied up an ancient
+tortoise that Jackson used to keep around his shop as a
+pet, and, mounting &quot;Slant&quot; on the ridge of its shell,
+offered to back the pair at catch-weights against anything
+on the island. &quot;Quill,&quot; a most engaging character,
+was the poet and minstrel of Kai. He did not,
+however, figure in the <i>Cora Andrews</i> affair, save that he
+later wrote some rather spirited verses in celebration of
+it, or rather of what little he knew of it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">If the feeling in Kai had been one of disappointment
+when it was first reported Allen had landed without a
+horse, that awakened by the still more astonishing intelligence
+that he did not have a girl with him was somewhat
+different&mdash;rather more akin to apprehension, it
+seemed to me. &quot;Slant&quot; was no more of a laggard on
+the love-path than the race-track, and the gay gossip of
+his amazing <i>amours</i> was sipped with the tea of effete
+Apia and Papeete with scarcely less gusto than when it
+sauced the salt-horse of the pearling fleets of Port Darwin
+and Thursday Island. The lightning of his love
+was likely to strike anywhere, you were told, sometimes
+in the most unexpected places. There was that vixen of
+a <i>gin</i>&mdash;a straight Australian aboriginal black&mdash;whom he
+had risked his life for in cutting across a corner of the
+&quot;Never-Never&quot; when he ran away with her, only to
+have her turn and knife him later in Deli out of jealousy
+of a half-caste Portugee Timorese who had caught his
+fickle fancy. And&mdash;to take the other extreme&mdash;there
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page42" id="page42"></a>[pg&nbsp;42]</span>
+was that little golden-haired doll of a niece of the Governor
+of Fiji, who fell heels over head in love with
+&quot;Slant&quot; after seeing him play polo in Suva, and who,
+when they packed her off for home to break up the disgraceful
+affair, made what was described as a really sincere
+attempt to go over the rail of the Auckland-bound
+Union packet. Then there was &quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; affair with
+that notorious pearl-pirate &quot;Squid&quot; Saunders&#39; girl&mdash;the
+one the missionaries adopted and tried to reclaim,
+and who promised for a while to be such a credit to their
+teaching&mdash;with its ghastly sequel. And so it went.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was said that &quot;Slant&quot; boasted of having a son
+(he never kept track of girls, he said) and a saddle in
+every group west of the &quot;hundred and eightieth.&quot; I
+daresay this was true, though those who put it <i>island</i>
+instead of group doubtless exaggerated. I had landed at
+several islands myself where I had been unable to borrow
+a saddle.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Most of the little unpleasantnesses that disturbed the
+<i>dolce far niente</i> atmosphere of Kai had their roots in
+the fact that the male population of the island was always
+a good jump ahead of the female, that there were
+not, in short, enough girls to go round. Under these conditions
+the advent of so notorious a &quot;feminist&quot; as Allen
+could not but be provocative of a certain anxiety, especially
+on the part of those who were (to use Jackson&#39;s
+terse if inelegant expression) &quot;&#39;arborin&#39; &#39;igh-class &#39;ens.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Don&#39;t you coves make no mistake,&quot; Jackson was
+quoted as saying; &quot;&#39;Slant&#39; &#39;ll be tykin&#39; a myte stryght
+aw&#39;y. Only question is &#39;oo&#39;s myte &#39;e&#39;s goin&#39; to tyke. If
+it was any bloke but that squar&#39;-jawed Yank w&#39;at &#39;ad
+&#39;is grapplin&#39; &#39;ooks slung into the plumage uv that perky
+peacock pullet, I&#39;d &#39;ave no doubt w&#39;at bird &#39;Slant&#39; ud
+be baggin&#39; an&#39; draggin&#39; &#39;ome to broil. But&mdash;layin&#39; low
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page43" id="page43"></a>[pg&nbsp;43]</span>
+as &#39;e is fer a bit&mdash;I&#39;m thinkin&#39; it ain&#39;t <i>that</i> presarve
+&#39;e&#39;ll be gunnin&#39; in just yet aw&#39;ile.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Stryght dope&quot; again from old &quot;Jack.&quot; Allen had
+his own reasons for not wishing his presence in Kai to be
+called too forcibly to the attention of the authorities in
+the British Solomons, where his latest escapade (something
+to do with the forcible recruiting of blacks) came
+pretty near the line where they were likely to ask for
+a gunboat from the Sydney station to aid in bringing
+him to book. Allen was by no means inadept of his
+fellow men, and he must have known that a showdown
+with a man of Bell&#39;s stamp&mdash;even though he had the
+best of it and copped the most desirable thing he ever
+set eyes on for his very own&mdash;could hardly fail to prove
+a clash that men would like to talk about, the inspiration
+of a tale that would shudder itself from Yap to
+Tasmania in delirious beach-comber jargon, setting
+tongues wagging about him at a time when publicity was
+quite the last thing that he wanted.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Pipped as he was by the pullet&#39;s pulchritude (his own
+expression&mdash;he admitted as much to Jackson offhand)
+the cool-headed if hot-blooded Allen evidently decided
+to ride a waiting race for at least the first half or three-quarters,
+and so have something to draw on for the
+straightaway. &quot;Easy starter but a hell of a finisher,&quot;
+was the popular appraisal of &quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; way of winning
+with a horse, and it was but natural that he should pin
+his faith to similar tactics where a woman was in the
+running. There&#39;s a lot in common between the two,
+and it is rarely indeed that a man who has a way with
+the one comes a cropper with the other.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It has occurred to me, too, that a very wholesome respect
+for Bell as a man may have had a good deal to
+do with Allen&#39;s failure to force the running at the start
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page44" id="page44"></a>[pg&nbsp;44]</span>
+in the matter of Rona. The steel of his own hard purposefulness
+could not have but struck sparks on the
+flint beneath the American&#39;s mask of suave reserve at
+their first meeting, and the Australian was far too intelligent
+not to sense that in Bell&#39;s Jovian spirit there was
+a force more compelling than anything in his own.
+Moreover, at riding, fighting and shooting&mdash;all that carried
+much weight when they judged a man in the
+Islands&mdash;Allen must have known that if the balance
+inclined either way, it was in the American&#39;s favour.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It may well have been the sheer rugged, manly forcefulness
+of Bell that gave Allen pause, at least in those
+early weeks before the Australian&#39;s infatuation for the
+girl became an obsession in which his reason had no part.
+For years he had been taking life and property out of
+downright contempt for his victims. &quot;I&#39;m the better
+man, and therefore the more deserving,&quot; was sufficient
+excuse in his own mind for his most high-handed outrages.
+But in Bell&mdash;for almost the first time perhaps&mdash;he
+had met a man who had an &quot;edge&quot; on him&mdash;even his
+soaring ego could not prevent his recognizing that. This
+must have been plain to him even when he measured
+the Yankee with the yardstick of his own primitive code.
+Yes, I really think that Allen, in his innermost mind,
+rated Bell as a man who, like himself, had a &quot;right&quot; to
+the best of everything. I am even convinced that, for
+a while at least, he even tried to respect Bell&#39;s right to
+Rona.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But do not let me leave the impression that there was
+one iota of physical fear of Bell in this attitude of
+Allen&#39;s. From what I had seen, and was to see, of the
+cool-eyed Antipodean that was unthinkable, even though
+he knew that the powerful ex-athlete could come pretty
+near to staving in his ribs with a single punch, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page45" id="page45"></a>[pg&nbsp;45]</span>
+though he may have suspected that the Yankee was the
+deadlier man on the draw. I honestly believe that
+&quot;Slant&quot; Allen had no fear in his heart of anyone or
+anything under heaven. At that time, I mean; what
+came to him later is another matter.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Slant&quot; ran true to Jackson&#39;s &quot;dope sheet&quot; in the
+matter of &quot;tykin&#39; a myte,&quot; though, but it was done
+quite decently and in order&mdash;that is, as such things go
+in the Islands. He put up with &quot;Quill&quot; Partington (an
+old pal) for a fortnight, and then, when &quot;Quill&#39;s&quot; lyric
+spirit led him to run over to Malaite in search of a queer
+native banjo that someone had told him the bush niggers
+of the interior of that island made, strings and all, from
+the wild boar, &quot;Slant&quot; simply stayed on to &quot;look after
+the pigs and chickens&quot; (as he told them at Jackson&#39;s)
+and, incidentally, Mary Regan. Mary came from Norfolk
+Island, and claimed lineal descent from the mutineers
+of the &quot;Bounty.&quot; Certainly she looked the part&mdash;of
+a descendant of mutineers, I mean. She had specialized
+in unhappy love affairs, and showed it. She
+had a thin, bony, angular frame, a voice like the wail of
+a cracked fog-horn, and a temper &quot;calid enough for
+cooking purposes,&quot; as &quot;Quill&quot; described it. &quot;Quill,&quot;
+who had developed a taste for curries and hot seasonings
+while living in India, claimed that the reason he had put
+up with Mary for so long was because of the saving she
+enabled him to effect in <i>paprika</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">How &quot;Slant&quot;&mdash;straight meat-eating and unpampered
+of palate as he was&mdash;hit it off with the mercurial Mary
+no one seemed to know. At any rate, I feel sure that he
+found her &quot;condimental&quot; disposition useful as a counter-irritant
+against the rising fever of his passion for Rona,
+something which, though he kept it under astonishingly
+good outward control, had been burning with increasing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page46" id="page46"></a>[pg&nbsp;46]</span>
+heat from the very first time he saw her. He confessed
+that to me later. Curbed passion, like wounded pride,
+if it cannot find outward expression, bites inward.
+With all his despicable record well in mind, I still cannot
+help thinking with a certain admiration of the game
+bluff the rascal put up during those six or eight weeks
+that the enchantment of Rona worked within him, of
+the gay, devil-may-care smile that so successfully masked
+the writhings of his racked spirit. First and last, there
+was something about the fellow&mdash;I think it must have
+been his flaming courage&mdash;that attracted me strongly in
+spite of all that I knew, and all that I came to hold,
+against him.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Since Kai held no regular intercourse with any of
+the surrounding islands, the news that the plague&mdash;a
+pernicious form of bubonic&mdash;had broken out and was
+making terrible ravages among both the bush and saltwater
+niggers of the Solomons was received with no
+especial interest on the beach, save perhaps by those who
+were wont now and then to take a flyer in &quot;black ivory.&quot;
+The labour-recruiting trade&mdash;itself almost the only
+medium through which the pest had been spread&mdash;was
+hard hit of course; indeed, had there been anything like
+adequate control of the pernicious traffic at this time, it
+would have been suspended entirely until all of the
+islands from which blacks were being taken, or to which
+they were being returned, were able to present something
+approximating clean bills of health.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Since this was not done, however, the only check on
+the movement of blacks&mdash;infected or otherwise&mdash;was the
+possible reluctance of the masters of ships engaged in
+the trade to take the risk of carrying them. And since
+the average black-birding skipper lived as a matter of
+course with a gun in one hand, his life in the other, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page47" id="page47"></a>[pg&nbsp;47]</span>
+the devil&#39;s tow-line between his teeth, it was hardly to
+be expected that a little thing like the spectre of the
+&quot;Black Death&quot; looming up on the windward horizon
+was going to make him reef much canvas. The &quot;Black
+Death&quot; in another form would ambush him sooner or
+later anyhow. With niggers waiting to settle accounts
+with him in every bay it was only a matter of time at
+the best. Why worry about a few cases of a disease that
+might not kill him even if he did get it? Heave in and
+get under way! That was about the way the black-birder
+looked at it, and he went right on scattering infected
+niggers around the South Seas like a cook stirring
+raisins into a pudding.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But in the secluded and peaceful haven of Kai lagoon
+they reckoned that they had little to fear from the
+epidemic whatever happened elsewhere. Let the plague
+and the heathen rage for all they cared. They were their
+own quarantine officers, and, until the &quot;Black Death&quot;
+ceased to stalk in the neighbouring islands, &quot;No
+Visitors&quot; was the order of the day. All very simple and
+efficient&mdash;in theory. Covered every possible contingency&mdash;just
+about.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had spent several colourful days once&mdash;getting about
+from island to island in the New Hebrides&mdash;with red-haired
+old Mike Grogan on the <i>Cora Andrews</i>, and had
+heard from that hard-fisted giant&#39;s own lips something
+of the grim balances checked against his life in practically
+every black-birding island of Melanesia. A black&#39;s
+home bay holds a labour-recruiting skipper responsible
+for the man&#39;s safe return at the end of his contract time,
+and if he does not come back they figure that the only
+fair way to even up the score is by killing the captain
+of the ship which took him away. Grogan calculated
+that he would have to be killed something like one hundred
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page48" id="page48"></a>[pg&nbsp;48]</span>
+and forty times to make a clean sheet of all the
+accounts thus reckoned against him. He took a sort of
+grim pleasure in running over the items of the various
+tallies, but always ended with: &quot;B&#39;gorra, the devils&#39;ll
+be gittin&#39; me yit!&quot; He was convinced that it would be
+a &quot;cutting-out&quot; party that would do for him in the end,
+and I have no doubt that he fought over in his mind
+that final bloody showdown every night he stood the
+&quot;graveyard&quot; watch alone. A sudden volley from the
+bush, his whaleboat caught in a swarming rush of blacks,
+his crew disabled or deserting, and himself alone battling
+it out single-handed with the niggers at the last.... It
+was something like that he expected for a grand finale,
+and all the &quot;fighting Irish&quot; in him yearned for it as a
+sunflower turns to the setting sun.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;An&#39; it ain&#39;t as if I won&#39;t be givin&#39; the spalpeens a
+run for their money, me bhoy,&quot; he had cried one afternoon,
+clapping me on the shoulder where I swayed with
+him to the plungings of the <i>Cora</i> in a nasty cross-swell.
+&quot;An&#39;, b&#39;gorra, it&#39;s a way to die after a man&#39;s own heart&mdash;shootin&#39;
+an&#39; clubbin&#39; into a mob o&#39; niggers out under
+God&#39;s own sky!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Full as my mind was of other things on that accursed
+day of which I am about to write, I could not
+help but think of these words when they told me at
+Jackson&#39;s that old Mike&#39;s fighting spirit had passed on
+a windless midnight, and while Mike himself was jack-knifed
+over the <i>Cora&#39;s</i> wheel, spitting blood and curses,
+and imploring the devil to quit tying knots in his tortured
+guts with a red-hot pitchfork.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">What little we heard of how things came to go wrong
+with the <i>Cora</i> in the first place fell from the blackening
+lips of her &quot;Agent&quot; (as the recruiter is called), who
+managed to reach the beach of Kai in a whaleboat, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page49" id="page49"></a>[pg&nbsp;49]</span>
+who did not go into a delirium until a half-hour before
+he died that evening. She was packed to the hatches with
+&quot;return&quot; boys from Samoa. Although the plague had
+been claiming a very heavy toll among the Melanesian
+blacks of the coco plantations of Upolou, Grogan decided
+to take a chance at making the Solomons with a
+load which, on account of the risk, was offered him at
+double rates. They would have made it all right, the
+Agent thought, had not the southerly gale which blew
+them a long way out of their course been followed by
+many days of calms and alternating winds. Grogan&#39;s
+softness in trying to doctor the first case of plague&mdash;instead
+of following the customary practice, cruel but
+effective, of shooting the infected black (doomed anyhow)
+and throwing the body to the sharks&mdash;was probably
+responsible for the ghastly sequel. The blacks fell
+sick by dozens, until at last the Skipper&mdash;doubtless already
+in the first throes of the disease himself&mdash;ordered
+every living man except the surviving members of the
+crew driven below and battened under hatch. Grogan
+died that night and the mate the following morning.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The only white man remaining was the Agent, and he,
+obsessed with a life-long horror of being buried at sea,
+steered the best course he could for the nearest island.
+The <i>Cora</i>, luckily heading into the treacherous reef-beset
+passage at the turn of the tide, dropped her hook in Kai
+lagoon in the first flush of the dawning of the next day.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page50" id="page50"></a>[pg&nbsp;50]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER V<br />
+<small>A SHIP OF DEATH</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">With</span> a good many days of my life to which
+I cannot look back without a blush of shame,
+I write deliberately when I say that the
+one ushered in by the raucous grind of the <i>Cora
+Andrews&#39;</i> chain running through its hawse-pipe as
+she let go anchor a couple of cables&#39; lengths off Kai
+beach, stands alone in the horror and the painfulness
+of its memories. It is characteristic of all but the most
+degraded of beach-combers&mdash;doubtless their general contempt
+of life has much to do with it&mdash;that &quot;once in a
+while&quot; they &quot;can finish in style&quot;; that, on a showdown,
+they are usually there with the goods. I had
+always felt sure that, in a pinch, I could force myself
+to come through in the same way&mdash;the thought had
+gilded many a slough of despond for me. Well, this day,
+I had my chance and funked it&mdash;funked it clean, as a
+yellow dog slinks from a fight with its tail between its
+legs, as an underbred hunter refuses a jump. Oh yes,
+I had an excuse. &quot;Seeing green&quot; is next thing to &quot;seeing
+yellow.&quot; Almost anyone knows that. But I had
+thought that there was enough red blood left in me to
+make it possible for me to take the bit in my teeth and
+finish like a thoroughbred at the last. But there was
+not. That was the thought which had made the ghastly
+tragedy even more tragical to me, which made a mockery
+of the triumph which I might otherwise have felt when,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page51" id="page51"></a>[pg&nbsp;51]</span>
+first Australia and then Europe, acclaimed me as the
+greatest marine painter of the decade.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">For several days previous to the coming of the <i>Cora
+Andrews</i> I had been slipping up pretty badly on my
+&quot;absinthe reform&quot; program. It was largely the fault, I
+think, of a positively infernal spell of weather. The
+ozone-laden trade winds, falling light after a spell of low
+barometer, had finally failed altogether. Kai was lapped
+in sluggish moisture-saturated airs that clung like a wet
+blanket. The Gargantuan popcorn-like piles of the trade
+clouds were replaced by strata of miasmic mists which
+awakened all the latent fevers in a man&#39;s body and
+mind. The sea, slatily slick of surface, heaved in oily,
+indolent smoothness, sliding over the reef without sound
+or foam. The brooding, ominous sullenness was all-pervading,
+oppressive with sinister suggestion.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Everyone on the island was drinking heavily, and
+mostly alone. No tipsy choruses boomed out from under
+the sounding-board of Jackson&#39;s sheet-iron roof. Even
+&quot;Slant&quot; Allen failed to appear for his wild end-of-the-afternoon
+dashes up and down the beach. Rona dropped
+in languidly one afternoon to say that Bell was tilting
+the bottle more frequently than she had ever known him
+to do before, and that for three days he had missed his
+early morning plunge from the reef.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Too much walkee with Jo&#39;nnee Walkah, Whitnee,&quot;
+she punned in a feeble flicker of pleasantry. &quot;I veh-ry
+much worree along Bel-la.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">She needn&#39;t have worried, though. <i>He</i>, at least, had
+the stuff in him for a proper finish.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was only to be expected that I should seek solace
+in a time like this by snuggling closer than ever into the
+enfolding arms of the &quot;Green Lady.&quot; That fickle jade
+was at her best&mdash;and her worst. Never had she winged
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page52" id="page52"></a>[pg&nbsp;52]</span>
+me to loftier pinnacles of sensuous delight; never had
+she dropped me to profounder depths of horror and
+despond. The night before the <i>Cora</i> came marked a new
+&quot;high&quot;; also a new &quot;low.&quot; I dropped like a plummet
+straight from a pea-green grotto full of lilies of the
+valley, maiden&#39;s hair ferns and ambrosia-breathed houri
+to the fire-scorched cliffs ringing the mouth of the Bottomless
+Pit. I knew that Pit of old. Most of the early
+hours of my mornings for the last five years had been
+spent in trying to keep from being pushed into it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But this time, though, it looked as if they were going
+to get away with it. Failing to break my grip (I always
+managed to hang on somehow), they had tried new
+tactics. They were pushing in the side of the Pit itself
+so as to carry me with it. I felt the relentless creeping
+of the ledge on which I struggled to maintain precarious
+footing. If I could only push back into the rock ...
+through it ... out to the air! Nothing could stand
+against the mighty heave I gave with my shoulders.
+The cliff parted with a great rip-roar of rending, and I
+reeled back, back, straight through&mdash;the pandanus siding
+of my hut. An instant before a nigger had knocked off
+the shackle of the <i>Cora&#39;s</i> anchor chain. The unchecked
+run of forty-odd fathoms of rusty iron links through
+a hawse-pipe is very like in sound to the rending of a
+rocky cliff&mdash;that is, to a man in an absinthe nightmare.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That violent awakening did not bring me straight back
+to normal by any means. You never come out of the
+&quot;green horrors&quot; that way, unless, of course, you fall into
+water, or set fire to the house, or do something else that
+calls for instant action. You usually come out by gradual
+stages, each successive one marked by a shade more
+of the earth-earthy than the last.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In this instance my fall only changed the spirit of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page53" id="page53"></a>[pg&nbsp;53]</span>
+my nightmare. I was by no means out of the woods,
+either. I had backed away from the Mouth of the Pit
+all right, but what brought that Ship of Death&mdash;black
+and sinister she was against the bloody redness of the
+infernal sunrise&mdash;unless it was to take me there again?
+I <i>knew</i> that it was a real ship. I <i>knew</i> those black
+things festooned along its rails were real dead men. I
+<i>knew</i> that the horrible reek which presently came pouring
+in over the oily water to penetrate my contracted
+nostrils was the real smell of rotting flesh. I <i>knew</i> that
+I was looking out at Kai lagoon, and from the door of
+my own hut. I <i>knew</i> these things, just as I <i>knew</i> it was
+real blood I saw and tasted when I bit my finger to prove
+that I knew them.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But it was still as in a dream that I became aware of
+an erratically rowed whaleboat pulling away from the
+Death Ship and making for the beach. It was with an
+agreeable sense of relief that I noted that it was apparently
+heading for the quay rather than in my direction.
+Drawing near, it sheered away from the weed-slippery
+landing and went full-tilt for the beach. A man&mdash;a big
+man, bare of legs and of chest, wearing only a red <i>sulu</i>&mdash;ran
+down to meet it. It seemed no more than a perfectly
+natural development of the ghastly pantomime
+that the big man should raise a revolver and shoot one
+of the black rowers when the latter jumped over the
+gunwale of the whaleboat and started to bolt up the
+beach. I saw the flash from the revolver, saw the fugitive
+crumple and fall, and the sharp report, impacting
+on the side of my sheet-iron rain-water tank, slammed
+against my ear-drums with a shattering &quot;whang.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That close-at-hand shot had the effect of shocking me
+back a notch or two more nearer normal; but, nerve-shattered
+as I always was at the end of a night, it was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page54" id="page54"></a>[pg&nbsp;54]</span>
+something very akin to the abject terror that gripped me
+as I backed away from the Brink of the Pit which now
+impelled me to &quot;back away&quot; from the new menace.
+Seizing my painting things from sheer force of habit, I
+slunk off through the long early morning shadows of
+the coco palm boles, not to stop until I came out upon
+the broken coral of the steep-shelving leeward beach of
+the island. It was as far as I could go without swimming.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Here Laku, my Tonga boy, found me toward noon.
+The coffee from the flask he brought was the first thing
+to pass my lips since I had poured my last drink the
+night before. It steadied me somewhat, but my nerves
+still refused to react. The shock of the morning had
+been too much for them. I realized that Kai had a
+mighty knotty problem on its hands with that shipload
+of dead and dying niggers in the lagoon (Laku had told
+me it was the <i>Cora</i>, and something of what the trouble
+was), and it took a lot of screwing before I got my
+courage up to a point where I could force my reluctant
+feet to carry me back to shoulder my share of the responsibilities.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was still streaking and dabbing at my canvas at
+three o&#39;clock, and it must have been nearly an hour later
+before I packed up and started back toward the village.
+I burned that bizarre rectangle of colour-slashed canvas
+on the very first occasion (which was not until a day or
+two later) that I had a chance to stand off and look at
+it objectively. There was revealed in it too much of the
+utter unmanliness which marked my conduct on this
+most shameful day of my life to make it a pleasant thing
+to have around. For me to have kept it would have
+been like a man&#39;s framing and hanging the excoriation
+of the judge who had sentenced him for some despicable
+crime.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page55" id="page55"></a>[pg&nbsp;55]</span>
+What had transpired in the village up to the moment
+of my return at the end of the afternoon I must set down
+as I learned of it later. Everything considered, it seems
+to me that Kai&mdash;with one or two notable exceptions&mdash;behaved
+very creditably in an extremely trying emergency.
+Awakened when the <i>Cora&#39;s</i> anchor was let go, a
+number of men had run out to the beach, from where
+their glasses quickly gave them a pretty good idea of the
+state of affairs aboard the luckless black-birder. Then
+they got together at Jackson&#39;s&mdash;the lot of them in their
+pajamas or <i>sulus</i>, just as they had tumbled out of their
+sleeping mats&mdash;to decide what was to be done. The majority
+at first seemed inclined to stand by their predetermined
+plan of shooting the first, and every man
+from a plague-infested ship that tried to land on the
+beach. But at this juncture Doc Wyndham, calling their
+attention to the fact that a whaleboat had already put
+away from the <i>Cora</i>, suggested that they wait and learn
+just how things stood before starting off gunning.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I&#39;m with you as far as shooting any nigger that
+tries to break quarantine goes,&quot; he said, &quot;but I&#39;m dam&#39;d
+if I&#39;ll stand by and see anyone take a pot shot at Mike
+Grogan, or any other sick white man, for that matter.
+Old Mike nursed me through a spell of &#39;black-water&#39; once
+at Port Darwin, and if he is in that boat I dope it it&#39;s
+up to me to tote him home to my shack and do what I
+can for him. If he can&#39;t clamber out I&#39;m going to wade
+in and carry him back to the beach, so you&#39;ll have to
+shoot the two of us if you shoot at all. But I don&#39;t think
+you will. I&#39;m not asking any of you chaps to have anything
+to do with the stunt. You needn&#39;t touch him.
+I&#39;ll take him home and swear not to budge from there
+till the thing&#39;s over one way or the other. After that
+I&#39;ll put myself in a ten-day quarantine. Moreover, I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page56" id="page56"></a>[pg&nbsp;56]</span>
+won&#39;t be expecting attention from any white man or
+nigger on the island in case the luck goes against me
+and I catch the pest myself. It&#39;s my own little game
+and I won&#39;t stand for any interfering in it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That was the gist of Doc Wyndham&#39;s remarks as
+Jackson outlined them to me the next day. They met
+with hearty assent from all of the dozen or more present,
+except on the score of letting the Doc have the job all
+to himself. He turned down every one of the volunteer
+nurses, however, saying it was his own kettle of fish and
+that he&#39;d have to stew it in his own way. He even insisted
+on meeting the boat alone, urging that there was
+no use in multiplying the points of possible &quot;plague
+contact.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">So it must have been the distinguished surgeon from
+Guy&#39;s that I saw shoot the bolting black that morning.
+Had I continued to watch, instead of bolting myself
+at that juncture, I would have seen him wade out, lift
+a man tenderly from the stern-sheets of the whaleboat,
+and start carrying the limp body up the beach to where
+a spreading bread-fruit tree shaded the door of the
+sheet-iron shack which he was wont humorously to refer
+to as his &quot;professional, social and domestic headquarters
+for Melanesia.&quot; Following that, I would have seen a
+bunch of motley-clad figures prance down and start menacing
+the irresolute boat-pullers with flourished revolvers,
+forcing the frightened blacks to back off and
+begin splashing their wobbly way out to the <i>Cora</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Wyndham&#39;s conduct all through struck me as rather
+fine, especially for a man who was a convict of three
+continents and two hemispheres. Disappointed in finding
+his friend Grogan in the whaleboat, on learning that
+the latter and his mate were already dead, Doc just as
+cheerfully set about paying to the Agent the debt he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page57" id="page57"></a>[pg&nbsp;57]</span>
+felt he owed to old Mike. Before entering his house,
+he called to his girl&mdash;a saucy little Samoan named Melita,
+who had gone right on sleeping through all the racket&mdash;ordering
+her to make a hurried departure by the back
+door and not to return until he sent for her. The Doc
+was never a man to let sentiment interfere with business,
+Jackson opined.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Making the doomed man as comfortable as possible in
+his own canvas folding bed, Wyndham deferred giving
+an opiate until he had gained such information as he
+could of how things were on the <i>Cora</i>. Then, after communicating
+(from a safe distance) what he had learned
+to a delegation from executive headquarters at Jackson&#39;s,
+he nailed a red <i>sulu</i> to his front door as a danger
+signal and disappeared behind the bars of his self-imposed
+quarantine.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I may as well state here that Wyndham&mdash;thanks,
+doubtless, to the precautions which he, as a medical man,
+would have known how to take&mdash;side-stepped the plague
+completely, quite as completely, indeed, as he sidestepped
+the Thursday Island customs authorities a year
+or so later, when a half season&#39;s shipment of pearls from
+Makua Reef, Limited, disappeared as into thin air.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Of the information Wyndham gleaned from the Agent
+before giving the latter a shot of morphine to relieve his
+agony and mercifully hasten the inevitable end, the most
+important as affecting Kai&#39;s action was that something
+over a hundred blacks had been battened down in the
+schooner&#39;s forecastle and &#39;midships hold for seventy-two
+hours, with nothing but a couple of stubby wind-sails
+feeding them air. The dead had all been cleared out
+before this was done, but there were a lot of bad cases
+among the living who were driven or thrown down the
+hatches. By the stench, the Agent knew that some of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page58" id="page58"></a>[pg&nbsp;58]</span>
+these had already died; but that many still had life in
+their bodies he judged by the unabated vigour of the
+howling.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The most reassuring news passed on by the dying
+man was that Ranga-Ro, Grogan&#39;s gigantic Malay
+Bo&#39;sun, had remained in charge of the <i>Cora</i>, and that he
+appeared to have the black crew (only three or four of
+them, luckily, had succumbed to the plague so far) well
+in hand. That brightened the outlook a good deal, for
+what Kai had feared above all else was a general breakout
+and stampede, which might inundate the island with
+plague-infected niggers, crazy beyond all possibility of
+control.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Ranga, who claimed to have had at one time or another
+every tropical disease on record, was&mdash;or believed
+himself to be&mdash;a plague immune. He was not in the least
+worried over the responsibilities that had fallen on him,
+and could be counted upon, the Agent thought, to see
+the game through. The only trouble was that he couldn&#39;t
+navigate, so that if the <i>Cora</i> was going to be taken to a
+port where any real relief could be obtained, she would
+have to have at least one competent white officer. Would
+Kai furnish that officer? was the question up before the
+meeting called at Jackson&#39;s to decide what should be
+done with the ill-fated black-birder.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">This was rather a larger assemblage than the one which
+had gathered at dawn, called up by the rattle of the
+<i>Cora&#39;s</i> anchor-chain. The latter was mostly made up of
+the &quot;inside push,&quot; &quot;Jackson&#39;s Own,&quot; as they were
+sometimes alluded to, and that they were a dead game
+bunch of sports was attested by the way in which they
+had volunteered in a body to nurse for Doc Wyndham.
+The later and more representative meeting was hardly
+up to the earlier one on the score of quality. There were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page59" id="page59"></a>[pg&nbsp;59]</span>
+a few out-and-out rotters on the island, and about the
+worst of these was a typical Wooloofooloo larrikin from
+Sydney, whose name I have forgotten. As foul of
+tongue as of face, he was as sneaking and cowardly as
+a wild Malaite pup reared in a black-birder&#39;s galley.
+He it was who, with a smirk on his tattoo-defiled face,
+got up and suggested that the simplest way out of the
+difficulty was to &quot;blow up an&#39; burn the bloomin&#39; &#39;ooker
+w&#39;ere she lies. Cook the bloody niggers to a frizzle, pleg
+an&#39; all.&quot; Give him a few sticks of dynamite and he&#39;d
+pull off the bally job himself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The leering wretch, in his eagerness, pushed right out
+in front of gaunt-framed old Jackson, who was &quot;presiding.&quot;
+&quot;Wi&#39;out battin&#39; a blinker,&quot; as he told me
+later, that old Kalgoorlie outlaw took the proper and
+necessary action. His straight-from-the-hip kick doubled
+the miscreant up, breathless, speechless, upon the floor&mdash;the
+only floor of sawed boards in all Kai. He rather
+favoured that method when he had to throw a man out,
+Jackson explained, on account of the convenient parcel
+it made of him when lifted by the back of his belt.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">When Jackson called the meeting to order again and
+explained what word Wyndham had sent as to the lay
+of things on the <i>Cora</i>, &quot;Froggy&quot; Frontein, one of the
+escapes from Noumea, his Gallic soul aflame, popped up
+and volunteered to sail her to any non-French port in
+the Pacific. That brought a cheer for &quot;Froggy,&quot; but
+the enthusiasm died down a bit when it transpired that
+the only ships the gallant ex-counterfeiter had ever
+boarded in his life were the steamer which deported him
+from Marseilles and the cutter in which he&mdash;buried under
+copra in its hold&mdash;had escaped from New Caledonia.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">More competent volunteers were not lacking, however,
+and several of these were trying to urge their respective
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page60" id="page60"></a>[pg&nbsp;60]</span>
+claims at once when &quot;Slant&quot; Allen&#39;s magnetic glance
+drew the eye of the chairman and he was given the floor.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Calling several of the more insistent of the volunteers
+by name, &quot;Slant&quot; asked if it had occurred to them that
+the nearest port which had quarantine facilities equal to
+handling more than a dozen cases of infectious disease
+was in Australia&mdash;probably Townsville, but possibly
+Brisbane. They admitted that they hadn&#39;t thought that
+far ahead.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;In that case,&quot; Allen cut in with, &quot;it may be in order
+for me to point out that there&#39;s not a one of the whole
+mob of you young hopefuls that wouldn&#39;t be pinched
+and clapped in the brig just as soon as they saw your face
+and recollected what it was you sloped for in the first
+place.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That shot made some impression, though &quot;Crimp&quot;
+Hanley seemed to think he had countered not uneffectively
+when he asked: &quot;Who in hell thinks he&#39;s going to
+last long enough to get her there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">What &quot;Slant&quot; had got up to say, he went on without
+deigning to engage the logical &quot;Crimp&quot; in argument,
+was that there was one first-class sailor in Kai against
+whom nothing was booked in Australia, a man, moreover,
+who had been known to be looking for a command for
+a number of months. He referred to Captain Bell, who,
+he regretted to say, had not been summoned to their
+meeting. If it was agreeable to those present, he would
+be glad to wait upon Captain Bell and acquaint him with
+the facts in connection with the emergency which confronted
+them all. In the event that Captain Bell should
+see fit to assert his claim to this place of honour, as he
+had no doubt would be the case, he&mdash;&quot;Slant&quot;&mdash;was in
+favour of giving that claim precedence over all others,
+both because of Captain Bell&#39;s well-known ability as a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page61" id="page61"></a>[pg&nbsp;61]</span>
+navigator (his late slip, they would all admit, was due to
+circumstances quite beyond his control), and because he
+was the only competent man available who would not
+have to step out of the frying pan into the fire on making
+port in Australia. What was more, in case Captain Bell
+felt that he needed a mate for a voyage which could
+not but be beset with much danger and many difficulties,
+he&mdash;&quot;Slant&quot;&mdash;wished to take the occasion to put in his
+claim for that berth. He had been in bad in Sydney, he
+had to admit, but it was nothing very serious, and he
+felt assured that, in a pinch, there were certain influences
+which could be counted upon to get him clear. No
+fear that he would not be seen in the Islands again in
+due course.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Considering what &quot;Slant&quot; was really driving at,
+you&#39;ll have to admit that this was put with consummate
+adroitness. The meeting voted by acclamation to allow
+him to carry out his suggestion, adjourning in the meantime
+to await developments. It was significant, in the
+light of what transpired later, that Allen flatly refused
+the offer of Jackson and two or three others to
+go along to Bell&#39;s with him and &quot;make a delegation
+of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">No suspicion was aroused by the fact that Allen, on
+the way to Bell&#39;s shack, stopped in at his own for five
+or ten minutes. Indeed, nothing that he did at any time
+awakened anybody&#39;s suspicions&mdash;among the beach push,
+I mean.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">When &quot;Slant&quot; came out of Bell&#39;s at the end of half
+an hour, he was accompanied by the American, the latter
+apparently leaning heavily on the Australian&#39;s shoulder.
+This occasioned little surprise, as Bell, who had hardly
+been seen for the last three days, was believed to have
+been drinking heavily. Instead of returning round the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page62" id="page62"></a>[pg&nbsp;62]</span>
+curve of the beach to report at Jackson&#39;s, as it had been
+assumed he would, &quot;Slant&quot; led the way to a little
+dugout canoe lying in the shade of the coco palms in
+front of Bell&#39;s and started pulling it down to the water&#39;s
+edge. When it was seen that the slender Australian
+was doing most of the tugging, while the big American
+seemed to be blundering about to small purpose, it was
+remarked at Jackson&#39;s that Bell, for the first time since
+he hit the beach of Kai, appeared to have stowed enough
+booze to submerge his &quot;Plimsol&quot; and affect his trim.
+At the same time it was admitted that the Yankee was
+a wonderful &quot;weight-carrier&quot;&mdash;nothing like him ever
+seen in the Islands. It was thus that they mixed nautical
+and racing idiom at Jackson&#39;s Sporting Club.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">When the little canoe was finally launched, Bell,
+helped by Allen, stumbled forward and slithered down
+in the bow. The Australian plied his paddle from the
+stern. It was remarked that the dugout&#39;s progress was
+very slow, but &quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; leisurely paddling was attributed
+to the care he had to take on account of the
+trim Bell&#39;s lopsided sprawl gave the cranky craft.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">By the time the canoe slid in alongside the <i>Cora</i>, Bell
+appeared to have collapsed completely. Lifting carefully
+by the shoulders, Allen was seen to raise the inert body
+in the bow enough for a hulking yellow giant&mdash;easily
+recognizable as the lusty Ranga-Ro&mdash;to throw a mighty
+arm around its waist. Then, with his other arm looped
+round a stanchion, he swung his burden high above the
+rail and into the arms of two of the black crew. Thereafter
+nothing was seen of the <i>Cora&#39;s</i> new skipper for an
+hour or more.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Doosed smart loadin&#39;,&quot; was Jackson&#39;s laconic comment
+on the teamwork Allen and Ranga had displayed
+in hoisting Bell&#39;s husky frame out of a wobbling canoe
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page63" id="page63"></a>[pg&nbsp;63]</span>
+and up over the <i>Cora&#39;s</i> four feet of freeboard topped by
+five strands of &quot;nigger wire.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen did not go aboard, but continued to lie alongside
+for ten or fifteen minutes, evidently giving extended
+orders to the Malay bos&#39;n. Immediately the
+canoe pushed off, great activity was observable among the
+crew, who were evidently rushing preparations for getting
+under way before the ebb began to race through the
+passage.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The rate at which Allen paddled back to the beach
+was in marked contrast to his leisurely progress on the
+way out. Grounding the canoe on the beach near where
+it had been launched, he made directly for the door of
+Bell&#39;s house and bolted inside. Reappearing almost immediately,
+he came on along the beach at a more deliberate
+gait.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At Jackson&#39;s he told them that Bell had jumped at
+the chance of taking the <i>Cora</i> to Townsville.... Said
+it might be the means of getting his master&#39;s certificate
+back in case he pulled it off all right. But he&mdash;&quot;Slant&quot;&mdash;couldn&#39;t
+allow a white man to tackle a job like that
+alone. He had only landed to pick up his kit and a few
+things Bell wanted. He was going to get back aboard the
+<i>Cora</i> before they began to shorten in. It was going to
+be a ticklish job, fetching the passage from where she
+lay in those fluky airs.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Leaving Jackson&#39;s, Allen went to his own (or rather
+&quot;Quill&quot; Partington&#39;s) house, where, according to what
+I heard from Mary Regan a couple of days later, he took
+several drinks but did not do anything toward throwing
+his things together. A half-hour later he was seen hurrying
+along the beach to Bell&#39;s again, and when he came
+out from there it was in the company of a girl&mdash;plainly
+the &quot;Peacock.&quot; Paddled by a third party, who came
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page64" id="page64"></a>[pg&nbsp;64]</span>
+upon the scene at this juncture, these two went off to
+the schooner, boarding her just as she filled away on the
+first tack of the almost dead beat to the entrance of the
+narrow seaward passage. For all they knew on the
+beach, Allen was carrying out his program (with the
+little incidental of Rona&mdash;doubtless taken along at the
+last moment by way of a surprise for Bell&mdash;thrown in),
+just as he had outlined it to them. They were not hurt
+by his failure to say good-bye. They were not strong
+for the gentler amenities in the Islands, anyhow.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page65" id="page65"></a>[pg&nbsp;65]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VI<br />
+<small>COMPULSORY VOLUNTEERING</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">As</span> a matter of fact, however, there had been a very
+considerable slip-up in &quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; carefully doped
+slate. That was plain from a number of little
+things which sunk into even my absinthe-addled brain in
+the few minutes I spent in his and Rona&#39;s company while
+paddling them off to the <i>Cora</i>. How staggering a slip-up
+it must have been for him I was not able to figure until
+I got my nerves under control the following day.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was still far from pulled together when I came back
+to the village after my day of hiding (for that&#39;s what it
+amounted to) on the other side of the island. With
+my head twanging like an overstrung banjo, I was
+feverishly anxious to get home and seek relief in the
+only thing I knew would relax the tension of my breaking
+nerves. I had told Laku to &quot;putem littl&#39; fella pickaninny
+in rock-a-bye belonga him&quot; just as soon as he got
+back to the shack. This was a long-standing joke between
+us, and I knew that he would interpret aright this
+<i>bêche-de-mer</i> order to &quot;put the baby in its cradle&quot; as
+a strict injunction to lay a certain long green bottle in
+a little basket of porous coco husk, which, dampened
+and hung in a draught, answered the purpose of a crude
+refrigerator. The vision of the slender green trickle I
+should shortly pour from the dewy fresh lip of that bottle
+was drawing me on as the thought of the oasis with its
+fountain draws the thirsting desert traveller.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page66" id="page66"></a>[pg&nbsp;66]</span>
+Between horrors fancied and real&mdash;from my struggle
+at the mouth of the Bottomless Pit to the coming of the
+Ship of Death&mdash;my nerves had suffered a number of
+trying shocks since the dawning of that accursed day;
+but the one that came nearest to bowling me over I had
+still to receive. I had <i>known</i> there was a Bottomless Pit;
+I had <i>known</i> there was a Death Ship; I had <i>known</i> they
+were shooting niggers on the beach. As each of these
+horrors was projected upon my vision in turn I had accepted
+their reality as a matter of course. Didn&#39;t I see
+them with my own eyes? Didn&#39;t I continue to see them
+after I had bitten my finger? But <i>Rona, with her arm
+and her peacock shawl thrown over &quot;Slant&quot; Allen&#39;s
+shoulder, coming out of Bell&#39;s house</i>.... No, that
+wouldn&#39;t do.... That was one thing they couldn&#39;t
+put over on me. My eyes must be playing tricks on my
+brain. I must be in even worse shape than I thought.
+Never before had my fancy conjured up a thing so utterly,
+impossibly absurd. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed,
+I pulled up and started kicking the shin of one foot with
+the toe of the other. That was another little trick I had
+of proving whether or not I saw what I &quot;saw.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At the clink of the broken coral under my shuffling
+feet the girl turned her head in my direction, but, far
+from releasing &quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; neck from her embrace, she
+only drew the lanky Australian closer with her right
+arm, while with her left she beckoned me imperiously.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Whitnee, come alonga this side, washy-washy!&quot;
+Her thin clear voice cut the air like the swish of a
+rapier.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was, strangely enough, the fact that she lapsed into
+the vulgarest of <i>bêche-de-mer</i>, rather than the eagerness
+of her gesture, that drove home to my wandering wits
+the fact that Rona was confronted with difficulties, that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page67" id="page67"></a>[pg&nbsp;67]</span>
+she needed help. Verging on nervous and physical collapse
+as I was (and as I knew I would continue to be
+until I had gulped my first steadying draught from the
+cool green bottle), the realization that something concrete
+was demanded brought me instantly out of the
+half-trance in which I had walked since dawn. Still a
+sorry enough specimen, I was at least sufficiently in hand
+not to need any more finger-bitings or shin-kickings to
+know the difference between what seemed real and what
+was really real. Letting my easel go one way and my
+paint box the other, I hastened forward in answer to
+Rona&#39;s summons.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Katchem washy-washy one piecee boat,&quot; Rona began
+as I came up, her heaving breast, flushed face and flashing
+eyes revealing the emotion that held her in its
+grip.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Man-man; my word, what name this fella thing you
+do?&quot; I interrupted between breaths, blurting mixed
+<i>pidgin</i> and <i>bêche-de-mer</i> English of a brand to match
+the vile blend the girl had discharged at me.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I too much cross this fella &#39;Slan&#39;,&#39;&quot; she started to
+explain. &quot;Him too much&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;You&#39;d think she was cross with me, Whitney, if you
+could see the way she&#39;s sticking me in the neck with her
+hat pin,&quot; Allen cut in, the half-sheepish, half-amused
+grin he had worn from the first broadening as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That was the first &quot;straight&quot; English to be spoken,
+and the words had the effect of reminding Rona that
+she had been speaking nothing but low jargon from the
+outset. For weeks she had been taking the greatest pains
+to avoid both of the weird volapuks in all her chats with
+me. Pulling herself together with an effort, she strove
+again to be a purist.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;&#39;Scuse me, Whit-nee,&quot; she chirruped, paying
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page68" id="page68"></a>[pg&nbsp;68]</span>
+&quot;Slant&quot; for his sally with a prod that made him duck
+like a prize-fighter avoiding a straight-arm punch;
+&quot;&#39;scuse me, but I&#39;m veh-ry mad. This bloody boundah
+he put <i>kor-klee</i> in Bel-la&#39;s drink. He take Bel-la to
+schoonah. Now we all go off to schoonah. If Bel-la he
+dead, then I keel this boundah, &#39;Slan&#39;.&#39; You will do us
+the paddl&#39;?&mdash;ple-ese, Whit-nee.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There was a deal more that I would fain have been
+enlightened about, but my brain was clear enough now
+to understand the urgent necessity of getting off to the
+<i>Cora</i> without delay. A drugged man (or a poisoned
+one&mdash;it was not until later that I learned how that
+strange essence of the wild Papuan fig might be expected
+to act) on a plague-infested black-birder looked like just
+about the last word in hopelessness; but (I told myself)
+if there was anything I could do for my friend, it was
+up to me to try to do it. Rona seemed to have some sort
+of plan in her head, though just what she was taking
+Allen along for I didn&#39;t quite twig at the moment.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The funny part of it was that the Australian didn&#39;t
+seem particularly averse from going off to the schooner.
+Indeed, it was he who cut in to call Rona&#39;s attention to
+the fact that they were rushing preparations on the
+<i>Cora</i> for getting under way, adding: &quot;If you don&#39;t want
+to be left at the post I might suggest you whip up a
+bit.&quot; Even as he spoke the throbbing wail of a chantey
+came to our ears across the water, and I could just make
+out the blur of motion on the forecastle where a knot of
+niggers was circling round the capstan.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Washy-washy! Quick! quick! Whit-nee,&quot; implored
+Rona, leading the way, with Allen&#39;s head still in the
+crook of her arm, to the canoe; &quot;we must make the great
+hur-ee.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Luckily, the dugout, although Allen had left it pulled
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page69" id="page69"></a>[pg&nbsp;69]</span>
+well up on the beach when he landed, was half awash
+through the rising of the tide, now just about to ebb. I
+launched it without difficulty. Still with her knife at
+&quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; neck, Rona made him enter ahead of her and
+crouch in the bottom of the canoe, well forward, while
+she seated herself on the sinnet-wrapped thwart immediately
+behind his hunched shoulders. When the unabashed
+rascal coolly leaned back and started to make
+himself comfortable with an arm thrown over her knee,
+the girl stiffened with a start of repulsion. It was more
+than a prick she gave him this time, for I saw the sudden
+swell of his jaw muscles wipe out the lines of his grin
+as his teeth set over a repressed oath.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Pushing off, I slid gingerly along the port weatherboard
+until the canoe heeled just enough to bring a
+gaping hole in the starboard bow clear of the water that
+started to pour through it, and began to paddle cautiously
+inside the outrigger, the only place I could get at
+from where I sat. Our progress was, of course, slow as
+to speed and wobbly as to direction. Even at that, a
+good deal of water kept slopping in, and I couldn&#39;t blame
+Allen, who was sitting in it, for asking Rona if she
+minded if he baled a bit with his sun-helmet.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Her only reply was another prod with the needlepointed
+<i>kris</i>. (I knew it was the little Jolo dagger, for
+I had seen it as she adjusted her shawl on sitting down).
+&quot;Hur-ee, Whit-nee,&quot; she urged, quiveringly tense, and
+continued to keep her flaming gaze riveted on the
+schooner, where the latter, foot by foot, was moving up
+on her shortening chain.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">About halfway out Rona gave a start and a glad little
+cry. &quot;I see Bel-la,&quot; she laughed. &quot;He stand up by
+wheel. By jingo, he look&mdash;he look like he lick his weight
+in wile cats!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page70" id="page70"></a>[pg&nbsp;70]</span>
+That had been the big Southerner&#39;s favourite expression
+when, glowing with the reaction from his deep,
+eye-opening dive from the reef, he would come prancing
+back to his door of a morning. The sight of his bare
+muscular torso, white as marble against the dingy folds
+of the half-hoisted mainsail, must have called up in the
+girl&#39;s mind the picture of Bell breezing in from his bath,
+and brought the tersely quaint phrase to her lips. As a
+matter of fact, there was no saying at that distance <i>how</i>
+Bell looked; but it was good to see him on his feet, at
+any rate. Probably Rona had been mistaken about the
+poisoning.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I told you he was all right,&quot; Allen remarked drily,
+shifting a few inches to get clear of the water that was
+beginning to swish about his knees. &quot;He was drunk&mdash;dead
+drunk; that&#39;s all. He began to buck up an hour
+ago. Looked through my glass and saw them dousing
+him with water. First thing he did was to take a drink
+(plenty of it aboard)&mdash;saw him tilt the bottle. Then
+he must have made them open up the hatches. There&#39;s
+more than the crew lining the rail there for&#39;ard; besides&mdash;you
+don&#39;t think the slop-chute from the galley spills
+out the bait that&#39;s drawing those black fins, do you? I
+won&#39;t need to tell you they don&#39;t belong to chambered
+nautili out for an afternoon sail. There&#39;s a man-eating
+shark under every one of them. Can I lend you my
+binoculars?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">He started to slip the strap of the powerful racing
+glasses over his neck, but desisted when Rona refused to
+clear the way by lifting the point of her dagger. Save
+for maintaining that one important little point of contact,
+she ignored him completely, and &quot;Slant&quot; seemed
+rather to resent the latter more than the former.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Well, if you don&#39;t want to use it, I suppose you won&#39;t
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page71" id="page71"></a>[pg&nbsp;71]</span>
+mind if I have a bit of a look-see,&quot; he went on in half-assumed
+petulance. Rona replied with the usual prod,
+but interposed no further objection when he raised and
+began focussing the glasses.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Clubbing niggers on the fo&#39;c&#39;sl&#39;,&quot; he commented
+presently, as signs of commotion were visible forward.
+&quot;Skipper don&#39;t want &#39;em too thick on deck while he&#39;s
+getting under way, most likely.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Then, a minute later: &quot;Looks like you&#39;ll need an ice-breaker
+to clear a passage through those sharks, Whitney;
+or perhaps we can walk across their backs from the
+edge of the jam. Seem to be thick enough to give good
+solid footing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">And again, shortly: &quot;Chain almost straight-up-and-down,
+Whitney. Mudhook going to break out in a
+couple of minutes. Can&#39;t accelerate that &#39;long, long
+pull&#39; of yours, can you? Looks as if they weren&#39;t planning
+to wait for us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was a gruesome passage, that last hundred yards.
+The sharks were hardly as thick as Allen&#39;s picturesque
+hyperbole might have led one to believe, but there were
+undoubtedly more than a score of triangular dorsals
+slashing about in swift circles. But the sharks, for the
+most part, gave us a good berth. It was the things that
+<i>didn&#39;t</i> get out of the way that came near to flooring me
+at the last&mdash;black, bloated bodies, floating face down, like
+logs awash, till the canoe struck them, then to roll shudderingly
+over and sweep you with the sightless gaze of
+their wide, staring eyes as you fended with the paddle.
+Rona, her flashing glances running back and forth over
+the schooner (following Bell, who appeared to be lending
+a hand now and then on sheet or halyard), seemed not
+to see the floating horrors around us. Allen&#39;s steely
+eyes met the corpses stare for stare, and looked them
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page72" id="page72"></a>[pg&nbsp;72]</span>
+down. But upon me the horrors which passed the others
+by descended with full force. How I kept going is more
+than I can guess. But I did it. At last the loom of the
+<i>Cora&#39;s</i> blistered starboard quarter cut off the seaward
+view, and I steadied the dugout in close to the upper
+line of her weed-foul copper sheathing.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Apparently no notice whatever had been taken of us
+up to this time. Short-handed as he was, Bell was
+doubtless too busy to keep a lookout, while to the few
+niggers watching us through the wire the sight of a dugout
+carrying &quot;two fella white marsters and one fella
+Mary&quot; was of indifferent interest. All they cared about
+was getting away from the Death Ship, and they didn&#39;t
+need to be told that this &quot;pickaninny boat&quot; hadn&#39;t come
+to help forward their desires in that direction. Besides,
+the guard walking up and down behind them with
+a Lee-Enfield over his black shoulder had undoubtedly
+given them to understand that the first one to start over
+the side would be shot.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It must have been the guard who reported us finally.
+Burning with impatience, Rona was just prodding up
+Allen and ordering him to clamber aboard and tell
+&quot;Mistah Bell&quot; she wanted to speak to him, when I heard
+the shout of &quot;&#39;Vast heavin&#39;!&quot; ring out, and presently
+a familiar tousled head was poked over the top of the
+barbed wire. (I should explain, perhaps, that three or
+four strands of &quot;nigger wire&quot; are run all the way round
+the rail of every labour-recruiting ship. This is done
+with a double purpose&mdash;to make it difficult for the
+blacks aboard to bolt, should the spirit move them, and
+to serve as a partial protection while at anchor against
+the always imminent attacks of the treacherous shore
+natives.)</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There was a look in Bell&#39;s face I had never seen there
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page73" id="page73"></a>[pg&nbsp;73]</span>
+before. The old familiar furrows of dissipation showed
+deep around the mouth, but if he had been drinking
+heavily, there was nothing to indicate it. What struck
+me at once was his air of determination&mdash;I might almost
+say exaltation. His head was held high, his shoulders
+were thrown back, and he might have been treading the
+deck of a battle-ship as he swung up to the rail. Everything
+about him betokened the man who has taken a
+great resolve, and means to see it through if it kills
+him.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Although I had heard no word of it up to that moment,
+I understood at once that Bell had taken command
+of the schooner, that he was going to try to sail her to
+some port where the plague-stricken blacks could be
+given medical attention and kept under control. It was
+like Bell to take on a job like that, I said to myself; but
+he would do it as a matter of course. It would never
+occur to him that there was any alternative, just as with
+an order in the Navy. There must be something more to
+account for that air of high resolve.... I couldn&#39;t
+help thinking that, and I was right. He let out what it
+was shortly.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It&#39;s right nice of you to come off to say good-bye,
+honey&mdash;and of you, too, Whitney,&quot; Bell called down
+genially; &quot;but, as we&#39;ah not quite what you&#39;d call fixed
+fo&#39; cawlahs, you&#39;d bettah do it from wheah you a&#39;. You,
+Mistah Allen, if you have fin&#39;ly made up youah mind in
+the mattah of signin&#39; up for the voyage, I reckon we can
+find accommodation fo&#39; you. But fust, let me say that
+if you&#39;ve got any mo&#39; of that dope you put in my whisky
+stowed about youah puson, you&#39;d best scuppah it befo&#39;
+you climb abo&#39;d. I doan quite twig what you did it fo&#39;,
+unless it was to dodge out of goin&#39; yo&#39;self, afta you had
+promised to help me see the job through. But now,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page74" id="page74"></a>[pg&nbsp;74]</span>
+seein&#39; you&#39;ve come off of youah own free will, I reckon
+I can fo&#39;get that lil&#39; slip, providin&#39; it ain&#39;t repeated.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Although Rona could hardly have known the exact
+meaning of &quot;free will,&quot; she caught the drift of Bell&#39;s
+remarks readily enough. &quot;This rotten boundah&quot;
+(bounder was the worst name she knew to call a man in
+&quot;pure&quot; English) &quot;not come himself,&quot; the girl cut in
+shrilly, speaking for the first time. &quot;I fetch him. See!&quot;
+and she threw back the folds of the peacock shawl to
+reveal the bright wavy blade of her little <i>kris</i> boring into
+the hollow between Allen&#39;s right shoulder-blade and the
+corded column of his sinewy neck.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;From the reef I see you an&#39; this fella &#39;Slan&#39;&#39;&quot;
+(Allen&#39;s shoulder quivered under her designative prod)
+&quot;go off to schoonah in boat,&quot; Rona went on, avoiding as
+well as she could in her excitement the jargons she knew
+Bell disliked so much. &quot;Bime-by I see &#39;Slan&#39;&#39; come
+back&mdash;you stop schoonah. When I go home I smell&#39;em
+<i>kor-klee</i>. You no sabe <i>kor-klee</i>, Bel-la. I sabe him too
+much long time. I smell <i>kor-klee</i> in one glass&mdash;not in
+othah. Pu-retty soon this boundah &#39;Slan&#39;&#39; come house.
+He say: &#39;Bel-la go off in schoonah. Now I stop with you
+all time!&#39; Then I sabe what for <i>kor-klee</i> veh-ry queeck.
+So I katch&#39;em this fella by neck an&#39; fetch&#39;m off schoonah.
+I say myself: &#39;If Bel-la dead, I keel this boundah; if
+Bel-la not dead, <i>he</i> keel him.&#39; Heah he is, Bel-la&mdash;you
+fix him pu-lenty. Then we go home-side.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;So that&#39;s what upset the appl&#39;-ca&#39;t?&quot; There was
+nothing of the wrath of the jealous male in Bell&#39;s deep,
+chesty laugh. &quot;Well, I&#39;m not blamin&#39; Mistah Allen fo&#39;
+fallin&#39; in love with you, honey. No propah man could
+quite help doin&#39; that, as I see it. Just the same, I can&#39;t
+quite approve of his way of goin&#39; about it, no&#39; the occasion
+he took fo&#39; it, eethah. So you brought him off fo&#39;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page75" id="page75"></a>[pg&nbsp;75]</span>
+me to execute, honey. That&#39;s right rich. Youah a
+brick, you shuah a&#39;. But I won&#39;t be killin&#39; him, honey&mdash;no,
+hahdly that. I&#39;m just goin&#39; to sign him on as
+Fust Mate of the <i>Cora Andrews</i>, just as he &#39;lowed he do
+at the beginnin&#39;. Of co&#39;se I won&#39;t be goin&#39; home with
+you, honey. Doan you see I&#39;m in command of this heah
+ship?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A sudden shiver shook Rona&#39;s tense frame at those
+last words. Half rising, she started to speak, but Bell
+cut her short with lifted hand and went on himself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Mistah Allen,&quot; he said, addressing himself now to
+the huddled figure in the bottom of the canoe; &quot;I said
+I was goin&#39; to sign you on an&#39; take you with me. Let
+me qualify those wuds just a trifle. I&#39;ll pumit you to
+go if you&#39;ll agree in advance to my tums. I might explain
+that theah&#39;s two dif&#39;rent views in the mattah of
+the best way of avoidin&#39; catchin&#39; the pleg. One is, that
+you must keep strictly soba&mdash;straight teetotal; the otha&mdash;diametrically
+opposed to the fust&mdash;is that you must
+keep dead drunk&mdash;pif&#39;ucated. Now I reckon that it&#39;s
+goin&#39; to take at least one white man to sail this hookah
+all the way to Australyuh; that is to say, at least one
+white man must steah cleah of the pleg fo&#39; the entahprise
+to be crowned with success. But as theah ain&#39;t
+no suah data as to which is the safe an&#39; sutin way to
+&#39;complish this, I figa theah&#39;s nothin&#39; else to do but sta&#39;t
+with two white men, and let one of &#39;em try the fust
+purscripshun an&#39; the otha the second.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Now (tho&#39; I must admit it&#39;s a bit high-handed on
+my pa&#39;t) I&#39;ve already picked the one I&#39;m goin&#39; to take;
+so, if you elect to sign on, Mistah Allen, you&#39;ll have to
+take the otha. Theah&#39;s a dozen cases of whisky abo&#39;d&mdash;not
+Jawny Wakah, to be suah, but still fayah to middlin&#39;
+cawn jooce&mdash;an&#39; I had to toss off a tumblah o&#39; two of it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page76" id="page76"></a>[pg&nbsp;76]</span>
+as an antidote fo&#39; that dream-provokin&#39; dope you wished
+onto me. But&quot;&mdash;Bell&#39;s head was up and his shoulders
+back again&mdash;&quot;<i>that&#39;s the last</i>.&quot; His square jaw snapped
+shut on the words like a sprung wolf-trap. Now I understood.
+<i>That</i> was his Great Resolve.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Bell paused, and in the waiting silence I became
+aware for the first time of the low rumble of groaning
+from the bowels of the ship.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;So you&#39;ll see, Mistah Allen&quot;&mdash;the corners of his
+mouth relaxed into a smile as Bell resumed&mdash;&quot;that since
+the Skippah&#39;s plumped to try the &#39;soba man&#39; preventative,
+theah&#39;s nothin&#39; left for the Mate to do but to fight
+off the pleg by the &#39;drunk man&#39; method. Theah&#39;ll only
+be two of us, you see, an&#39; it&#39;s theahfo&#39; up to us to hedge
+ouah bets an&#39; play safe. But you won&#39;t be havin&#39; to
+go if you ain&#39;t hankerin&#39; after it. I&#39;m not (in spite of
+what the way you&#39;ve been &#39;shanghaied&#39; by&mdash;by Miss
+Rona might lead you to think) runnin&#39; a press-gang.
+It&#39;s entiahly up to you as to whethah o&#39; not you want
+to sail as the drunken Mate of the soba Skippah of a
+black-birdah full of pleg-rotten niggahs. You see, Mistah
+Allen&quot;&mdash;the whimsical grin broadened&mdash;&quot;you see
+I&#39;m not tryin&#39; to luah you on by paintin&#39; the picture any
+brightah than it is. &#39;Drunk Mate of a soba Skippah&#39;&mdash;do
+you get that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen made no reply, that is, not directly. Raising
+his hand to fend the expected prod from Rona, he
+wriggled halfway round and started to speak to me,
+where, in the stern, I still paddled the canoe gently
+against the turning tide and held it close alongside the
+schooner. For an instant I was puzzled with the look
+on the side-face he presented, but almost at once saw
+the reason for it. For the first time in my recollection
+the thin upper lip was uncurled by its mocking smile.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page77" id="page77"></a>[pg&nbsp;77]</span>
+By that, I thought I could gauge something of the extent
+of his slip-up. Yet&mdash;if I could have read the man&#39;s
+mind&mdash;I would have known that it was something even
+deeper than the wreck of personal hopes that had sobered
+&quot;Slant&quot; Allen. What it was I learned later.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Whitney,&quot; he began, the words coming huskily from
+the dryness of his throat; &quot;I don&#39;t dope a man&#39;s
+chances for finishing inside the distance flag in this little
+Handicap of Captain Bell&#39;s as better than a hundred to
+one. That&#39;s long odds to be on the short end of when
+a man&#39;s life is his stake. I don&#39;t give a damn about my
+life. Anyone will tell you that. I&#39;ve thrown it into
+the pool on worse than a hundred-to-one shot a good
+many times before this. But&mdash;well, I&#39;d rather appreciate
+it if&mdash;if you could see fit to make a point of not
+telling my friends on the beach that&mdash;that I had any
+help in&mdash;in volunteering&mdash;volunteering to lend Captain
+Bell a hand in getting this hooker on her way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Rona, sensing that her responsibilities, so far as Allen
+was concerned, were at an end, raised the <i>kris</i> from his
+neck and thrust it into the knot of her <i>sulu</i>. The Australian
+lifted himself lightly to his feet and looked Bell
+straight between the eyes. &quot;Lead me to your whisky,&quot;
+he said in a steadied voice.... &quot;By Gawd, I need
+it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Poising an instant on the middle of a forward thwart
+of the canoe, he sprang to the rail, clambered smartly
+to the top strand of the barbed wire, and swung lightly
+down to the deck on the main backstay.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was at this juncture that I went through the feeble
+motions of trying to act the part of a man myself. I
+pointed out to Bell that I had knocked about on yachts
+a good deal, and, while I couldn&#39;t claim to be much of a
+hand with niggers, was probably as good a navigator
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page78" id="page78"></a>[pg&nbsp;78]</span>
+as Allen was. I also said something about three men
+standing a better chance than two of pulling off the
+job, and even added, half jocularly, that I was about
+ready to go to Australia anyway, as I had had word
+that an exhibition of my pictures was due to open in
+Sydney in a fortnight. I only hope my words didn&#39;t
+sound as hollow to Bell as they did to me&mdash;for they were
+the last ones I was ever to speak to him.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Bell&#39;s gentlemanliness&mdash;nay, rather, his gentleness&mdash;came
+home to me more in what he refrained from saying
+in his reply than in what he said. He did <i>not</i> say that
+he had no absinthe aboard, and that, as a consequence,
+I would be only more useless and undependable than if
+he had. He did <i>not</i> say that his hands would be full
+enough looking after crazy niggers without having a
+crazy white man to keep an eye on. He even refrained
+from recalling to my mind a story I had told him of a
+French official in New Caledonia whose absinthe supply
+had run out while he was at an isolated post, and who,
+unable to stand the deprivation to the end of the three-days&#39;
+run in to Noumea in a trading cutter, had taken
+a header over the side almost in sight of port&mdash;and
+relief.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">All he <i>did</i> say was: &quot;Nonsense, ol&#39; man.... Quite
+out of the question.... Nothin&#39; doin&#39;.&quot; Then, as
+though to soften the curtness of his refusal:
+&quot;&#39;Twouldn&#39;t be propa, Whitney, to set a man that can
+slap colour on canvas like you can to herdin&#39; sick niggas.
+Besides, I&#39;m countin&#39; on you to stick &#39;roun&#39; Kai an&#39; be
+a sort o&#39; fatha an&#39; motha&#39; to Rona while I&#39;m gone.
+Youah the only man on the island I&#39;d ca&#39;ah to trust with
+that job.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There was nothing more to be said after that, I told
+myself; nothing more to be done. I gave up limply and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page79" id="page79"></a>[pg&nbsp;79]</span>
+relapsed into wondering how long it would take me to
+paddle Rona ashore and traverse the quarter of a mile
+of coral clinkers between the place where she would land
+and the long green bottle cooling in its breeze-swept
+swing beneath my coco leaf jalousies.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page80" id="page80"></a>[pg&nbsp;80]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VII<br />
+<small>RONA COMES ABOARD</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Well,</span> I still think I was right on the score of
+the futility of further words. Nothing more
+that I could have <i>said</i> would have changed the
+situation; but was there nothing more that I could have
+<i>done</i>? Rona answered that question, so far as she herself
+was concerned, then and there, though hardly in a
+way that I had the wit or the will to profit by.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Bell&#39;s answer to the girl&#39;s anxious appeal that she be
+allowed to join him had been no less brusque and decided
+than that he had made to mine. &quot;Sorry, honey.
+No &#39;commodations fo&#39; ladies this voyage. You wun&#39;t intended
+to nu&#39;se niggas, anyhow. Can&#39;t be done, honey.&quot;
+Then, to me: &quot;Time to be shovin&#39; off now, Whitney.
+Tide&#39;s already on the tu&#39;n. Right sorry to have to
+hurry you-all this way.&quot; Not a word of farewell....
+Navy training would not down.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Bel-la, leesten to me!&quot; There was more threat than
+entreaty in Rona&#39;s voice now. Beyond doubt, he had
+never crossed her before. That she was hurt and angry
+showed in every line of her tense figure, as she balanced
+precariously with her left foot on the outrigger and her
+right on the port weatherboard. &quot;Bel-la, by crackee, I
+say I go with you! If you let me come on schoona, all
+good. If you say no, by crackee, I&mdash;I sweem! I sweem
+afta you. You know I good sweema, Bel-la.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Swim! I knew the girl well enough to know it was
+not a bluff, and Bell must have known even better. I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page81" id="page81"></a>[pg&nbsp;81]</span>
+had heard him speak many a time of her absolute lack of
+fear. Also, although at that moment his imagination
+was not quickened (as mine was) by the drunken roll
+a black cadaver under the counter gave as a questing
+nose pushed into it from below, he must have known
+what shrift a swimmer would have in those shark-infested
+waters.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Bell&#39;s mouth twitched at her words (I could just see
+his head and shoulders where he conned ship with a foot
+on the starboard rail and a hand in the shrouds of the
+mainmast), but he made no reply. Doubtless he counted
+on my doing what I could to fish her out before anything
+happened. Sweeping his eye fore and aft, he noted
+how the turning tide had swung the schooner so that she
+headed directly away from the passage, with the fluky
+puffs of the freshening trade wind coming over her port
+quarter. Then, cautioning the men standing by at the
+fore and main sheets to &quot;take in sma&#39;t&quot; as she gathered
+way, he bellowed the order to &quot;Heave away!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The ululant surge of the <i>bêche-de-mer</i> anchor chantey
+floated aft as the blacks resumed their rhythmic tramp
+around the capstan.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&quot;<i>What name you b&#39;longa?</i></span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>What name you b&#39;longa?</i></span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>You Mary come catch&#39;m ride.</i></span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>What name you b&#39;longa?</i></span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>Come hear my songa&mdash;</i></span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>I take you to Sydney-side.</i>&quot;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">I have often wondered if the frank invitation in the
+swinging lines might not have been the inspiration of
+Rona&#39;s astonishing action.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The obligato of the incoming chain grinding through
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page82" id="page82"></a>[pg&nbsp;82]</span>
+the hawse-pipe had accompanied the chantey for only a
+stave or two, when Allen&#39;s clear, ringing voice (he had
+not needed to be told where a mate belonged when a
+ship was getting under way) announced from the forecastle:
+&quot;Anchor broken out, sir!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Walk lively! Get catted &#39;fore she hits the passage!&quot;
+Bell roared back, anxious lest the great length
+of chain still out would make trouble where the lagoon
+shoaled at its seaward entrance. A moment later he
+came aft and relieved the man at the wheel, ordering
+the latter to stand by to keep the mainsheet from fouling
+the nigger wire. It was the gigantic Malay, Ranga-Ro,
+bulking mightily against the purpling eastern twilight
+sky, who responded with a deep-rumbling &quot;Ay, ay, su!&quot;
+and sprang to the starboard rail to clear the sagging
+lines running back from the unstable-minded main
+boom. Then the amazing thing befell.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As the schooner gathered way and began gliding ahead
+under the impulse of the half-filled mainsail, Rona had
+crouched as though for a spring at the towing whaleboat.
+The painter of the latter, however, made fast on the port
+side of the taffrail, brought the yawning double-ender
+too far away for anything but a creature with wings to
+bridge the gap. Seeing it was impossible to jump to
+the whaleboat, she straightened up again, swaying undulantly
+as the dugout bobbed about in the gently heaving
+wake of the schooner.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Bel-la, I come!&quot; There was more of anger than
+despair in that steel-clear cry; more indignation than
+resignation in the hair-trigger poise of the reed-slender
+figure. The instant that she hesitated on the chance
+that this final threat might soften Bell&#39;s resolve was all
+that prevented what at best could not have been other
+than a nasty mess for the both of us. There was no
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page83" id="page83"></a>[pg&nbsp;83]</span>
+possible chance for me to intercept her before she
+jumped, and, once in the water, I knew she was quite
+equal to upsetting the canoe rather than be dragged
+back into it. As for help from the schooner&mdash;Bell had
+determined upon his course, and his eyes, like his mind,
+were directed ahead, not astern.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was Ranga-Ro (deftly fending the slack of the
+mainsheet from the nigger wire), not Bell, who turned
+at the sound of Rona&#39;s cry. Whether or not he had
+glimpsed her during the previous ten minutes, I am not
+sure; but for the girl (whose eyes had been on Bell
+from first to last), I was certain that the big Malay had
+not impinged upon her vision before. Recognition of his
+racial characteristics must have been instantaneous.
+They were written for even an ethnic novice to read in
+the giant&#39;s straight black hair, high cheek bones, wide
+mouth, with its betel nut-stained teeth, and the light
+golden yellow skin clothing the monstrously muscled
+limbs. The peculiar twist of the loosely-looped <i>sarong</i>
+and a wisp of rolled leaf behind an ear would have
+located him even more definitely; but to Rona the fact
+that there was an indubitable Malay staring into her
+eyes from the nearest rail of the receding schooner, made
+the incidental of his being a Moluccan&mdash;a Spice Island
+man&mdash;of little moment. She was used to handling big
+golden-yellow men.... They had proved a deal more
+manageable than a certain white man she could mention.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I heard, without understanding, the swift run of her
+tripplingly-tongued Malay, and only the sibilant hiss of
+&quot;<i>Lekas! Lekas!</i>&quot; at the end told me that what she had
+ordered done was to be done &quot;quickly! quickly!&quot; Her
+next order&mdash;to me&mdash;was no less insistent. &quot;Paddl&#39;
+catch&#39;n schoona, Whit-nee! Paddl&#39; lak hell!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The girl&#39;s imperious mood brooked no delay. My
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page84" id="page84"></a>[pg&nbsp;84]</span>
+work was cut out clear for me, and, everything considered,
+I am not at all sure that the yellow man&mdash;on the
+score of zeal, at least&mdash;outdid the white man in carrying
+out the orders he had received. Slipping back to the
+stern to even up the down-by-the-head trim Rona&#39;s presence
+in the bow gave the cranky dugout, I plied the
+stubby paddle with all the strength and skill at my command.
+The crazy craft rode higher now with Allen out
+of it, but even so the speed with which I drove it threw
+a wave inches above the hole in the crumbling bow.
+The up-curling water poured through in a steady stream.
+My race, I saw, was against that rising flood in the
+bottom of the canoe quite as much as against the
+schooner.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There were only eight or ten yards to make up on the
+still slowly moving <i>Cora</i>, and, barring swamping or a
+collision with a shark or a floating nigger, I felt that I
+could do it easily. But what to do when we had caught
+her up? Ah, there was where the yellow man was to
+come in. Ranga was just as busily carrying out his
+orders as was I. &quot;Clear away the nigger wire and stand
+by to pick me up,&quot; had plainly been the drift of that
+swift stream of Malay Rona had directed at him. Superbly
+disdainful of the sharp barbs that were slashing
+his bare palms to ribbons, he forced the whole savage
+entanglement down to the deck with no more apparent
+effort than a child would have used in collapsing
+a string-strung &quot;cat&#39;s-cradle.&quot; Rove through steel
+stanchions set at close intervals along the rail, the wire
+could not be torn entirely clear. So the direct and
+simple-minded Ranga did the next best thing&mdash;gave a
+mighty heave and brought three or four of the nearest
+stanchions down to the deck in the tangle of wire they
+had supported.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page85" id="page85"></a>[pg&nbsp;85]</span>
+An order from Bell at this juncture would probably
+have stopped this wholesale destruction of his protective
+entanglement; or perhaps I should say <i>possibly</i> rather
+than probably. One cannot be sure just how strong a
+force Rona had lashed into action. It has since occurred
+to me that the man must have been gripped
+with something very closely akin to the madness of <i>amok</i>
+to handle that wire with his naked hands as he did.
+It may be that the only one from whom he would have
+brooked interference was the one who had fired that
+savage train of energy&mdash;Rona. These points were not
+to be put to the test, however. From first to last Bell&mdash;although,
+from the wrecking of the wire almost under
+his very eyes, he must have known what was going on&mdash;never
+looked back.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">What with the settling of the half-swamped canoe and
+the accelerating speed of the schooner, it was touch-and-go
+at the end. I had gained by feet at first; then by
+inches; and finally, with but a couple of yards more
+needed to bring the bow up even with the schooner&#39;s
+counter, I realized that I was no better than holding
+my own. It was the last ounce of reserve in my aching
+frame that I called upon for that final spurt. Rona
+must have sensed that I was going my limit, for she said
+no word ... only crouched, tense as a waiting wild-cat,
+for the moment of her spring.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">For the first few seconds the gap closed quickly as the
+canoe gathered increased headway from the impulse of
+my wildly driven paddle; then more slowly and more
+slowly, until, again, I was no better than holding even.
+Another foot, and the jump would be safe. Bending low
+to make the most of my expiring strength, my eyes wandered
+from the goal for an instant. It was a shuddering
+gasp of consternation from the bow that brought them
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page86" id="page86"></a>[pg&nbsp;86]</span>
+back again. The swooning mainsail, filled by the freshening
+puffs, was beginning to make its pull felt in earnest.
+The gap had widened. Instead of gaining a foot
+I had lost two. That dished me completely. &quot;No good,
+Rona&mdash;I&#39;m&mdash;all in,&quot; I groaned, and slid limply down
+into the bottom of the canoe, where the water now lapped
+level with the thwarts.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Half fainting though I was, the picture of that super-simian
+spring of Rona&#39;s is indelibly etched upon my
+memory. Save for that one quick gasp, she made no
+sound. The jump was an impossible one ... sheerly
+impossible. And yet&mdash; Only a swift gathering of muscles&mdash;very
+like the final quivering hunch of an ape that
+leaps from tree to tree&mdash;heralded action. Then, with a
+back-kick that forced the already half-submerged bow
+right under, she flashed up to her full height and
+launched her body into the air.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was a good jump,&mdash;a wonderful one, indeed, considering
+the unstable take-off&mdash;but of course she missed
+the rail&mdash;and by feet. That didn&#39;t surprise me.... I
+had seen it was inevitable. But what I had <i>not</i> reckoned
+upon was the astonishing length of Ranga&#39;s mighty left
+arm. Standing by with a bight of the mainsheet gripped
+in his right hand to keep from overbalancing, he had
+sprung to the top of the rail as Rona jumped, leaning
+out at all of an angle of forty-five degrees, probably
+more. It was into the solidly pliant muscles of his great
+corded left wrist, extended to the full reach of the arm,
+that Rona clawed with the last half inch of her out-stretched
+fingers&mdash;clawed and <i>held</i>. I say <i>clawed into</i>,
+not clutched or seized. The girl&#39;s hold on Ranga&#39;s wrist
+was not that of an acrobat grabbing over the bar for
+which he has jumped (her leap was short by an inch
+at least of giving her a chance to do that), but rather
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page87" id="page87"></a>[pg&nbsp;87]</span>
+that of a flung cat clawing into the limb or the trunk of
+a tree. With less strength of fingers or length of nails
+her hands would merely have brushed the outstretched
+arm and missed a hold.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Under the impact of that flying hundred and twenty
+pounds (in spite of her slenderness, Rona must have
+weighed quite that) of bone and muscle, striking, as it
+did, just where the greatest leverage would be exerted,
+Ranga was all but swung round and thrown from his
+footing. The hastily-seized mainsheet was hardly a scientifically-run
+guy for the leaning tower of his stressed
+frame, nor did the wreck of the barbed wire entanglement
+writhing over the rail offer the solidest of foundations.
+Back and forth he swayed, like the half unstepped
+mast of a grounded sloop; then steadied, quiveringly, up
+to his original tense slant.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The acrobatic miracle wrought by Ranga in swinging
+Rona&#39;s precariously hanging form inboard was the most
+perfect feat of strength and balance I ever saw, or ever
+expect to see. It looked as sheerly impossible as the
+jump had looked&mdash;and was accomplished scarcely less
+quickly. The drawing up of the extended left arm
+(what a marvellous rippling and bunching of golden muscles
+that was!) brought the girl&#39;s pendant form close in
+against the corrugated bulge of the giant&#39;s chest, reducing
+the terrific leverage by a good half. A similar
+doubling up of the right, with a sudden tug on the
+mainsheet at the end of it, did the rest. For an instant
+the great rangy rack of corded muscles balanced erect in
+the midst of the wire-tangle festooned over the rail; then
+jumped lightly down beyond and deposited its burden on
+the deck.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Hardly ten seconds could have elapsed from the instant
+of Rona&#39;s jump to the one in which Ranga plumped
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page88" id="page88"></a>[pg&nbsp;88]</span>
+her down beside Bell at the wheel. The gap between
+the canoe and the schooner had widened to hardly twenty
+yards. I could see both the Malay and the girl quite
+distinctly as, with the latter still looped in the crook
+of his fingernail-torn left arm, he poised for a moment
+on the rail. Neither appeared to have turned a hair.
+Neither seemed in the least flustered ... might have
+been in the habit of doing that sort of thing every day
+for all the excitement they showed about it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The first thing Ranga did, as the dropped mainsheet
+gave him a free hand, was to reach to the knot of his
+<i>sarong</i> and satisfy himself that the little bamboo flute
+tucked in there had ridden out the storm. And Rona&mdash;her
+first move was to gather up and stow an amber-streaming
+corner of the peacock shawl, which was
+threatening to catch in an uprearing strand of the nigger
+wire. Those two funny little incidentals complete my
+recollections of that breathless quarter-minute. Whether
+Rona, or Bell, or anyone else on the schooner waved
+good-bye in my direction I do not recall. Ranga was
+taking in the slack of the mainsheet when I looked again,
+and Bell, peering up at the flapping headsails, was
+grinding away at the wheel. Two or three shots rang
+out following a commotion forward&mdash;probably fired to
+check a fresh up-surge of the blacks from below.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As Bell brought her round in a wide circle, the <i>Cora&#39;s</i>
+sails were flattened in and she began to beat up toward
+the entrance of the passage in a series of short tacks.
+As she headed in past the quay, I heard a burst of cheers
+roll up from a knot of humanity blurring the beach in
+front of Jackson&#39;s. It was just a big, full-throated general
+whoop, that first one, but it was quickly followed by
+a number of other volleys of &quot;huroars&quot; that seemed to
+carry suggestions of control and leadership. The last of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page89" id="page89"></a>[pg&nbsp;89]</span>
+these was a hearty &quot;three-times-three,&quot; topped off with
+a &quot;tiger.&quot; &quot;Cheering the parting heroes by name,&quot; I
+muttered to myself, and wondered who that last rousing
+&quot;tiger&quot; was meant to speed. I was still speculating
+when the sharp whish of a heeling dorsal, as a sheering
+shark avoided the submerged outrigger by a hair,
+awakened me to a rude realization of the fact that the
+swift tropic night had all but fallen and that I was
+drifting out with the tide in a holed and barely floating
+dugout.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Of all the ebbings of the tide of courage that my sorrily
+spent life had known, and had still to know, those
+next few minutes&mdash;with the <i>Cora</i> dissolving into the
+swimming dusk as she beat out through the passage, the
+weirdly green wakes of the sharks lacing the oily-black
+water with welts of phosphorescence as they assembled
+for their ghastly banquet, and my swamped canoe teetering
+in balance between positive and negative buoyancy&mdash;registered
+low-water mark. I have never heard
+of a despairing absinthe slave trying to break his bonds
+at the end of the day. It is invariably at the end of
+the night that he makes his break for liberty&mdash;at the
+beginning of the day he has not the courage to face.
+But it was the shame of the yellow in me, rather than
+the green, that held empire now. Rona had brooked no
+refusal of her demand to be taken on the <i>Cora</i>. Why
+had I? She had been ready to swim for it. Why should
+not I? Surely the sea, better than anything else, would
+wash that yellow stain from my honour and leave it
+white at the last. I didn&#39;t even have to screw my nerve
+up to the point of jumping over. Listing heavily to
+starboard as the half-capsized dugout was, one little inch
+edged to the right, and not even the leverage of the outrigger
+could keep it from overturning. Just the inclination
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page90" id="page90"></a>[pg&nbsp;90]</span>
+of my shoulders would do the trick.... I would
+not even have to take the initiative to the extent of
+edging along. Surely&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">With a quick gasp, I slid sharply to one side&mdash;but it
+was to the left&mdash;the outrigger side. The great starshaped
+welter of green luminescence, where a half-dozen
+wallowing man-eaters nuzzled into a bobbing witch-fire-streaked
+shape of unreflecting opacity, proved too much
+for my last unbroken filament of nerve&mdash;all that I
+needed to make my honour white. I had always dreaded
+sharks, and it was my horror of them now that checked
+the worthiest impulse that had stirred me that day. The
+momentarily eclipsed image of the cooling green bottle
+took shape again before my eyes, and, after that, there
+was nothing to do but make the best fight I could to
+reach it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Proceeding with infinite caution to avoid the upset
+which I now feared above everything in the world, I
+crawled forward along the outrigger side and stopped
+the hole in the bow with my folded drill jacket, as a
+necessary preliminary to beginning to bail out with my
+waterproof sun-helmet. But before I turned to on what
+could have hardly proved other than a hopeless task,
+the sound of oars and voices reached my ears, and presently
+the bow of a hard-pulled whaleboat came pushing
+up out of the darkness. It was old Jackson whose
+strong arm reached out and dragged me in over the
+gunwale. When they got back their breaths lost in
+cheering the departing schooner, he explained, after depositing
+my limp form in the stern sheets, Doc Wyndham
+bawled over to them from &quot;Quarantine&quot; that some cove
+had been left behind in a foundered canoe. Jackson
+himself reckoned that the Doc was beginning to go off
+his nut and see things; but as several of the others
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page91" id="page91"></a>[pg&nbsp;91]</span>
+seemed to have hazy recollections of something of the
+same kind, it was thought best to put off and investigate.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;&#39;Ow&#39;d you &#39;appen to miss c&#39;nections?&quot; Jackson
+asked sympathetically. &quot;I spotted you paddlin&#39; the
+canoe off, an&#39; we was so sure the Skipper &#39;ad signed you
+on that we give a speshul w&#39;oop in your &#39;onour. &#39;W&#39;at&#39;s
+the matter wiv W&#39;itney?&#39; I bellered (&#39;member the night
+you learned us that one?&mdash;time the looted fizz from the
+<i>Levuka</i> was on tap); an&#39; the boys cum back wiv: &#39;&#39;E&#39;s
+all right!&mdash;you bet!&mdash;Ev&#39;ry time!&#39;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;That wasn&#39;t the big &#39;three-times-three&#39; at the end,
+was it, Jack?&quot; I asked, my face burning with shame at
+the thought.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Well, no; &#39;ardly that un,&quot; was the half-apologetic
+reply. &quot;That ripsnorter was in &#39;onour uv &#39;Slant&#39; Allen.
+Long time pal uv all uv us, &#39;e is. Slash-bangin&#39; finisher,
+li&#39;l ol&#39; &#39;Slant.&#39;... Trust &#39;im allus to be on &#39;and
+w&#39;en they&#39;re liftin&#39; &#39;ell&#39;s &#39;atches.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I knew then that I wasn&#39;t going to be tumbling over
+myself to tell &quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; friends on the beach that his
+volunteering to go with the <i>Cora</i> had been just a shade
+less voluntary than they reckoned. <i>He</i> had not pulled
+up dead at his first hurdle as I had, anyhow. No, until
+I knew more of what had transpired earlier in the day,
+I was not going to give the man away; and not to his
+old friends in any case. I would do at least that much
+homage to his nerve.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Seeing how dead beat I was, Jackson waved back the
+crowd at the quay and headed me straight for home.
+He knew what I needed, and I was as grateful for the
+bluff old outlaw&#39;s unspoken sympathy as I was for the
+help of his sustaining arm. With rare delicacy, he
+avoided being a witness to my assault on the green bottle
+by leaving me at the door. Like all the rest of those
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page92" id="page92"></a>[pg&nbsp;92]</span>
+rough, red-blooded roysterers of Kai, Jackson felt that
+habitual absinthe drinking was degenerate, almost immoral....
+All right for a &quot;Froggy,&quot; of course, but
+not for a proper white man.... A thing that a real
+self-respecting beach-comber would never allow himself
+to be guilty of. The fact (which could not be concealed
+for long) that I was known to be addicted to the habit
+had taken even more living down than my painting,
+especially when they learned I was straight Yankee and
+not a &quot;<i>We-we</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I drank hungrily at first&mdash;gulping glass after glass
+of the cool green liquid,&mdash;but stopped just as soon as I
+found my nerves were steadied and before the first stage
+of &quot;elevation&quot; was entered upon. (A seasoned drinker
+takes some time to reach the latter.) Unspeakably tired
+physically, I dropped off to sleep almost as soon as the
+absinthe relaxed the tension on my nerves. My rest was
+dreamless and untroubled&mdash;or comparatively so.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page93" id="page93"></a>[pg&nbsp;93]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII<br />
+<small>I LEAVE THE ISLAND</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Rolling</span> out of bed at the end of twelve straight
+hours of sleep, I found the Trades blowing fresh
+and strong again, and the air&mdash;after the soddenness
+of the past week&mdash;almost bracing. A plunge
+from the reef and a piping hot breakfast of fried clams
+and duck eggs&mdash;my first solid food in over thirty-six
+hours&mdash;bucked me up astonishingly. For almost the first
+time since I came to the island, I was out before ten
+o&#39;clock&mdash;and well in hand, too. I had to be....
+There was much that it was up to me to learn&mdash;and perhaps
+to act upon.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That which I most desired to get some line upon was
+what Allen had been driving at in drugging Bell, or
+even, possibly, trying to poison him. What was <i>kor-klee</i>?
+(of which Rona appeared to be so terrified), and
+how did it act? were questions which I wanted especially
+to find the answers to. Was it a drug with a delayed
+action, following a preliminary stupefaction of comparative
+mildness? If so&mdash;no, there was nothing that could
+be done for Bell in that case; but, as a friend of his, I
+might do what I could to square the account later on.
+There was no lack of confidence <i>that</i> morning. The reaction
+(which had eluded me completely the day before)
+was strong upon me, and I felt quite equal to any situation
+that might arise. I still blushed with shame at the
+thought of the contemptible figure I had cut from dawn
+to darkness of the day previous, but I was ready to make
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page94" id="page94"></a>[pg&nbsp;94]</span>
+such atonement as was humanly possible. It was merely
+one of my &quot;high&quot; moods coming three or four hours
+ahead of time. I could have slung my colours with
+telling effect that morning, if there had been a chance
+for me to get at canvas.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">From one and another at Jackson&#39;s I gathered a fairly
+connected account of what had happened during the
+hours I was away on the leeward side of the island.
+The salient incidents of this I have already set down.
+None of them knew much of anything about <i>kor-klee</i>,
+but all agreed that Doc Wyndham would be sure to be
+an authority upon it. I dropped the subject for the
+moment, as I did not care to be pressed for an explanation
+of why I sought the information. The next day I
+slipped quietly over and had a long-distance interview
+with the learned Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Doc had buried the <i>Cora&#39;s</i> recruiting agent the
+night the schooner sailed, doing everything except the
+digging of the grave with his own hands. He had then
+returned home and shut himself in for his ten days of
+solitary quarantine. Solitary is hardly the word, though.
+Wyndham was far from being alone. Unlike Bell, he was
+a &quot;spree drinker&quot; rather than a speedy tippler. It was
+his habit (as he put it himself) to accumulate aridity during
+five or six months of the most rigorous teetotalism,
+and then blow up the dam and make the desert blossom
+like the rose under the stimulus of a generous flood.
+The breaking up of the Monsoon and the culmination of
+Doc Wyndham&#39;s biennial sprees were bracketed together
+in the Islands&#39; list of seasonal disturbances.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The desert was hardly due for its wetting at this
+time, but Wyndham, shaken by his unsuccessful fight to
+save the Agent&#39;s life, was loath to face the ordeal of the
+confinement ahead of him without company. So (as he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page95" id="page95"></a>[pg&nbsp;95]</span>
+explained after he had halted me a dozen paces from
+his door with a revolver flourished from the window)
+he called in the only dead sure plague-immune he knew&mdash;his
+old friend John Barleycorn&mdash;and raised the floodgates.
+The last thing he had impressed upon his brain
+before putting Barleycorn in charge was that he must
+rigidly confine his desert reclamation project to his
+own wastes. On no account was he to leave his own
+house, and, on no account, was anyone to be allowed to
+enter it. &quot;Strict quarantine&#39;s the word,&quot; he had repeated
+to himself many times before he started drinking,
+and &quot;Strict quarantine&#39;s the word&quot; was the greeting&mdash;and
+the warning&mdash;I heard when I stepped into the
+shadow of the big breadfruit tree in front of his
+door.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Solemn as an owl, Wyndham had been catching purple
+shrimps (or something of the kind) with a butterfly net
+and putting them under his microscope for examination.
+The big brass instrument was set upon a table pulled up
+to the window, while the shrimps were being harvested
+from the bosky depths of a patch of elephant-eared taro
+just outside. It was his favourite hunting and fishing
+preserve, that taro patch, the Doc had confided to me
+once, and the rarity and variety of the specimens captured
+there were rather remarkable. I don&#39;t remember
+many of them, but a sea-cow and a sabre-tooth tiger were
+among the commonest he had made slides of. Everything
+went under the microscope, of course. His captures
+were small in size during the first few days, starting
+with mere animalculae, but bulked steadily bigger as the
+desert blossomed to a jungle. It required a microscope
+with a great latitude of adjustment to handle such a wide
+range of subjects&mdash;but his was a most excellent instrument
+... most excellent. Thus the Doc.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page96" id="page96"></a>[pg&nbsp;96]</span>
+Pretending to ignore my approach completely, Wyndham
+continued squinting through the eye-piece of his
+microscope until I crunched over the dead-line he had
+established. Then he flourished the revolver, barked out
+his quarantine formula, and asked what I wanted.
+&quot;When I replied that I had come to inquire respecting
+the effects of a drug called <i>kor-klee</i>, his manner changed
+instantly. By some queer psychological process quite
+beyond me to fathom, he started at once speaking French,
+or rather what he thought was French. It was a weird
+jargon he had picked up in the Marquesas, where he had
+spent a year in research work when he first came to the
+Islands, and where (it was said) only his passion for
+collecting pearls&mdash;other people&#39;s&mdash;had prevented his
+winning to international fame for his all-but-successful
+efforts to isolate the bacteria responsible for the dread
+<i>fe-fe</i> or <i>elephantiasis</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;<i>Kor-klee&mdash;mais oui, mon ami. Je comprend him
+fella kor-klee too much. Parfaitement. C&#39;est la liqueur
+essential de la ficus&mdash;ficus&mdash;nom d&#39;un chien&mdash;ficus what-dyucalum.
+C&#39;est la aphrodisique le plus exquite, le plus
+fort, en tout le monde. Prenez vous comme ca&mdash;whouf!</i>&quot;&mdash;and
+he made a great pretence of inhaling the contents
+of his shrimp net to show how the drug was administered
+for that particular purpose.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;<i>Encore&mdash;quand&mdash;quand eat&#39;m like kai-kai!</i>&quot; he
+floundered on learnedly; &quot;<i>quand eat&#39;m kor-klee il fait&mdash;mak&#39;m
+mort&mdash;dead&mdash;tres vite</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Here he interrupted himself to ask for which purpose
+it was I intended to use the stuff.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Neither,&quot; I denied stoutly. &quot;I was merely asking
+out of curiosity.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;<i>Parle that talkee a la marines</i>,&quot; he scoffed. &quot;<i>Le
+meme chose talkee parle</i> &#39;Slant&#39; Allen. <i>Je voudrais</i>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page97" id="page97"></a>[pg&nbsp;97]</span>
+<i>connoce ou&mdash;ou in hell you fella catch&#39;m kor-klee.</i> I&#39;d
+like to get my fist on some of the blooming elixir myself,&quot;
+he trailed off into English.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Save for that one lapse, Wyndham, in spite of my
+reiterated appeals that he speak straight English, rattled
+on in his impossible Franco-<i>bêche-de-mer</i> from first to
+last. That which I have tried to render does it scant
+justice. Most of it was quite unintelligible. At the end
+of a rather trying half-hour (though it would have been
+amusing enough had I been less anxious for information
+that might throw light on the mystery I had set myself to
+unravel), about all that I had been able to gather was
+that <i>kor-klee</i> was the name given in the Dutch Indies
+to several preparations made from the latex of the wild
+fig of New Guinea. A crude infusion of it was employed
+by the Papuans in stupefying fish in their rivers. More
+elaborated extracts were distilled for their narcotic and
+other properties. One of these, vapourized and inhaled,
+was much prized by the Rajahs of Malaysia as a quickener
+of the languid pulse, a restorer of youth. Another&mdash;the
+most powerful extract of all&mdash;was a deadly poison&mdash;very
+neat and incisive in its action.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I also understood Wyndham to say that the use of the
+drug in any form acted as a great exciter of the cravings
+for alcohol and narcotics on the part of those addicted
+to these habits. &quot;If that&#39;s the case,&quot; I said to myself
+as I turned home, &quot;God pity poor old Bell&#39;s teetotal
+resolutions! It would have been hard enough without
+anything further in the way of a &#39;thust aggravata.&#39; I&#39;m
+afraid he&#39;ll be having to exchange rôles with &#39;Slant&#39;
+after all&mdash;to let the latter be the &#39;soba Mate of a drunken
+Skippa.&#39;&quot; Now that I had a chance to think about it,
+I didn&#39;t have any great faith in Bell&#39;s ability to refrain
+from drink for any length of time&mdash;certainly for not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page98" id="page98"></a>[pg&nbsp;98]</span>
+more than a day or two at the outside. He&#39;d probably
+see the thing through, I admitted, but not as a &quot;soba
+Skippa.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Turning over all I had picked up at the end of a
+couple of days, I felt that I could come pretty near to
+reconstructing in my mind those scenes of the drama of
+which there had been no witnesses save the actors themselves.
+Allen&#39;s infatuation for the girl had undoubtedly
+got the better of him the instant the turn of events suggested
+a plan which promised to give him undisputed
+possession of her. To this end he had plotted to get Bell
+off on a voyage from which there was no more than a
+negligible chance of his ever returning, while he himself
+remained behind to enjoy the spoils.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Considering that Allen&#39;s plan was evolved upon little
+more than a moment&#39;s notice, there could be no question
+that it was laid with consummate cleverness and carried
+out without a hitch&mdash;save, of course, for that final fatal
+slip-up which undid all the rest. To make sure of Bell
+and disarm his suspicions, Allen had assured the
+American that he himself would also go on the <i>Cora</i>.
+That he had tried to poison Bell, I had my doubts. I
+had not learned enough of how the drug acted to make
+my speculations on that point of much use. At any
+rate, with Bell unconscious on the schooner, it had clearly
+been the Australian&#39;s plan to return to the beach and
+remain there until she sailed, at the turn of the tide.
+That the <i>Cora</i> should get under way at that time had
+already been arranged between the unsuspecting Ranga
+and himself. The pretence that he had missed the
+schooner while engaged in getting his own and Bell&#39;s
+kits together would save his face with his friends on the
+beach. This latter consideration, it appears, was something
+the rascal never lost sight of. In the improbable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page99" id="page99"></a>[pg&nbsp;99]</span>
+event that Bell ever returned&mdash;but that bridge need not
+be crossed until it was in sight.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen&#39;s cropper at the last jump was directly due to
+his cool assumption (natural enough, considering his
+success with South Sea ladies generally) that the girl,
+once Bell was out of the way, would fall into his lap
+like a ripe mango. That, and his long-curbed passion for
+her, led him to rush in search of Rona the moment he
+landed from his first visit to the schooner, and, missing
+her then, to return before the <i>Cora</i> had got her anchor
+up. The consequences of his finding her in on this latter
+occasion I had seen something of myself. How that slip
+of a girl got the drop on the most notorious bad man in
+the Islands I could only conjecture. Probably, with
+Allen, it was the old story&mdash;prudence going out of one
+door as passion entered at the other. I didn&#39;t reckon
+that Rona had ever read the story of Delilah; yet I felt
+pretty confident that the point of that little Joloano <i>kris</i>
+had found its way to the pulse of &quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; jugular
+some time after the girl&#39;s arm had gone round his neck
+in what he thought&mdash;for a second or two at least&mdash;was a
+warm embrace. Rona&#39;s uncanny faculty for getting
+away with everything she went after&mdash;from having her
+peacock shawl dry-cleaned to boarding a schooner which
+was all of &quot;two jumps&quot; beyond her reach&mdash;had greatly
+impressed me. And well it might have....</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Even allowing that Allen had not tried to poison Bell
+outright, the fact remained that he had played the worst
+kind of a low-down trick on the American in treacherously
+attempting to railroad the latter out of the way
+and deprive the girl of his protection. That much was
+plain, and it was dead against the shifty Australian. In
+&quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; favour was the game manner in which he had
+stood the gaff at the last, when Bell left the way wide
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page100" id="page100"></a>[pg&nbsp;100]</span>
+open for him to return ashore without even going over
+the side of the plague-infested schooner. He had not
+hesitated an instant in staking his life in what he had
+very fairly characterized as the short end of a hundred-to-one
+shot. There must be redeeming qualities in a man
+who could do that, no matter how shot through with infamy
+his past record had been. It occurred to me as just
+possible that Bell&#39;s magnanimity had struck a responsive
+chord in Allen&#39;s sense of sportsmanship&mdash;that the latter
+was going to play whatever remained of that grim game
+on the square. If the <i>Cora</i> was lost, or if Allen and Bell
+and the girl all died of the plague (one or both of which
+contingencies seemed practically inevitable), the whole
+slate would be wiped clean anyhow. If not&mdash;if the <i>Cora</i>
+won through with any of those three surviving&mdash;some
+hint of what had transpired on the voyage would certainly
+be obtainable at Townsville, or whatever port
+the schooner succeeded in making. In any event, I told
+myself, it was up to me to get on to Australia at the
+earliest possible moment.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The fact that my Exhibition would be sure to have
+opened in Sydney by the time I reached Australia,
+really had nothing to do with my decision. In spite of
+the bluff I had tried to put over on Bell, I had had no
+intention of leaving Kai for a number of months to come.
+Nor, even after I began getting ready to go, did I
+attempt to ignore the fact that there might be duties
+for me to carry out in Townsville, the performance of
+which would be more likely than not to interfere seriously
+with my freedom of action for a good deal longer than
+the art world of Sydney would be inclined to pay homage
+to my marines.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">No, my coming show had nothing to do with my resolve
+to hurry south, although, naturally, I fully intended to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page101" id="page101"></a>[pg&nbsp;101]</span>
+take it in if things shaped so as to make it possible.
+Since my daubs had been making good with the connoisseurs
+of Kai&mdash;men who knew at first hand the things
+I was trying to paint,&mdash;I had little fear that the more
+sophisticated critics of civilization would not fall for
+them. I hadn&#39;t any worry on that score. I knew I
+had been doing good work. But&mdash;well, an artist who
+isn&#39;t interested in the way his work will react on his
+fellow-beings is lacking in a very important stimulus
+to success.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Kai manifested its usual sympathetic interest in my
+preparations for departure, but, with characteristic delicacy,
+asked no questions. Well off the steamer routes,
+and with only the most infrequent comings and goings
+of pearling and trading craft, the problem of reaching
+Australia with any dispatch seemed, at first, a hopeless
+one. For a while it looked like the best I could do would
+be to accept &quot;Slim&quot; Patton&#39;s kindly offer to run me
+over in his pearling sloop to Thursday Island, where I
+could count on getting a south-bound China-Australia
+liner inside of a fortnight. As Patton was known to be
+in bad for several little things at Thursday Island, his
+offer did more credit to his heart than to his head, and I
+was a good deal relieved when Jackson figured out a
+plan that promised to make it possible for me to reach
+my goal by another route. After thumbing a greasy
+sheet of Burns, Phillip sailings for the best part of an
+afternoon, the old outlaw suddenly announced he had
+found reason to believe that, with luck, a cutter getting
+away from Kai that night could intercept the Solomon-Australia
+packet at Samarai, off the easternmost tip of
+New Guinea. To be sure that the thing was done
+properly, he would take one of his own cutters and sail
+her himself. As my impedimenta consisted of little beyond
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page102" id="page102"></a>[pg&nbsp;102]</span>
+a few changes of drills and ducks, my painting kit,
+and a case of absinthe, and as Jackson used neither paint
+nor absinthe and wore a flowered <i>sulu</i> in place of ducks
+and drills, we had little difficulty in getting away on
+schedule.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Jackson&#39;s carefully tabulated calculations&mdash;you can do
+that kind of thing in those latitudes when the southeast
+Trades are blowing steady and you know your boat&mdash;were
+only wrong by an hour. That is to say, we would
+have missed the <i>Utupua</i> by something like that had we
+pushed right in to Samarai. Old &quot;Jack,&quot; however, sighting
+a bituminous smear trailing off above the tufted
+tops of the coco palms that line the inner passage,
+promptly shook out all his reefs, hauled up four or five
+points, and headed away on a course calculated to converge
+with that of the outgoing steamer a couple of
+miles to seaward. It was only after an abrupt greening
+of the tourmaline depths of the passage we had been
+threading suggested a sudden shoaling that it occurred
+to him to unroll and study his chart.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Five &#39;undred fathom&mdash;three &#39;undred fifty fathom,&quot;
+he read laboriously as his tarry forefinger cruised along
+the tiny rows of dots and figures indicating soundings.
+&quot;Three &#39;undred fathom&mdash;two &#39;undred fifty fathom&mdash;<i>one</i>
+bloody fathom! By Gawd, W&#39;itney, we&#39;re &#39;igh an&#39;
+dry already! This bally chart says they&#39;s only one
+fathom uv water on this kerblasted coral patch, an&#39; the
+cutter draws two feet mor&#39;n that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But he never luffed her, never altered her course a
+fraction of a point. &quot;More she &#39;eels the less she draws,&quot;
+he muttered philosophically, sitting down on the weather
+rail of the cockpit and starting to whittle at the end of a
+stick of tobacco with his clasp-knife. &quot;Save a lot of
+wig-waggin&#39; if we do pile up,&quot; he continued presently,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page103" id="page103"></a>[pg&nbsp;103]</span>
+rolling the shaved-off blackjack between his palms. &quot;Ol&#39;
+&#39;Choppy&#39; Tancred never giv&#39; the go-by to even a nigger
+dugout he could len&#39; a han&#39; to.&quot; Then he lighted his
+pipe, whoofed two or three whirling jets of blue smoke
+to leeward as he brought it to a proper draw, and settled
+comfortably back in puffing contentment. Ten minutes
+later he unrolled the chart again, produced a greasy stub
+of pencil from the band of his <i>koui</i>-leaf hat, and wrote
+with great care the letters &quot;P.D.&quot; across the dotted expanse
+where curving lines of figure &quot;1s,&quot; like the
+graphic representation of telegraph lines on a bird&#39;s-eye
+map, indicated six feet of water where the eight-feet-draught
+cutter had just crossed without a bump.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;As I figger it,&quot; Jackson observed drily, rolling up
+the chart and tossing it down the companionway as a
+thing whose usefulness was ended,&mdash;&quot;as I figger it, a
+bloke&#39;s only manifestin&#39; proper conserv&#39;tism w&#39;en &#39;e
+marks as &#39;Position Doubtful&#39; a reef that ain&#39;t tangibl&#39;
+enuf to stop &#39;im w&#39;en &#39;e &#39;its it.&quot; Then, presently, between
+puffs, as he stretched himself and sidled along
+to take the wheel as the cutter began to close the slowing
+steamer: &quot;Wonder &#39;oo the bally cove&#39;ll be &#39;oo bumps a
+mis-charted reef w&#39;en &#39;e thinks &#39;e&#39;s got four &#39;undred
+fathom uv brine &#39;tween his keel an&#39; the bottom uv the
+Pacific.&quot; The notorious inaccuracy of the South Sea
+charts is a continual source of amusement or wrath&mdash;according
+to whether a misplaced shoal or passage has
+spelt comedy or tragedy to him&mdash;for the man who sails
+their reef-beset waters.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was Captain Tancred himself who came tumbling
+down from the <i>Utupua&#39;s</i> bridge to greet me as I clambered
+up the Jacob&#39;s ladder thrown over from the forecastle
+head. Hearing of him often before, this was the
+first time I ever set eyes on one of the best-loved characters
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page104" id="page104"></a>[pg&nbsp;104]</span>
+in the South Pacific. He was a red-faced, blue-eyed,
+sandy-haired Scot, with a heart as big as his fist,
+and as soft as his voice was rough. Square himself as
+his own broad shoulders, and strictly law-abiding personally,
+he was credited with an amiable weakness for
+befriending every man who had run afoul of the statutes.
+I had heard them yarn by the hour at Kai of the way
+he had smuggled this one out of Australia, and that one
+into New Guinea; of how he had all but bumped South
+Head while standing-off-and-on in a &quot;Southerly Buster&quot;
+one night, on the off chance of picking up a jail-breaker,
+whose only claim upon Tancred had been that the latter
+had once before performed a similar service for the
+reprobate when he had forced his way out of the jug in
+Suva. Several of the push at Jackson&#39;s claimed actually
+to owe their lives to the bluff old Scot; many of them
+their liberty. &quot;Choppy&quot; Tancred&mdash;so called from his
+sun-washed red-brown mutton-chop side whiskers&mdash;was
+the nearest thing to a patron saint Kai ever had&mdash;that
+is, until the Rev. Horatio Loveworth hove up on their
+skyline some years later and converted the lot of them
+(just about) with the knuckles of his brawny fists.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The last thing Jackson had said, as he steadied the ladder
+for me to swarm up the <i>Utupua&#39;s</i> side, was to the
+effect that I ought to consider myself dead lucky to be
+stacking up with &quot;Choppy&quot; Tancred; &quot;or, leastways,&quot;
+he qualified, &quot;you would be if you was in any kind uv
+a mess &#39;e could fish you out uv.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Don&#39;t give up hope, Jack,&quot; I chaffed back, clawing
+round a projecting ventilator; &quot;I may land in a mess
+yet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Then don&#39;t be forgettin&#39; ther&#39;ll allus be a refooge
+for the errin&#39; on the banks an&#39; brays uv Kai Lagoon,&quot;
+he sang back, taking in the mainsheet as the cutter came
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page105" id="page105"></a>[pg&nbsp;105]</span>
+up to the wind; &quot;an&#39; that &#39;Choppy&#39; Tancred&#39;ll be the
+cove to give you a first leg-up on the way back there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Except for his very evident disappointment over the
+fact that I disclaimed any need of his help in getting
+ashore in Australia, Captain Tancred seemed not in the
+least put out over being stopped and boarded so high-handedly.
+He had carried many queer birds in his time,
+so that a man eccentric enough to take a case of drinkables
+with him on the <i>return</i> trip from the Islands didn&#39;t
+worry him as much as it might have some others. He
+was also kindly charitable about my &quot;exclusiveness&quot; of
+evenings (when all normal beings expand and grow sociable
+at sea), and even good-naturedly tolerant of my
+weakness for having breakfast in my cabin. I made it
+up to him to the best of my ability in my &quot;quickened&quot;
+hours of the afternoon, and we became good
+friends.... Really good friends. I felt that I could
+count upon him in a pinch.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The grounding of the company&#39;s Port Moresby
+steamer somewhere along the Barrier Reef was responsible
+for the fact that the <i>Utupua</i>, this voyage, had been
+ordered to pick up freight at both Cooktown and Cairns,
+instead of proceeding direct to Townsville on her regular
+schedule. This set her back two days, and brought us
+into the offing at Townsville twenty-four hours after&mdash;instead
+of twenty-four hours before&mdash;a sun-blistered, foul-smelling
+labour-recruiting schooner, with a dead Captain
+and a score or more of dying niggers, was brought
+to anchor off the Quarantine Station by the Mate, who,
+immediately the hook was let go, collapsed on the deck
+and went to sleep. The empty hulk of the <i>Cora Andrews</i>,
+swinging lazily to the turning tide, was one of the first
+things to catch my eye as the <i>Utupua</i> steamed in and
+tied up to her buoy.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page106" id="page106"></a>[pg&nbsp;106]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IX<br />
+<small>A GRIM TALE OF THE SEA</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">I have</span> often tried to figure just what effect on the
+succeeding train of events my earlier arrival in
+Townsville might have had. I have never come to
+any very definite conclusions in that connection. There
+were two or three things that were pretty well bound to
+happen, and if they hadn&#39;t come about one way, there is
+little doubt that they would have done so in another.
+Had I been there when the <i>Cora</i> arrived, it is probable
+that I would have learned definitely at once (instead of
+somewhat tardily) that Bell had <i>not</i> died of the plague.
+Certainly, on learning that fact, my impulse would have
+been to try to force Allen to an immediate showdown&mdash;to
+insist on his proving that the dope he had put in the
+American&#39;s whisky at Kai had not been the direct cause
+of the latter&#39;s death. Such a showdown would have
+been impossible to bring about at the time, however: for
+one reason, because Allen had been put into quarantine
+immediately, and, for another, because, completely
+played out by thirty-six hours at the wheel without relief,
+he had sunk into a sleep from which he had not rallied
+for over two days. Similar considerations would have
+prevented my seeing Rona. Besides being in quarantine
+she was in a state of raving delirium, which would have
+made it impossible for her to convey coherent information.
+Even Ranga, unaffected in mind and body though
+he was, I would hardly have been permitted to talk with
+when he landed, any more than I was two days later.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page107" id="page107"></a>[pg&nbsp;107]</span>
+No, everything considered, I fail to see where my earlier
+arrival would have made much difference in what happened.
+It must have been slated anyhow, I think&mdash;just
+bound to come off however the incidentals shaped.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Still askance at what he rated as my temerity in making
+an open landing in Townsville, Captain Tancred
+had somewhat reluctantly granted my request for a boat
+to take me ashore as soon as the quarantine officials were
+through with the ship. I couldn&#39;t, of course, go off in
+the quarantine launch, but one of the doctors lingered a
+few minutes to tell me what he knew of the <i>Cora</i>. Although
+her captain had died twenty-four hours before
+the schooner anchored, his remains had not been buried
+at sea. This, it appeared, had been largely due to the
+protests of some sort of a Kanaka girl the Skipper had
+had with him. According to the Bo&#39;sun&#39;s statement
+(fine upstanding fellow that looked like some kind of a
+Java man), she had gone plumb off her chump. Tried
+to knife the Mate first, and then plumped down by the
+Skipper&#39;s remains and threatened to stick the first man
+to touch it. The Mate, endeavouring to humour her,
+had not insisted on the burial&mdash;a reprehensible weakness
+on his part.... Common prudence demanded that
+the dead on a plague ship should be scuppered as soon
+as the breath was out of their bodies. That is, with a
+white man; with a nigger it did no harm to anticipate
+that event by an hour or so&mdash;as long as you were sure
+the fellow was going to whiff out anyway.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The funny part of it was, though (the Doctor went on),
+that the Skipper had not died of the plague at all. They
+had not, it was true, made any post-mortem in the rush of
+things; but it was certain, nevertheless, that his body
+had not displayed even the preliminary evidences of infection&mdash;no
+swelling of the glands of the groin or under
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page108" id="page108"></a>[pg&nbsp;108]</span>
+the arms. Magnificent physical specimen the chap was,
+but plainly a man who had punished an ocean of booze
+in his day. And yet&mdash;confound it all!&mdash;there was no
+evidence that the fellow had drunk himself to death,
+either. Now if it had been the Mate&mdash;<i>he</i> was exuding
+alcohol from every pore&mdash;absolutely reeking with it. Almost
+made a man drunk to breathe the air down to leeward
+of him. Seemed to have been on one glorious spree
+all the way from&mdash;somewhere up Solomon-way, he
+thought it was. Harried the niggers like a fiend, according
+to the Bo&#39;sun. Clubbed three or four of them
+to death for not stepping lively enough to his orders.
+Lucky thing the Skipper had scuppered all but one of
+the guns the first day out. But not all the booze he had
+soaked up had effected the nerve of the Mate. Kept his
+head and his legs to the last, finishing up with a straight
+twenty-four-hour trick at the wheel. Said none of the
+crew knew the Barrier Reef as well as he did. Had one
+nigger holding a parasol over him, another playing a
+concertina, another waiting handy with a bottle of
+whisky, and a fourth standing by to block any rushes
+from the Kanaka girl with her knife. Funny thing it
+never occurred to him to have her disarmed and tied up,
+or shut up. Grabbed the bottle of whisky and started to
+brain the Bo&#39;sun with it every time the latter tried to
+push in and relieve him at the wheel.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A chap of terrible determination and iron nerves, that
+Mate was, observed the Doctor. But no wonder....
+Think who he was! Allen! The Honourable Hartley
+Allen! The great Allen! Son of old Sir Jim Allen!
+Melbourne Cup winner! Best horseman in all Australia!
+Crooked as they make &#39;em&mdash;but how he could
+ride! Sent off to the Islands four or five years back for
+raising some sort of hell. His old Ticket-of-Leave had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page109" id="page109"></a>[pg&nbsp;109]</span>
+given him away when they came to strip him for a bath.
+No possible mistake about it. One of the doctors at the
+Quarantine Station had set a broken collar-bone for
+him once after he had fallen in a steeplechase at Coolgardie.
+Found the marks of the old compound fracture
+still humping up on the clavicle&mdash;the left one....</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was not without difficulty that I brought the excited
+young medico round to speaking of Bell again. The
+astounding fact that he himself, with his own hands, had
+actually helped to put the great and only Hartley Allen
+to bed, was proving almost too much for him. It was
+certainly not less than three separate times that he assured
+me that it was his own silk pajamas that were encasing
+the limbs of the resurrected hero. He switched
+subjects reluctantly, rising to go to his waiting launch.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Nothing in the world the matter with the big fellow&mdash;not
+even too much drink,&quot; he said as he began shuffling
+his health sheets together. &quot;He must have passed away
+from the sheer mental strain of the stunt he had tackled.
+Intense nervous strain&mdash;that was the one thing written
+all over the man. Face was starting to bloat a bit from
+the heat by the time I saw it first; but, even so, it still
+showed the lines of the most terrible mental suffering.
+Seemed to have gone out fighting hard to pull himself
+together&mdash;shoulders hunched up, finger-nails clenched
+deep into palms, lower lip bitten clean through.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;May not those&mdash;those things you mention have been
+caused by physical rather than mental agony?&quot; I asked,
+speaking very slowly to hide the agitation aroused by
+this significant intelligence. &quot;Isn&#39;t that about the way a
+man would repress his feelings if he was racked with&mdash;with
+stomach cramps&mdash;if he had eaten something that
+disagreed with him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Possibly so,&quot; admitted the Doctor, with the air of a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page110" id="page110"></a>[pg&nbsp;110]</span>
+man weighing an idea that had not occurred to him before;
+&quot;but somehow that wasn&#39;t the suggestion they
+carried to me&mdash;nor to any of us. Fact is, though, we
+didn&#39;t give the matter very much attention. That chap
+was dead&mdash;finished,&mdash;while the other white man and the
+girl&mdash;to say nothing of forty or fifty niggers&mdash;were alive.
+Then, with the excitement of finding we had the great
+Hartley Allen on our hands&mdash;and, on top of that, having
+the girl run <i>amuck</i> and give us the slip complete,&mdash;there
+was enough else to think about. The only&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The girl gave you the slip?&quot; I interrupted. &quot;How
+was that? You didn&#39;t mention it before.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Bolted and drowned herself in the creek,&quot; he replied;
+&quot;or at least there&#39;s every reason to believe she drowned
+herself, though they haven&#39;t found her body yet. She
+wasn&#39;t going to leave the Skipper, even when we started
+to take his body away for burial.... And of course
+we couldn&#39;t allow her to leave the Station until her
+period of quarantine was over. Had to take her away
+from the body by main force. She fought the whole lot
+of us with tooth and nail and a wicked little curly-bladed
+dagger. Stood us all off, too, and looked like
+getting ready to use the knife on herself when the big
+Malay (who chanced to be there, but had taken no part
+in the shindy up to that moment) stepped in, caught her
+wrist and took the nasty little toy away from her.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The big yellow man seemed to have rather a quieting
+effect on the girl. Blind mad as she was, she didn&#39;t try
+to stick him. It seemed to steady her a good deal when
+he talked to her in her own lingo. She was panting like
+a cat coming out of a fit when we left her, but was quite
+over her raving&mdash;wasn&#39;t even sobbing aloud. She was
+coming out of her hysteria&mdash;getting rational again. Her
+eyes, though still wild and almost throwing off sparks of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page111" id="page111"></a>[pg&nbsp;111]</span>
+anger, were quite free of the crazy look. It looked like
+our trouble with her was about over, but, to be on the
+safe side, we locked her up in one of the &#39;mad&#39; rooms.
+That was the last anyone has seen of her alive&mdash;or any
+other way, for that matter.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;You wouldn&#39;t have believed the thing possible!&quot;
+he ejaculated feelingly, turning back from the door and
+slapping the table resoundingly with his portfolio.
+&quot;That room was made to confine dangerous lunatics in,
+and it had fulfilled its purpose, too&mdash;up to night before
+last. To make it perfectly secure, it had been constructed
+without windows&mdash;nothing but a two-by-two
+hole up against the twelve-foot-high ceiling admitted
+light and air. There were no beds or chairs to be broken
+up when the occupant had tantrums.... Just sleeping
+mats, a sheet, a blanket and a mosquito net. No
+more. Even the wash basin was brought in and taken
+out by the attendant.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;In locking the girl in, no precautions were omitted
+except that of strapping her in a strait-jacket, and we
+had never resorted to that save in violent cases. The
+window&mdash;or rather air-hole&mdash;was so high and so small
+that it had never been considered worth while to put
+bars on it. But as it was the only conceivable way she
+could have got out (the attendant is absolutely trustworthy,
+and the key was not in his hands more than a
+minute or two anyway), we would have been forced to
+conclude that the girl had reached it with wings&mdash;had
+not we found the lower four or five feet of wall marked
+with the prints of the toes and balls of the bare feet which
+had apparently been violently projected against it. That
+led us to get a ladder and light and examine about the
+window more closely. For a foot or more below it the
+wall was splashed with blood and slightly scratched,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page112" id="page112"></a>[pg&nbsp;112]</span>
+where lacerated fingers had clawed at the narrow
+ledge.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It did not take us long to figure that, taking the
+whole length of the room to get going in, the girl had
+flung herself up the wall something in the way that a
+terrier will run six or eight feet up the side of a house
+for a ball or handkerchief fastened there. That&#39;s the
+only way we could account for the toe-prints on the wall,
+though it is quite possible that, after failing to pull off
+the trick in that fashion&mdash;it&#39;s a stunt that looks dead
+hopeless for anything but a monkey,&mdash;she managed it
+with a straight spring, high enough to get her fingers
+over the ledge. Even from there, not one woman in a
+million could pull herself up. But we had already remarked
+on the extreme wiriness of the girl (a regular
+human ape she was for agility), and so found it a bit
+easier to accept the evidence of our eyes. In some way or
+another she had managed it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The air-hole opened out under the eaves of the sheet-iron
+roof,&quot; the Doctor went on, forgetting his waiting
+launch in the interest of the story, and seating himself
+again at the table. &quot;It must have taken some jolly
+snaky wriggling to crawl through the hole, out over the
+eaves and on top of the roof; but she did it, else she
+could never have jumped across the big banyan, where
+we found some twigs broken at the point she hit, and
+some wisps of silk floss. The other side of that banyan&mdash;a
+hundred feet from the wall of the hospital&mdash;spreads
+until it comes to about fifteen feet from the station wall.
+The wall is ten feet high, has broken glass on the top of
+it, with three or four strands of barbed wire above
+that.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Swinging to the ground by a pendent air-root on the
+side she had landed in, the girl crossed under the tree&mdash;the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page113" id="page113"></a>[pg&nbsp;113]</span>
+marks of her bare feet showing plainly in the soft
+earth&mdash;and used a similar ladder with which to mount on
+the other side. To be sure of clearing the barbed wire,
+she had climbed to a firm perch fully twenty-five feet
+from the ground, and made her final jump from there.
+Luckily for her, the cane field on the other side of the
+wall had been flooded but a day or two before&mdash;though
+I don&#39;t doubt she would have jumped just the same
+if it had been to a cobblestone pavement.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;We found the deep prints of her feet, knees and
+hands where she had sprawled on striking. Her tracks
+down to the edge of a sprouting row of seed-cane, and
+the marks where she had crawled up out of a deep irrigating
+ditch to the road, were all we had to indicate the
+direction she had taken. As she had seemed plumb daft
+about the dead Skipper, we figured that she had probably
+broken out with the idea of going to his grave, and perhaps
+making an end of herself there. If that was it, she
+failed. There were no signs whatever of her having been
+near the fresh mound we had tucked the big fellow
+away under. It was some distance away from the Station,
+and, in the night, it isn&#39;t likely she would have met
+anyone to ask the way of. The only grave she found
+was her own, and not a very restful one at that, I&#39;m
+afraid.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;We had noticed that she seemed to set great store by
+a big yellow shawl she wore&mdash;rather a fine old piece of
+Oriental work it looked, with a dragon or some other
+kind of wild animal embroidered on it. Well, when we
+found that lying on the bank of Ross Creek, just a bit
+inland of the town, we felt so sure that it marked the
+jumping-off place for her in more ways than one. For
+that reason, what search has been pressed since has been
+in the form of shooting alligators, and seeing if one of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page114" id="page114"></a>[pg&nbsp;114]</span>
+them appears to have enjoyed anything extra-special in
+the way of tucker lately.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">An impatient toot from his launch carried the Doctor
+to the door again, where he paused long enough to assure
+me for the third or fourth time that it would be most
+unlikely that permission would be granted me to see the
+Mate or the Boatswain of the <i>Cora</i> until their spell of
+quarantine was over. If I was really anxious about it,
+he would gladly put in a word for me with the Chief.
+I would have to show good reason for my request, of
+course. Perhaps, if it chanced that I was able to shed
+any light on how the schooner came to get into such a
+mess&mdash;I cut him short by saying that I might call at
+the Quarantine Station when I came ashore a little later.
+What I knew about the sailing of the <i>Cora</i> from Kai
+happened to be the one thing I didn&#39;t care to confide to
+anyone&mdash;just yet. Asking the Mate to order my boat
+to stand by for me a few minutes longer, I went to my
+cabin to be alone while I turned the fresh developments
+over in my mind.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had been prepared to await the coming of the <i>Cora</i>
+indefinitely. In fact, what I expected above anything
+else was that the final news would be a report that she
+had been found piled up on any one of a thousand reefs
+that spread their coral claws all the way from the Louisiades
+to the Great Barrier. And in case she did get
+through, I was quite prepared to learn that both of the
+white men and the girl had succumbed to the plague. But
+to be told that, after the schooner had avoided disaster,
+and all three of them the plague, that the two upon
+whom my interest and affection had centred were gone&mdash;dead,&mdash;was
+just a bit staggering. It was now up to me
+to determine upon a definite course of action, and, since
+it was now out of the question attempting to follow my
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page115" id="page115"></a>[pg&nbsp;115]</span>
+first impulse of going to Allen at once and forcing a
+showdown, I wanted time to think.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">What the Doctor had told me of the way Bell appeared
+to have died had instantly reawakened my suspicions
+of Allen. Had the <i>kor-klee</i>, working with a
+recurrent effect, finally proved fatal? Or had Allen,
+perhaps, administered a second and stronger dose? He
+would have had a hundred opportunities to do that had
+he desired to. Rona&#39;s attacks on the Mate, indicating
+the deadliest hatred, seemed to prove that her first suspicions
+of him had not weakened during the voyage&mdash;more
+likely, indeed, had hardened to a certainty. The
+belief I had been entertaining that Allen had made up
+his mind to play the game out on the square was not very
+deeply grounded.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">My sense of personal loss in the passing of Bell and
+Rona was not a thing I cared to let myself dwell upon
+for the moment. There was no question that the news
+of Rona&#39;s death had shocked me even more than that of
+Bell&#39;s. Not that there was anything more between us
+than I have already told. I had never let myself think
+of her in terms of physical possession, though the sheer
+animal attraction of the girl was beyond anything I had
+ever experienced in a woman. But her appeal to the
+artistic side of me had been stronger even than that.
+Just as the thrill I felt at the first sight of her bathing in
+the pink-lipped bowl of the reef had made the very world
+itself seem more wonderful and beautiful, so now the depression
+that filled me on realizing that I was never
+again to have sight of her made the world seem emptier
+and drearier.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Another thing: there was no denying that Bell, splendid
+fellow that he was, had shot his bolt. A real come-back
+with him was too much to expect. The most that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page116" id="page116"></a>[pg&nbsp;116]</span>
+could have been hoped for was that he would &quot;finish in
+style,&quot; and that I was assured he had done, no matter
+in what agony of soul and body his brave spirit had taken
+flight. But Rona&#39;s bolt was still unsped. The girl had
+hardly begun to finger Life&#39;s bowstring. It was almost
+as hard to think of the flaming, soaring spirit of her as
+quenched, as it was to believe that the matchless perfection,
+the supple gracefulness of her body&mdash;<i>shooting alligators
+to see if any of them had been enjoying anything
+extra-special in tucker lately</i>! I could not pursue that
+line of thought any further. I agreed with the Doctor
+that the fact that the girl had parted with her beloved
+shawl indicated that she had reached a jumping-off
+place&mdash;a point where she had no further use for it. I
+could not picture her&mdash;living&mdash;without its amber-bright
+flame streaming about her limbs. The wonder was that
+she had not kept it for a shroud. As I came out upon
+the deck to go to my boat, the intermittent crack of
+rifle shots along the shore told me that the &quot;search&quot; had
+not been abandoned.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Beyond deciding to go ashore and see if anything further
+could be learned, I had made no plans. It seemed
+that about the best I could do would be to wait in Townsville
+until Allen and Ranga were out of quarantine, and
+then let things shape as they would; but always assuming
+that, in case the former could not satisfy me he was
+innocent of Bell&#39;s death, I should do what I could to
+settle the reckoning with him. That would be my atonement&mdash;to
+Bell and to myself&mdash;for my sorry failure to
+&quot;measure up&quot; the day the <i>Cora Andrews</i> came to Kai
+Lagoon.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Captain Tancred, who had never quite settled it in his
+own mind how a man who openly admitted he had been
+living in the Kai colony for months would not have to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page117" id="page117"></a>[pg&nbsp;117]</span>
+be smuggled ashore on the quiet if he expected to avoid
+arrest in Australia, met me at the gangway.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Best to leave the luggage aboard, lad,&quot; he began
+genially; &quot;then that&#39;ll be ain less thing ye&#39;ll hae to
+bother wi&#39; if ye&#39;re haen&#39; to cut an&#39; run for it. If ye&#39;re
+not back ag&#39;in by the time I&#39;m gettin&#39; awa&#39;, than I&#39;ll
+be sendin&#39; it in for ye on the Company&#39;s launch. But
+ye&#39;d best be hangin&#39; on wi&#39; me a bittie, an&#39; tak&#39; me to see
+them pictur&#39;s ye&#39;ve been tellin&#39; me aboot in Sydney
+toon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">My pictures! The Exhibition had slipped my mind
+completely, driven out by the news of the <i>Cora</i> and the
+anxieties that had followed in its train. I had told
+Captain Tancred something of my coming show, but had
+hardly convinced him. He was far too considerate to
+say outright that he didn&#39;t believe me, but my Kai origin
+could not be ignored. If I was to have an exhibition
+of paintings in Sydney, then why was I stopping off in
+Townsville? On that point&mdash;since I didn&#39;t want to go
+into the <i>Cora</i> affair with anyone until I knew how things
+were going to shape&mdash;I had hardly been able to reassure
+the old sceptic. I might be an artist all right enough&mdash;I
+don&#39;t think he had any serious doubts on that score,&mdash;but
+I must also be some kind of a crook. He was plainly
+convinced in his own mind that I was trying to slip into
+Australia on the quiet, and was rather hurt because I
+would not take him into my confidence and let him
+help me.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But why not take in the Exhibition? In nine days,
+with any luck in connections, I could go to Sydney and
+back, with a day or two to spare. Even if the trip ran
+over that time, it was not likely that the man I wanted
+to see would be getting away immediately.... And,
+in any event, I would know how to find him, whether in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page118" id="page118"></a>[pg&nbsp;118]</span>
+Australia or the Islands. Further, it could not but have
+a salutary effect on my nerves to get quite beyond the
+attraction I felt that Quarantine Station would have for
+me if I lingered within physical reach of it. Nothing
+but absinthe, and more absinthe, and then more absinthe,
+could be depended upon to relieve my nerves once
+they were fully wrought up, as I knew they must be if I
+remained in Townsville in enforced inaction, fretting my
+heart out with impatience. And too much absinthe
+would mean only one thing&mdash;that I would begin the day
+on which I was to meet &quot;Slant&quot; Allen for a final showdown
+in a condition of mind and body precisely similar
+to that in which I had entered upon another day of
+accursed memory&mdash;and, doubtless, with equally shameful
+consequences to myself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">These thoughts flashed through my mind in a fraction
+of the time I have taken to set them down. My reply
+to Captain Tancred followed close upon his suggestion
+that I leave my luggage aboard.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I think I&#39;ll be going through to Sydney with you,
+Captain&mdash;or at least as far as Brisbane,&quot; I said, motioning
+to the steward to bring up the bags he had already
+stowed in the waiting boat. &quot;I know no one whose
+opinion on my daubs I&#39;d rather have than yours. But
+I&#39;ll pay my little visit ashore here just the same, counting
+on you to get my kit landed in the unlikely event of
+my not being aboard again when you get under way this
+afternoon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was not long in coming to the conclusion that there
+was nothing new to be learned ashore, that is, with respect
+to what had happened on the <i>Cora</i> in the course of
+her voyage from Kai. This was not because the story
+was not on everyone&#39;s lips.... Quite to the contrary,
+indeed, the town was agog with the dramatic suddenness
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page119" id="page119"></a>[pg&nbsp;119]</span>
+of the arrival of the plague ship and its astonishing
+sequel. But as no one had been allowed to see
+any of the survivors, such accounts as were current were
+only those which had been passed out by the quarantine
+people, and about all the latter knew I felt that I had
+already gathered that morning from the Doctor on the
+<i>Utupua</i>. Bell&#39;s name was not mentioned, and not a man
+I talked with knew that the dead white man had been the
+Skipper.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">For Townsville&mdash;for all of Australia&mdash;the overwhelming
+appeal of the event was in the fact that a black-birding
+schooner had been brought into port by an ex-Ticket-of-Leavester,
+who had <i>volunteered</i> to risk his life
+in an attempt to save those of half a hundred plague-stricken
+niggers. That one circumstance in itself was
+wonderful enough, but when, on top of it, the announcement
+was made that the hero was none other than the
+former idol of sporting Australia, the Hon. Hartley
+Allen, popular imagination was stirred as rarely ever
+before. What man in all the Antipodes had not envied
+Allen, the supremely successful owner, rider and sportsman?
+What woman had not been intrigued by the
+romantic dash of him? What boy had not dreamed of
+growing up in his image?</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Townsville, delirious with the dramatic appeal of this
+splendid act on the part of a man who had tasted the wine
+of adulation as he had drunk the dregs of infamy, was
+but a microcosm of Sydney and Melbourne, Brisbane and
+Adelaide, to all of which the news had been flashed by
+wire. Every town and hamlet, from Cairns to Hobart,
+from Perth to Woolongong, were dispatching telegrams
+of congratulation to a man who was still muttering in
+his drunken sleep behind the walls of the Townsville
+Quarantine Station. Sydney was competing with Brisbane
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page120" id="page120"></a>[pg&nbsp;120]</span>
+for the honour of being the first to bestow the
+&quot;Freedom of the City&quot; upon the man both of them had
+had some share in transporting. A special from Sydney
+to the local sheet, hinted darkly of what might happen to
+the misguided official who attempted to revive any of
+the old charges against the man &quot;whose sublime courage
+had emblazoned his name upon the tablets of undying
+fame.... A hand that is raised today against the
+Hon. Hartley Allen is a hand that is raised against the
+noblest traditions of Australia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had to elbow through half of a densely packed block
+to read that last on the bulletin in front of the <i>Trumpet&#39;s</i>
+office. The mob cheered wildly as the message was
+chalked up on the blackboard&mdash;cheered the stirring sentiment
+and growled ominously at the suggestion that
+any hand would dare to be raised against the Hon.
+Hartley Allen and the noblest traditions of Australia.
+As I elbowed my way out again, I wondered just what
+the Charters Towers miner, who had manifested his exuberant
+approval by slapping me on the back, would
+have thought&mdash;nay, what he would have done&mdash;had he
+known that the hand fingering the guard of the revolver
+in the right side-pocket of my shooting jacket (I had
+brought the useful little weapon on the off chance that
+it might be needed) was rather more likely than not to
+be raised against at least one of those cherished institutions
+he was so anxious to uphold.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I began to perceive that the line between dealing out
+retributive justice to a blackguard of a murderer and
+assassinating a national hero in cold blood might easily
+become too hairlike in its tenuousness for a red-eyed
+Australian jury to admit the existence of it. For it was
+nothing less than a national hero that &quot;Slant&quot; Allen
+was becoming, even before he roused from the heavy
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page121" id="page121"></a>[pg&nbsp;121]</span>
+sleep which had held him ever since he collapsed over the
+wheel as the <i>Cora</i> came to anchor. That circumstance,
+I told myself, complicated my task beyond measure,
+though I couldn&#39;t, of course, allow it to make any difference
+in my program in the event Allen wasn&#39;t able to
+satisfy me that he was guiltless of the murder of my
+friend. But if things should transpire which might
+make Allen anxious to put <i>me</i> out of the way&mdash;if he, not
+I were the attacking party&mdash;that would simplify things
+greatly. I began to ponder that felicitous possibility.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Would not the fact that I was the only living man
+(Ranga, whatever he had seen or heard, would hardly
+need to be reckoned with as a witness) who knew the
+actual facts about the way he had &quot;volunteered&quot; to join
+the <i>Cora</i> at Kai awaken a desire in Allen&#39;s lawless breast
+to seal my mouth for good and all, now that he had so
+much to lose by the truth&#39;s coming out? The feeling
+that such would be the case&mdash;that the dizzily mounting
+fortunes of the ex-beach-comber would ultimately impel
+him to seek me out for an understanding&mdash;grew on me
+more and more as I turned the situation over in my mind,
+until at last it became a certainty, against which I felt
+justified in preparing as a boxer trains for a definitely
+scheduled prize fight.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I did not reckon it worth while to call at the Quarantine
+Station, which was some distance from the town and
+not easy to reach. I did, however, just before I put off
+to the ship, meet the young doctor with whom I had
+talked in the morning. The only thing which he was able
+to add to what he had already told me was in connection
+with the question I had raised respecting the cause of
+Bell&#39;s death. To be certain that he had been correct in
+stating that the latter had not died of plague, he had
+made a special inquiry. In response to this he had been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page122" id="page122"></a>[pg&nbsp;122]</span>
+shown a slide made from a smear they had taken of the
+late Skipper&#39;s blood. The bacteriologist had seen to that
+immediately the body was landed. It showed no traces
+whatever of plague bacilli. I could be quite assured on
+that point. The Chief was unwilling to hazard an
+opinion as to what the real cause of the man&#39;s death
+might have been. He seemed rather to regret that he
+had failed to order a post-mortem. Allen was still
+sleeping heavily, but would be right as a trivet beyond a
+doubt as soon as he woke up and gave them a chance to
+sweat some of the alcohol out of his hide. Pulse steady
+as a church.... Temperature a shade sub-normal.
+Marvellous constitution.... Wonderful fellow altogether.
+Any word of the girl? No, nothing. Ten
+pounds reward had been offered for the recovery of her
+body, or any recognizable part of it. Search was still
+going on, and he pointed across to the opposite foreshore,
+where a couple of spindling Hindu coolies&mdash;evidently
+sugar plantation contract hands&mdash;were earnestly engaged
+in performing &quot;<i>hari-kiri</i>&quot; upon a plethoric &#39;gator
+they had just bagged and towed to the beach.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Doctor was already beginning to look ahead. Did
+I fancy Allen would be able to wangle it so as to get
+an entry in for the Melbourne Cup in the short time
+that remained before that classic was run? Entries
+closed some time ago, of course. He&#39;d have to square
+it with the stewards some way. They might make a
+special exception, seeing who Allen was, and what he
+had just done. Any horse with his colours would carry
+a barrel of money, just out of sentiment if nothing else.
+Did I think he would wangle an entry?</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;No,&quot; I replied, stepping down into my boat. &quot;No,
+I&#39;m afraid the chances are all against it.&quot; My mind
+had been torn with doubt over a number of things that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page123" id="page123"></a>[pg&nbsp;123]</span>
+day.... It was a relief to be asked to express an
+opinion on a matter respecting which I had no doubt....
+Not a shred of it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Captain Tancred welcomed me back to the <i>Utupua</i>
+with a significant grin. &quot;So ye didna find the outlook
+ashore to yer likin&#39; lad?&quot; he boomed boisterously,
+thumping me on the back. &quot;Weel, dinna ye mind, since
+ye wasna nabbed. I&#39;ll be findin&#39; a wa&#39; to slip ye aff in
+Sydney sae they wan&#39;t be puttin&#39; nose to yer trail till
+ye&#39;re clean awa&#39;.&quot; The look on the old boy&#39;s face was
+a study when, a few days later, after the tugs had nosed
+his ship into her berth at the Circular Quay, I stalked
+brazenly off down the gangway, with no more regard for
+the two Bobbies guarding the dock gate than they had
+for me. He had exacted two promises from me before
+he let me go: one, that I was to take him to see my pictures,
+and the other, that I would not fail to let him
+know if there ever came a time when he could be of
+Service to me.... &quot;Real sarvice, lad; you&#39;ll be twiggin&#39;
+wha&#39; I mean.&quot; I gave both promises freely, just as
+I kept them later&mdash;yes, both of them.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As I had trunks, with all the common accessories of
+civilization, stored at the <i>Australia</i>, my transformation
+from a beach-comber to a fairly correct imitation of a
+comfortably heeled artist was the matter of but a few
+hours. My appearance at the Exhibition could not have
+been better timed. The affair had been extremely well
+handled from the first. I had been sending pictures to
+Sydney from all parts of the South Seas for the last
+eighteen months, packing them up as completed and
+getting them off whenever opportunity offered. Two or
+three had been lost, but, on the whole, I reckoned the
+plan safer than trying to take them round with me in
+one lot, at the risk of losing the bunch.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page124" id="page124"></a>[pg&nbsp;124]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER X<br />
+<small>ART AND SUSPENSE</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Nothing</span> had been further from my mind than
+an Australian exhibition. I cared little for the
+provincial approbation of the Antipodes, and I
+was hardly ready for Paris&mdash;not quite yet. It was only
+at the reiterated requests of friends (two of them were
+young Australian artists I had known in my student
+days in Paris), to whom I was under real obligations for
+their kindness in receiving and storing my pictures as
+they dribbled into Sydney, that I finally gave consent to
+a public showing. In doing this, I had stipulated particularly
+that they were to take all the troubles and
+responsibilities of the affair, and that under no circumstances
+was I to be expected to appear in person&mdash;unless,
+of course, it suited my convenience and inclination at the
+time.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As I have said, the affair had been most intelligently
+handled from the first. There had not been enough of
+my canvases comfortably to fill the wing of the big New
+South Wales Government Museum and Art Gallery
+which was available for exhibitions, but my friends,
+rather than pull the show off at a less pretentious and
+worse lighted gallery, had added enough of their own
+pictures to relieve the coldness of otherwise blank walls.
+These were also South Sea marines&mdash;it was a straight
+seascape show throughout,&mdash;but more or less conventional
+in inspiration and execution. Benchley might
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page125" id="page125"></a>[pg&nbsp;125]</span>
+have been painting marine backgrounds for an aquarium,
+so faithfully did he labour to reproduce every detail of
+jutting coral branches and floating seaweed. Crafts,
+on the other hand, had fallen early under the influence
+of Turner, and persisted in bulling the yellow ochre
+market by drenching his Great Barrier Reef seascapes
+with such a flood of golden light as was never seen save
+at the head of the Adriatic and now and then on the
+coasts of Tripoli and Algeria.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I would hardly characterize my own work as a compromise
+between these two extremes.... It was <i>not</i>
+that, though I <i>was</i> less of a slave to form than Benchley,
+and by no means so emancipated from it as Crafts.
+Rather, I should say, I was striving, independent of
+either classic or contemporary influence, to paint such
+depth, warmth and atmosphere into my tropical seascapes
+as would make them convey an <i>intenser</i> suggestion
+of reality. I did not expect water spaniels to pay me
+the subtle compliment of trying to gambol in my breakers,
+nor children to try to launch their toy sailboats in
+my lagoons.... Benchley&#39;s &quot;colour photograph&quot;
+effects were more likely to attain to those distinctions
+than my comparatively impressionistic sketches. What
+I was striving for was an effect that would compel some
+such comment as old Jackson had made the first time
+he stood off and conned my &quot;Swells and Shells&quot;&mdash;&quot;Gawd
+bly&#39;me, that&#39;s <i>it</i>! That water&#39;s wetter &#39;n a swept
+deck, an&#39;, s&#39;elp me Mike, but I c&#39;n bloomin&#39; near sniff
+them bloody clams!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Very naturally, then, since the sea was what I was
+painting, the impressions of anyone who didn&#39;t know the
+sea as intimately as did my beach-combing cronies of Kai
+wasn&#39;t going to worry me much. The opinions of men
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page126" id="page126"></a>[pg&nbsp;126]</span>
+who knew less about the subject of my pictures, and
+more about how pictures in general were painted, didn&#39;t
+strike me as anything that counted very seriously.
+Nevertheless when, at Brisbane on the voyage south, I
+got the Sydney papers with the account of the opening
+of the show, it was a good deal of a satisfaction to find
+that my work appeared to have got over with the art
+critics. These had, of course (since they were denied
+Jackson&#39;s facility of expression), to confine themselves
+to the jargon of their kind. It was plain, however, that
+they had been favourably impressed, and were doing
+the best they could with their comparatively restricted
+vocabularies. Mere city dwellers, too, most of them, one
+had to allow for their limited capacity of appreciation
+for something&mdash;the sea&mdash;which they knew only from
+other pictures. But even allowing for that, it was reassuring
+to find that they were coming across so whole-heartedly.
+Such capsules of praise as they had in stock
+were scattered with lavish hands for whoso would to
+swallow. &quot;The soul of the sea palpitates through every
+canvas,&quot; said the <i>Herald</i>; &quot;you leave the gallery with
+the tang of blown brine fresh in your nostrils,&quot; said the
+<i>Telegraph</i>; &quot;Australia is honoured with having the
+first chance to see this brilliantly distinctive work,&quot; said
+the illustrated <i>Australasian</i>, and promised four full pages
+of reproductions of the &quot;gems of the collection&quot; in its
+next issue. The young lady (I judged she was young)
+who was on the job for the Melbourne <i>Age</i> gushed
+breathlessly for a column and a half. This was a sample:
+&quot;In &#39;Mother-of-Pearl&#39; he has woven with a warp
+of sunbeams and a woof of rainbow&mdash;a shimmering brocade
+of exultantly sentient brightness!&quot; Capsules of
+praise, every one of these; but they were from the top
+shelf beyond a doubt, and the fact that they had been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page127" id="page127"></a>[pg&nbsp;127]</span>
+reached for indicated that at least something of my message
+had dribbled over the frames.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The <i>Bulletin</i> had done rather better than the others in
+commissioning for the occasion an &quot;art critic&quot; who (as
+transpired in the course of his half-page article) had
+sailed his own sixty-footer to Auckland and back. He,
+at least, had met the sea on more intimate terms than
+was possible through Sunday mixed-bathing at Coogee
+and Manley (with occasional ferryboat passages, about
+the limit the others had gone, I reckoned). Said he, in
+speaking of &quot;The Seventh Son of a Seventh Son&quot;: &quot;The
+beat of the eternal sea was behind every slash of the
+brush with which this Franco-American wizard of light
+and colour painted that rolling mountain of water. I
+felt my fingers involuntarily clutching at the spokes of
+the wheel to bring her up to meet the menace of that
+curling crest. I forgot where I was ... I almost felt
+the heave of a deck beneath my feet....&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I rather liked that, I must confess; though perhaps
+it didn&#39;t give me quite the double-barrelled thrill of
+&quot;Heifer&quot; Halligan&#39;s comment when I sent for him to
+pass judgment on that same picture before the paint of
+my finishing touches upon it was dry. A month before,
+as I have already mentioned, I had given the &quot;Heifer&quot;
+a pretty severe pummelling with the four-ounce gloves,
+and, like the good sport he was, to show that there was
+no hard feeling on the score of his battered optics, he
+had volunteered to sail me in his sloop to Tuka-tuva (the
+reef on which Bell lost the <i>Flying Scud</i>, it may be recalled)
+so that I could make some close-range studies
+of hard-running waves at the point of breaking. And,
+just to show that there was no hard feeling on <i>my</i> part
+over the wallop below my belt with which the &quot;Heifer&quot;
+had finally brought the bout to a close, I accepted. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page128" id="page128"></a>[pg&nbsp;128]</span>
+studies had been made&mdash;just a few slashes on oil-cloth
+with a rather useful waterproof paint I had mixed specially
+for &quot;sloppy&quot; stunts like that&mdash;with my shivering
+anatomy lashed to the <i>Wet-Eyed Susy&#39;s</i> bowsprit, while
+the &quot;Heifer&quot; tacked back and forth just beyond the line
+where the pull of the shoaling reef, dragging at their
+bases, let the green-black tops of the combers tumble over
+in a thunderous roar. As he was really taking a good
+deal of a chance of losing his handy little pearler, if
+nothing else, it was only right that the &quot;Heifer&#39;s&quot; request
+for a first look-see at the completed picture should
+have the call.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">He studied it in silence for a minute or two, legs wide
+apart and his bullet head cocked judicially to one side.
+Then his fine teeth were bared in a broad grin and he
+vented a throaty chuckle of amused admiration. Said
+he: &quot;Mister Whitney, that hulkin&#39; ol&#39; lalapalooser there
+looks like he has all the kick behint him of that bally
+wallop on the solar plexus you floored me with the other
+day.&quot; Not even the Sydney <i>Bulletin&#39;s dilletante</i> yachtsman
+could do quite as well as that&mdash;from my standpoint,
+at least. But of course I had a weakness for the Kai
+viewpoint.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Exhibition had been opened early in the week&mdash;the
+usual affair of the kind, &quot;Under the Patronage and
+in the Presence of His Excellency, the Governor General
+and Lady X&mdash;&mdash;,&quot; and a long list of specially invited
+guests. Amiable old Lord X&mdash;&mdash; had made one of the
+happy little speeches for which he was famous. Then
+they had all had tea and a look at the pictures. This
+inevitable formal session out of the way, the show was
+opened to the general public. Under the stimulus of the
+astonishingly enthusiastic press, the public had come
+through beyond all expectations. For the next three days
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page129" id="page129"></a>[pg&nbsp;129]</span>
+the crush at the gallery was, as the <i>Bulletin</i> had it, like a
+&quot;bargain day rush at <i>Morden&#39;s</i>.&quot; On Friday, it was
+advertised, Sir Joseph Preston, R.A., a very distinguished
+English artist visiting in Australia, had consented
+to speak at the Exhibition on &quot;The Painter with
+the New Method and the New Message.&quot; This was the
+day of my arrival in Sydney. It did not occur to me at
+first just who the subject of the discourse was to be.
+When it finally came home to me, I began speeding up
+my transformation process at once. By dint of rushed
+valeting and dressing, I just managed to reach the gallery
+as Sir Joseph was getting under way.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I won&#39;t endeavour to set down his speech, not even in
+outline. It was highly complimentary from first to last&mdash;and
+not even condescending, which was as surprising as
+pleasing when one considered how lofty an eminence Sir
+Joseph occupied in the art world. One thing I was just
+a bit disappointed about, though, was that the speaker
+seemed to assume that the pictures on exhibition represented
+my ultimate expression, the best I could do, or
+could be expected to do; whereas I knew that I had
+hardly got my foot well planted on the first rung of the
+ladder. I regretted without resenting this. I hadn&#39;t
+painted my hopes and ambitions into the pictures, so how
+was Sir Joseph Preston, more than anybody else, to see
+what I was driving at? I rather wanted to tell him about
+it, though. I hadn&#39;t talked with an artist of the old
+boy&#39;s calibre since I was in Paris, and not often there.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was just screwing up my nerve to push in and introduce
+myself, when Benchley pounced upon me with a
+joyous whoop and did the thing as a matter of course.
+Totally oblivious of the widening circle of wondering
+cackle that arose as the news of my unexpected, and not
+undramatic, appearance spread outward through the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page130" id="page130"></a>[pg&nbsp;130]</span>
+jam, I held forth to the beaming Royal Academician on
+the things that had been passing through my mind. The
+great man fired as though he had been of tow and my
+words&mdash;my ideas&mdash;were a torch laid to the inflammable
+mass of him.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Magnificent! Perfectly ripping!&quot; he exclaimed
+with enthusiasm; &quot;but what a shame I didn&#39;t know that
+ten minutes ago so that I could have told them! By
+Jove, I&#39;ll tell them now! Better yet&mdash;jolly good idea;
+<i>you</i> tell them. Just the things you&#39;ve been telling me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Benchley, Crafts and my other sponsors descended
+upon me like a pack of hounds at those words, and the
+first thing I knew I had been hustled up onto their little
+dais, and Sir Joseph was introducing me as &quot;a gentleman
+who can make a few pertinent additions to my late remarks.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I hadn&#39;t been called upon for a speech since I won the
+middle-weight boxing championship of Harvard in my
+Junior year, and speaking was by no means my long
+suit even in those days. I bucked up and went through
+it now though, just as I did on that first occasion. It&#39;s
+no very difficult thing to get away with when you know
+what you want to say&mdash;and have the crowd with you.
+I spoke briefly, but very earnestly&mdash;very much to the
+point, too, I think. When the crowd had quieted down
+a bit, tea was served. The next morning, when I read
+the papers in bed, it was to discover that I had become
+a fully fledged&mdash;or perhaps maned is the proper word&mdash;lion.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In one of those same papers there was an interesting
+item of news about another lion. The special representative
+the <i>Herald</i> had rushed to Townsville immediately
+the news of the <i>Cora Andrews</i> affair had been received,
+wired that the Hon. Hartley Allen, replying from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page131" id="page131"></a>[pg&nbsp;131]</span>
+the Quarantine Station to a note the correspondent had
+addressed him there, announced definitely that it was his
+intention to pay a visit to his old home town of Sydney.
+He would leave by the first steamer sailing after the
+doctors had certified him free of the danger of plague
+infection.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That was good news. The best I could have hoped
+for. It confirmed my growing belief that I was not
+going to have to do much, if any, seeking in order to
+meet my man. And it was a hundred to one that the
+doctor with whom I had talked on the <i>Utupua</i> had told
+Allen of the conversation as soon as the latter came out
+of his long sleep, I was even inclined to the opinion that
+his decision to go south as soon as he could had been
+influenced by a desire to find out once and for all what
+attitude I was going to take toward him. This was all
+to the good. There was no need of my hurrying back to
+Townsville now. I could stay in Sydney and enjoy my
+triumph while watching that of the Hon. Hartley Allen
+develop. With a lighter heart than I had known since
+the rumble of the <i>Cora&#39;s</i> anchor chain awakened me
+on that day of hateful memory in Kai, I tumbled out of
+bed, took a cold bath, and went down to the dining-room
+for breakfast&mdash;the greatest burst of early matutinal
+energy I had shown in years.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The avidity of the interest of the public in the Hon.
+Hartley Allen increased day by day as the time
+approached for the hero to come south. All of the important
+papers had special men on the job in Townsville,
+and every scrap of news bearing the least relation
+to the man of the hour was instantly put on the wires
+and rushed into print. Save for that one announcement
+that he intended visiting Sydney, Allen himself gave out
+nothing. The correspondents had to confine themselves
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page132" id="page132"></a>[pg&nbsp;132]</span>
+to reports of his continued improvement in health, as
+passed out to them by the doctors, and to speculation&mdash;columns
+of it&mdash;as to what effect Allen&#39;s return might be
+expected to have upon racing. His elder brother&mdash;Sir
+James, who was now in England&mdash;had allowed Hartley&#39;s
+stable to run down a good deal after the latter had been
+shipped off to the Islands. There were a few good
+horses left after the best of the string had been sold to
+pay off debts, and these would form a nucleus which
+could not fail to develop quickly into a factor to be
+reckoned with in the meets of next season. There was
+no limit to the discussion of this phase of the affair, Melbourne
+and Sydney racing experts devoting even more
+space to it than the special men in Townsville.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Of the story of the <i>Cora Andrews</i> there was nothing
+new whatever being brought out. If Allen was telling
+the doctors at the Quarantine Station anything, it must
+have been in confidence, for these professed to have
+learned nothing further every time the correspondents
+pressed them for details. The schooner herself, it was
+reported, had broken from her mooring during a gale
+and been driven upon the beach of Cleveland Bay, some
+miles from the town. A hole had been stove in her bow
+and it would be impossible to get her off before considerable
+repairs were carried out. As she had not been
+disinfected since the removal of the plague victims, there
+would probably be some delay about the repairs, especially
+as the question of her ownership was in doubt.
+She had belonged to the man who sailed her in the
+labour-recruiting trade, and he was dead. So was the
+Skipper who had taken her over in the Louisiades. It
+looked like the Hon. Hartley Allen had the most valid
+claim to her, but that was a matter to be adjusted by
+the courts in any event. In the meantime, the schooner,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page133" id="page133"></a>[pg&nbsp;133]</span>
+as she was lying in fairly quiet water, was probably safe
+until the next gale. Thus the papers.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">When Allen finally came out of quarantine it transpired
+that he would have a wait of three days on his
+hands before there was a steamer departing for the south.
+The delay was unavoidable, although an enthusiastic
+Sydney paper had suggested that the Admiral commanding
+the Australian Naval Station should detach a gunboat
+to bring the hero home. Allen, it appeared, had
+actually tried to avoid meeting the newspaper men, and
+consented to do so finally only on the condition that he
+would not be expected to give out anything in the way
+of an interview in respect to his past, present or future.
+As they had no alternative in the matter, the correspondents
+accepted the ultimatum, but only&mdash;as most of
+them confessed&mdash;in the hope of getting it modified when
+action was joined. They were doomed to disappointment.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen received them on the veranda of a house that had
+been put at his disposal by a prominent local shipping
+man&mdash;a detached bungalow in the grounds of the latter&#39;s
+home on the outskirts of the town. They reported him
+looking rather soft&mdash;a good two stone heavier than his
+former riding weight. He was heavily browned from the
+tropical sun, showed a tinge of yellow&mdash;doubtless from
+malaria and <i>dengue</i>,&mdash;and his face was deeply lined
+about the eyes and mouth. He looked to have aged
+rather more than the five years of his absence: but life
+in the Islands was hardly the rest cure most Australians
+fancied it. No, not by a long shot.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Except for his refusal to tell anything whatever of the
+story of how he had brought the plague ship through the
+Great Barrier Reef, Allen had been very courteous and
+agreeable to the pressmen. They all agreed that he was
+in good fettle&mdash;quite full of beans. Indeed, it was Allen
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page134" id="page134"></a>[pg&nbsp;134]</span>
+who did all of the interviewing. Persistently refusing to
+answer any questions about himself, he was avid of interest
+concerning all that had happened in the racing
+world during his absence. What were the real facts
+behind the breakdown of the Colchester filly after she
+had won the Victoria National so handily? Who was
+that colt <i>Ballarat Boy</i> out of?&mdash;the one that had upset
+all the dope in the spring meet at Adelaide. Were Tod
+Sloan and Skeets Martin still piling up wins in England?
+What was the secret of their success? Was there
+any chance of these or any other of the Yank jockeys
+coming to Australia?</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Answering such questions as these for an hour was the
+way that bunch of high-salaried feature writers interviewed
+the Hon. Hartley Allen. And when, as one of
+them put it in somewhat mixed simile, they were
+&quot;pumped dry as a last year&#39;s dope sheet,&quot; the hero announced
+that the interview was over.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Disappointed in their endeavours to pry any pearls
+from the oyster into which Allen (for reasons best
+known to himself) had metamorphosed himself, the correspondents
+made the best of a bad job by playing up
+the modesty of the man they had been sent a thousand
+miles or so to interview. Modest was an adjective that&mdash;in
+the light of what most of them knew of Allen&#39;s past&mdash;it
+hadn&#39;t occurred to any of them to use before. Now,
+however, they made up for lost time. The modest hero
+did this, or the modest hero said that.... There was
+modesty in the way he stroked his chin, in the shrug
+of his shoulders, in the way he crossed and uncrossed
+his legs when sitting. His habit of looking sideways
+when speaking was rated as a sign of modesty; so was
+the trick of stroking his cheroot between thumb and forefinger
+as he smoked. <i>Modest</i>&mdash;<i>hero</i>&mdash;those words became
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page135" id="page135"></a>[pg&nbsp;135]</span>
+permanently wedded in my mind during the week that
+I was reading leaders written with them for an inspiration,
+the report of sermons preached with them as a text.
+I cannot hear the one of them to this day without thinking
+of the other. <i>Modest hero!</i> In the estimation of the
+public &quot;Slant&quot; Allen, whom I had always thought of as
+the most egotistic man I had ever known, remained that
+to the&mdash;until public estimation ceased to interest him.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There was one little item of news telegraphed from
+Townsville which I read with a good deal of grim amusement.
+The day before his departure Allen was given
+some kind of a send-off in the Town Hall. As he was
+riding down the main street on his way to this affair,
+a man ducked under the rope holding the crowd back at
+the curb, rushed at the open carriage and aimed a blow
+at the breast of the hero with a knife. No whit perturbed,
+the latter had coolly deflected the thrust by
+striking up the assailant&#39;s elbow with his left hand.
+Then, seizing the ruffian&#39;s wrist with his right hand, he
+had brought it sharply down on the edge of the carriage
+door, shattering the bones and causing the knife to fall
+from the relaxed fingers to the pavement. Infuriated
+by the dastardly attack, the crowd had set upon the
+would-be assassin, who was only saved from being
+mauled to death through the interference of none other
+than Allen himself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The correspondents were much impressed, not only by
+the behaviour of the generous-hearted hero in intervening
+to save the life of the man who had just tried to take
+his own, but also&mdash;and especially&mdash;by a curious little
+circumstance in connection therewith. It was observed,
+in short, that, while Allen had defended his own body
+most effectually with his bare hands, as soon as he saw
+that the man who had attacked him was on the verge of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page136" id="page136"></a>[pg&nbsp;136]</span>
+being killed by a bloody-minded mob, quite beyond
+police control, he whipped out a revolver and used the
+menace of it to clear a space around the trampled body
+of his late assailant. The correspondents all thought
+that was rather fine; indeed, I was inclined to think so
+myself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen had flatly refused to lodge a complaint against
+the man who had tried so desperately to knife him, and
+even declined to help the police in their attempt to identify
+the fellow. &quot;Just an old Island affair, the big-hearted
+hero had explained with a careless laugh, as he
+turned on his way to receive the Golden Key symbolizing
+the Freedom of the Queen City of Northern Queensland.&quot;
+That was the way the <i>Herald</i> man had it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At the Police Station the prisoner was recognized at
+once as a man named Saunders, who had been convicted
+of a series of bullion robberies in the Kalgoorlie gold
+fields of Western Australia some years previously. Because
+of his diabolical practice of throwing red pepper
+and vitriol to blind his victims, he had gained the sobriquet
+of &quot;The Squid.&quot; He had escaped after serving
+but eighteen months of his twenty-five-year sentence and
+made his way across the &quot;Never-Never&quot; to Port Darwin,
+where all trace of him was lost for the time. He was
+supposed to have slipped away to the Islands. This was
+confirmed a few months later, when a boatload of out-bound
+placer miners were held up and robbed of the
+fruits of their season&#39;s work in the Fly gold fields of
+New Guinea. Even if one of them, who had once been
+in Western Australia, had not identified Saunders, the
+fact that a jar of sulphuric acid had been thrown into
+the midst of the miners would have connected &quot;The
+Squid&quot; with the crime beyond a doubt. Australia had
+but fragmentary record of his later crimes, but he was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page137" id="page137"></a>[pg&nbsp;137]</span>
+known to have been mixed up in a number of pearl
+robberies in and about Thursday Island. He had continued
+to practise his vitriol-throwing trick (varying it
+occasionally with a fiendishly original stunt with some
+native concoction), and was still known as &quot;The Squid.&quot;
+How long he had been lying low in Australia, or why
+he ventured there, he refused to tell; neither would he
+offer any explanation of his savage attack upon the hero
+of the hour. All he had said in the latter connection was:
+&quot;&#39;Slant&#39; &#39;ll twig why I took a flyer at returning the
+pig-sticker to him&mdash;it was his onct.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I understood at once that the root of &quot;The Squid&#39;s&quot;
+grudge against Allen struck back to that affair of the
+old pearl pirate&#39;s missionary-reared daughter&mdash;a copper-haired,
+ivory-browed Amazon of a girl who had become
+one of the most consummate sirens in the pearleries
+after a three-months trip with &quot;Slant&quot; to Singapore
+had broken her in. Amazing story the whole thing,
+from its beginning with the girl&#39;s mother&mdash;a teacher in
+the Gospel Propaganda Society&#39;s school at Thursday
+Island who had fallen afoul of one of &quot;The Squid&#39;s&quot;
+tentacles long before his conviction&mdash;to its ghastly finish,
+when the girl herself settled her accumulated account
+against all mankind with the body and soul of one&mdash;a
+hot-headed lump of a young missionary just out from
+London.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">According to the version current in Kai, Allen had
+not been greatly to blame in the affair with the temperamental
+rack of bones and red braids that the girl
+was when she burst upon the Islands from the Auckland
+convent; but &quot;The Squid&quot; evidently felt that the man
+who had set the snowball (not a very apt metaphor, for
+I never heard the girl compared to anything so frigid)
+rolling was the one to settle with. I had heard of three
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page138" id="page138"></a>[pg&nbsp;138]</span>
+or four rather ingeniously thought-out attempts he had
+made to square the account, all of which, however,
+had failed as a consequence of Allen&#39;s quickness of wit
+and hand in sudden emergency. The knife figuring in
+the Townsville attack, it occurred to me, was probably
+the one the resourceful &quot;Slant&quot; had put through &quot;The
+Squid&#39;s&quot; shoulder at twenty paces a fraction of a second
+before the latter had delivered a flask of red pepper
+from his upraised hand.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I also thought I understood why Allen had bluntly
+refused to make any explanation of the attack. A veritable
+Turk in his relations with women, that Island
+Lothario had also the Turk&#39;s dislike for discussing his
+women in public. When sober, Allen rarely if ever
+boasted about anything. When very drunk, he would
+occasionally toot a horn anent his racing wins; and once,
+when he was all but swamped&mdash;awash to the rails with
+&quot;Three Star&quot;&mdash;I had heard him give a maudlin monologue
+on men he had put away. But I&mdash;and no one else,
+so far as I knew&mdash;had ever heard him talk of the girls
+he had bagged, though the Lord knows there had been
+enough of them. (The nearest he ever came to it was in
+that little joke of his I have mentioned&mdash;the one about
+having &quot;a son and a saddle in every island group in
+the South Pacific,&quot;&mdash;and that was only a sort of delicate
+implication.) His close-mouthedness about women was
+one of a number of little things I couldn&#39;t help but liking
+in the rascal.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Since Allen and Saunders would not talk, and since
+the knife that figured in the affair&mdash;a heavy dirk, with
+a shark&#39;s hide handle and the mark of a Lisbon cutlerer
+on the blade&mdash;could not talk, the ever-baffled Townsville
+correspondents had been able to gather practically nothing
+about what their journalistic noses told them was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page139" id="page139"></a>[pg&nbsp;139]</span>
+a red-hot human interest story. Blocked on that trail,
+they devoted a lot of space to a discussion of the interesting
+revelation of the hero&#39;s Island nickname. More or
+less ingenious theories as to &quot;Why &#39;Slant&#39;?&quot; filled the
+columns of the papers for a number of days. None of
+them was within a mile of the mark. One of the correspondents
+fancied the name had been given Allen
+because of his &quot;aquilinity, his wiry slenderness, so that
+he clove the air like a slant of sunbeams as he rode.&quot;
+Another writer was sure the name was suggested by the
+hero&#39;s peculiar crouching seat&mdash;the slant of his back as
+he urged on his mount. They were quite incapable of
+going beyond Allen&#39;s physical characteristics, or of
+visualizing him save on horseback.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That added another little item to the list of things
+I could have enlightened the press and the public on
+about &quot;Slant&quot; Allen, and, in this particular instance,
+I wouldn&#39;t have minded passing on the facts at once. Indeed,
+I made rather a hit at a Government House
+luncheon one day by telling how the nearing hero (he
+was expected to be landing at Brisbane on the morrow)
+had qualified for his queer nickname. Jackson, who was
+responsible for the title, had confided to me how he came
+to bestow it. There was no story behind it, as some of
+the papers had hinted. Old &quot;Jack,&quot; after having known
+Allen pretty intimately for a couple of years, came to
+the conclusion one day that the lanky Sydney-sider was
+the first man he ever met who persistently and consistently
+kept him guessing. Given a situation, and the
+foxy old highwayman had discovered that he could
+usually tell in advance how any given man would be
+likely to meet it. It was after he had guessed wrong
+about Allen some dozens of times, without once guessing
+right, that Jackson made up his mind that there was no
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page140" id="page140"></a>[pg&nbsp;140]</span>
+forecasting the &quot;slant of his course from the slant of
+the breeze.&quot; And because something in the mellifluous
+sound of the word struck pleasantly on the trader&#39;s ear,
+he began applying the name to the man who had inspired
+it. &quot;No re&#39;l reason for it,&quot; he explained; &quot;but it sure
+do seem to fit &#39;im like a new copper bottom does a
+schooner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Governor General&#39;s Aide-de-camp, who was
+something of a follower of the ponies, confirmed Jackson&#39;s
+opinion and the fitness of the sobriquet. Said the
+gaily uniformed &quot;Galloper&quot;: &quot;The great secret of Allen&#39;s
+astonishing success as a point-to-point rider was his
+amazing faculty for bringing off the unexpected. Once,
+at Launceston, I saw him win on a hundred-to-one shot
+(how he happened to be riding the skate I don&#39;t know)
+by deliberately bolting the course and putting his mount
+full tilt through a thorn thicket. He was in tenth place,
+with a mile to go when he did it, and he won the race
+by a dozen lengths&mdash;his own and the waler&#39;s hide in
+tatters.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Another unexpected win of Allen&#39;s,&quot; he continued
+with the wry grin of a man who speaks of dearly bought
+experience, &quot;was that &#39;Totalisator&#39; coup of his at Adelaide.
+His pals got in on the &#39;Tote&#39; somehow, and&mdash;&quot;
+A warning cough from Lord X&mdash;&mdash; checked the loquacious
+&quot;Galloper&#39;s&quot; tongue in mid-flight, and, with reddening
+gill, he faded away with: &quot;Sorry, sir, but I
+forgot it isn&#39;t quite&mdash;quite the thing to remember that
+little chapter of Hartley Allen&#39;s past. Quite right,
+really. My mistake. Dead sorry, sir....&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There was no doubt that Allen was going to have a
+clean-scored slate to begin writing anew on. I was thinking
+of that, and &quot;Why &#39;Slant&#39;?&quot;, as I walked back to
+the hotel an hour later. &quot;No forecasting the slant of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page141" id="page141"></a>[pg&nbsp;141]</span>
+his course from the slant of the breeze!&quot;... &quot;Faculty
+for bringing off the unexpected.&quot; I hoped that he
+wasn&#39;t going to disappoint me in the matter of bringing
+things to a showdown on his arrival in Sydney. But no....
+My every instinct told me that he would not side-step
+that. So I made all preparations properly to receive
+&quot;Slant&quot; Allen, and, on the day of his triumphant
+home-coming, was waiting for him in my room at the
+<i>Australia</i>, as I have already told.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page142" id="page142"></a>[pg&nbsp;142]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XI<br />
+<small>A HERO&#39;S HOMECOMING</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">It</span> was two o&#39;clock when I began powdering and
+screening the yellow-hued inner lining of my sea
+shells. Subconsciously, I must have set three in my
+mind as the time my caller would come, for it was not
+until that hour that I ceased my absorbingly interesting
+labours and looked at my watch. So far as I can recall,
+I felt no concern one way or the other. I simply noted
+that the hour had gone by without bringing my expected
+visitor, and went back to my work.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As a matter of fact, having just made a most gratifying
+discovery, I was rather glad that the interruption
+had not come. I had isolated a new and wonderful
+colour&mdash;a dark coppery gold that I had yearned for
+every time I saw sunlight filtering through brine onto
+the gently undulating leaves of reef-rooted kelp. Now
+I had it; and it was not an accident&mdash;I could do it again.
+By standing on edge a fragment of one of the big
+bivalves I was experimenting with, I discovered that a
+sharp blow with the side of my pestle caused the thinnest
+of chips to fly from its enamel-like lining. These,
+glassily translucent as they fell, when reduced in the
+mortar gave a warm, almost glowing powder of exactly
+the hue I sought. Now if I could only devise a way of
+mixing it effectively....</p>
+
+<p class="indent">So well were my innermost faculties set to respond to
+that expected knock, that, when it came, not even the
+mazes of exultant speculation in which my discovery had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page143" id="page143"></a>[pg&nbsp;143]</span>
+set my brain&mdash;my outward wits&mdash;to wandering, prevented
+instant ganglionic reaction. I didn&#39;t have to
+think. That had all been done an hour before, and the
+necessary orders given. At the alarm, these had only
+to be carried out as prearranged. My legs and arms
+simply obeyed the directions that had been registered
+for them in some convenient little nerve-knots strung
+along my spinal column. That carried me, stepping
+softly, out of the bathroom, through the bedroom, and
+past the middle of the sitting-room, well beyond the
+direct line of vision of anyone opening the door from
+the hall. It was a position from which I must see
+anyone coming in before he was able to locate me. The
+rest of the order&mdash;carried out simultaneously&mdash;had to
+do with laying the pestle lightly on the bathroom table
+and thrusting the hand that had been wielding it deep
+into the right-hand pocket of my old shooting jacket.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In the second or two that it had taken me to reach
+the middle of the sitting-room from the bathroom, my
+wits had relinquished their rainbow dreams and were
+back on their workaday job. They it was which, now
+the limit of ganglionic action had been reached, stepped
+in and took command. It was not from nervousness that
+I swallowed once and flashed my tongue across my lips
+before speaking. I only wanted to be sure my voice was
+as firm as I knew the resolution directing it to be.
+Speaking sharply, but in a tone not above the ordinary,
+I said: &quot;Come in, Allen!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Among the several little surprises in store for me in
+the course of the next few minutes, not the least came
+when the man on the other side of the door coughed and
+cleared his throat as his hand began to turn the knob.
+I was just telling myself that such palpable symptoms
+of nervousness were very unlike &quot;Slant&quot; Allen to display,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page144" id="page144"></a>[pg&nbsp;144]</span>
+when the door swung inwards and &quot;Slant&quot; Allen
+stepped into the room. Allen, but not the Allen I had
+known. Absolutely nerved to readiness as I was, the
+contrast of this flushed, slightly embarrassed, almost diffident
+young chap and the ruthless, cold-blooded badman
+I had made every preparation&mdash;physical and mental&mdash;to
+meet came nigh to taking me aback. It was like
+clambering up out of a companionway, all set for a
+hurricane sweeping the deck&mdash;and finding it calm. For
+an instant my jaw must have come near to sagging in the
+amazement that swept over me. I pulled myself together
+quickly, though, and if Allen noticed my momentary
+lapse, he gave no sign of it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">He was the first to speak. &quot;So you were expecting
+me?&quot; he said, but not as though greatly surprised.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Ra-<i>ther</i>,&quot; I replied with emphasis. &quot;Look at this!&quot;
+and I pulled out the revolver from my right-hand pocket,
+released the hair-trigger adjustment, slid the safety-catch,
+and laid it on the table by the window. I would
+not have been guilty of such an obvious act of bravado
+had not my preternaturally acute senses told me that, so
+far as Allen was concerned at least, there was not going
+to be any occasion to use the weapon. That feeling persisted
+even when, as Allen turned slightly in the act of
+closing the door, I noticed a very perceptible bulge
+where the flimsy corner of his pongee coat swept his lean
+right flank. The instant he entered the room I knew
+that, whatever motives had brought him there, the intention
+of trying to kill me was not among them. Scarcely
+less strong were my doubts that I would be able to establish
+any valid grounds for killing him. My old sneaking
+liking for certain things about the debonair rascal was
+not dead.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">He grinned appreciatively at the sight of the gun, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page145" id="page145"></a>[pg&nbsp;145]</span>
+then, with a perfunctory &quot;You don&#39;t mind, do you?&quot;
+stepped over and picked it up. I watched him without
+misgivings, my mind still busy adjusting itself to the
+new aspect.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Was that the toy you used the day you put a bullet
+hole through the crown of my new hundred-dollar Payta
+hat?&quot; he asked, fingering the exquisitely turned barrel
+admiringly. &quot;My own fault, of course. I egged you on
+by expressing some doubts of your ability to do it from
+your jacket pocket. This looks like ...&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Same gun&mdash;same jacket&mdash;new pocket,&quot; I cut in laconically;
+adding: &quot;I was prepared to repeat the operation
+just now&mdash;with about half a finger less elevation on
+the muzzle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was the real old Allen grin that opened out as the
+significance of those concluding words sunk home. Not
+the mocking smirk which had curled his lips so much of
+the time, but a good, broad, healthy grin that betokened
+genuine inward enjoyment. The fellow&mdash;I had remarked
+it before&mdash;had a really keen and inclusive sense
+of humour&mdash;even inclusive enough to permit his hearty
+participation in a laugh that was on himself. But that
+irritating sneer (which had died on his lips as a full
+realization of Bell&#39;s bigness in giving him his choice of
+going on the <i>Cora</i> or remaining at Kai came to him)&mdash;that
+sneer, with the amused contempt for all the world it
+connoted, did not reappear. Indeed, I am not sure that
+I ever saw it again. Had there been some inward change
+in the man to dry up the fount of contempt from which
+that ironic smirk rose to his lips? I wasn&#39;t clear on that
+point yet: but certainly he had been profoundly shaken&mdash;deeply
+stirred.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Save for that expansive grin of real amusement, Allen
+made no comment on my implication that I had been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page146" id="page146"></a>[pg&nbsp;146]</span>
+waiting to send a bullet&mdash;a few inches below the crown
+of his hat. &quot;Sweetest balanced little piece of light
+artillery I ever trained,&quot; he remarked inconsequentially,
+holding the revolver at arm&#39;s length and squinting along
+the sights to where his reversed image menaced back
+from the depths of a full-length mirror. He really admired
+the little gun&mdash;I could see that by the way his fist
+closed on the checked vulcanite grip, by the caressing
+touch of his forefinger on the locked trigger.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Made to order by the S. and W. people for my
+father,&quot; I explained, trying to fall in with his mood as
+far as I could. If he had come to talk about revolvers&mdash;well,
+who in Australia knew more about them than I
+did? I continued:</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;There&#39;s two or three of the Governor&#39;s own little
+gadgets on it, and one or two I had added myself. The
+one that I like best is that safety-catch.... Stranger
+can&#39;t release it till he&#39;s been shown how. You never
+can tell who may be picking up a gun that&#39;s left lying
+around, you know. You&#39;ll have to admit it would be
+doubly painful for a man to be plunked with his own
+revolver.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I couldn&#39;t for the life of me have refrained from that
+last little sally, and Allen seemed to enjoy it as much as
+I did. His broadened grin showed an extra tooth or
+two at each end as he relaxed his extended arm. &quot;I
+haven&#39;t the least intention of trying to impose that indignity
+on you,&quot; he laughed. &quot;Besides, you needn&#39;t
+fear that the significance of that sag in your left-hand
+pocket has been lost on me. Had me covered from there
+all the time, didn&#39;t you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;As a matter of fact, I had,&quot; I replied, beginning to
+grin myself; &quot;but this confounded sawed-off <i>Mauser</i>
+automatic has an upkick that makes anything like delicate
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page147" id="page147"></a>[pg&nbsp;147]</span>
+work quite out of the question. I could wing you
+with it from there, no doubt; but the job wouldn&#39;t be a
+pretty one&mdash;nothing that I could take any pride in.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I laid the stubby automatic on the table where the
+other weapon had been, saying that I always did hate the
+drag of a gun in my pocket. Then, letting my glance
+wander to the bulge on Allen&#39;s right hip, I added pointedly:
+&quot;... especially when I can&#39;t see any immediate
+use ahead for it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Either missing the point of that gentle hint, or else
+ignoring it completely, Allen went on playing with the
+little S. &amp; W. Breaking it gently with practised hand,
+he studied with bent head the smooth, easy action of
+the automatic ejector. Just a bit more of a bend, and the
+six cartridges slid noiselessly forth and fell into his hand.
+He commenced shoving them back, one by one. It was
+the last, or the next to the last, of the greasy cylinders
+that slipped from his fingers, struck the floor and rolled
+under the table. I remarked with admiration the magnificent
+swell of the flexed saddle muscles as the thin
+<i>pongee</i> tightened over the bent thighs; the narrow hips,
+the lean, powerful back, the&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Good God!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The voice, hoarse with awe and surprise, was mine;
+but my own mother would hardly have recognized it.
+For an instant my quaking knees almost let me collapse
+to the floor; then my faltering inward control stiffened
+and clapped the brakes on my skidding nerves. By the
+time Allen, startled by my sudden exclamation, straightened
+up from his scramble after the still unretrieved
+cartridge, I had myself fully in hand again. I could not
+be sure whether his flush and quick breathing were from
+surprise or the stooping posture in which he had been.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Did you speak, Whitney?&quot; he asked, after running
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page148" id="page148"></a>[pg&nbsp;148]</span>
+his eyes over the room and assuring himself that no
+one had entered. I held his eyes with my own till I was
+sure my voice was steadied. When I spoke, it was deliberately
+and evenly. &quot;So Rona came back,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The train of lightning mental processes by which I had
+arrived at that astonishing conclusion had not much of
+an edge on Allen&#39;s quick comprehension of what had
+started that train going. For only the briefest instant
+his eyes were blank with surprise. Then, with a look
+of complete understanding, he clapped a hand to the side
+of his neck and began smoothing straight the limp collar
+of his soft silk shirt. The ghost of what would have been
+a sheepish grin flickered up and died away, and to his
+face came something of that half-embarrassed, half-eager
+look that had sat upon it when he entered the
+room, as he said: &quot;Yes, Rona has come back. That was
+one of the things I came to see you about. She&mdash;we&mdash;the
+both of us have a bit of a favour to ask of you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Quite the master of myself now (and of the situation,
+too, I thought), I came back banteringly with: &quot;If it&#39;s
+that red, white and blue neck of yours you want tied
+up, I have one of B. and W.&#39;s little First Aid cases in
+my bag....&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was the shockingly torn and bruised neck that had
+been revealed when Allen&#39;s collar had slipped back as he
+stooped to recover the rolling cartridge that set my swift
+train of thought going. This must have been something
+of the order of it, but electrically rapid of action: Lacerated
+neck&mdash;old Chinaman at Ponape whose neck was
+scratched when Rona ran away from him&mdash;Rona a specialist
+in neck-scratching&mdash;probably scratched Allen&#39;s
+neck (Question&mdash;Was it done in the course of one of the
+attacks she was known to have made upon him on the
+<i>Cora</i>?)&mdash;Could not have been done on the <i>Cora</i>, as they
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page149" id="page149"></a>[pg&nbsp;149]</span>
+had left her over two weeks ago and these half-healed
+scratches were not over five or six days old.&mdash;Hence,
+Rona had scratched Allen&#39;s neck inside of the last week,
+and, therefore, could not have drowned herself in Ross
+Creek a fortnight ago. Conclusion&mdash;Rona has come
+back.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It had taken not over a second or two for my quickened
+mind to run that devious course, and Allen&#39;s must
+have covered a good part of it in even less time. The
+wits of the both of us were keenly on edge. There could
+not but have been a fine display of sparks had he been
+in his wonted aggressive mood. But he had not come
+for fighting, physical or mental, it seemed. He had come
+to ask a favour&mdash;&quot;for the both of us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;<i>For the both of us!</i>&quot; The significance lurking in
+those words had eluded me for a moment in the sudden
+adjustment my mind was called upon to make in coming
+to a realization of the fact that Rona&mdash;the lissome lovely
+Rona&mdash;was not dead&mdash;that the bright flame of her was
+unquenched after all. But: &quot;<i>a favour for the both of
+us!</i>&quot; A sudden chill checked and throttled the thrill
+that had started to flood my being. &quot;<i>A favour for both
+of us!</i>&quot; &quot;So&mdash;Bell dead&mdash;&#39;Slant&#39; Allen takes the girl
+in the end!&quot; I said to myself. Then, the echo of Kai&#39;s
+estimate of Allen&#39;s track strategy: &quot;An easy starter
+but a hell of a finisher, &#39;Slant&#39;. Don&#39;t worry about
+what he&#39;s doing when the starting flag drops; watch
+him head into the stretch.&quot; &quot;... <i>head into the
+stretch</i>,&quot; I repeated to myself. &quot;Then what about the
+finish? Is he already under the wire?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">These thoughts, like the train preceding them, must
+have flashed through my mind very quickly, for it was
+Allen&#39;s voice replying to my badinage about First Aid
+for his lacerated neck that brought me out of them.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page150" id="page150"></a>[pg&nbsp;150]</span>
+&quot;The neck&#39;s doing very well, thank you,&quot; he was saying,
+&quot;considering that its windpipe was closed for all of
+sixty seconds, and that most of the hide was clawed off
+from it all the way round.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That was really very interesting intelligence, but my
+mind, deep in another channel, was quite incapable of
+compassing the significance of it for the moment.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;So you&#39;ve landed the girl after all,&quot; I said woodenly,
+cursing myself inwardly for the gallery play that had
+left both guns beyond my reach. For of course he had
+deliberately put Bell out of the running&mdash;shouldered him
+in the stretch.... Reviving suspicions brought also a
+realization of what it was up to me to do, now that there
+was no longer doubt....</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;That depends very largely upon you.&quot; Allen&#39;s quick
+reply cut short further conjecture.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Depends upon me?&quot; I interrupted incredulously.
+&quot;What do you mean by that? Oh, I see. Now that
+you&#39;ve put Bell out of the way, perhaps you think that
+I, as his closest friend, ought to&mdash;to distribute his estate,
+so to speak. If that is the way you figure it, let me tell
+you that all the distributing you can count on me for
+will take the form of spraying lead over your worthless
+hide. You won&#39;t mind handing me one of those guns,
+will you? I don&#39;t mind which.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It would have been sheer madness&mdash;straight suicide,&mdash;that
+outburst, had Allen been moved by the least desire
+to get me out of his way. I have never been quite able
+to make up my mind as to whether it was my instinctive
+feeling that he had no such desire that prompted me to
+take more leeway than prudence&mdash;nay, the commonest
+motive of self-preservation&mdash;would have dictated; or
+whether I simply lost my head&mdash;let my feelings get away
+with me. It may well have been the latter, for shocks
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page151" id="page151"></a>[pg&nbsp;151]</span>
+had been crowding pretty thick, and it was hardly to
+be expected that the gears of my self-control wouldn&#39;t
+slip a cog now and then under the strain.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen&#39;s brows drew together in a black scowl for a
+brief space, and his eyes contracted and grew hard as
+steel. Then, slowly, the scowl smoothed out, leaving only
+a deep flush behind it. It was not replaced by his former
+look of anxious embarrassment, however. Rather his
+expression was one of a serious, controlled determination.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;That matter of my putting Captain Bell out of the
+way, as you choose to phrase it,&quot; he said sharply, &quot;is
+one of the things I called to talk with you about. Since
+you&#39;ve stated so plainly what you intend to do about
+it&mdash;assuming it&#39;s a fact,&mdash;perhaps it would be in order
+to take it up before&mdash;before the other matter. As for
+these pistols.... Since they&#39;re yours, help yourself
+to both of them.&quot; Stepping back from the table, well
+out of reach of the guns, he added: &quot;But I&#39;d rather
+appreciate it if you could see your way to refraining
+from using them until I&#39;m through with what I&#39;ve got to
+say; after that ...&quot; (he gave his shoulders an indifferent
+shrug) &quot;it&#39;s up to you. Do what you think
+best with them. I don&#39;t want them&mdash;neither one of
+them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Of course not,&quot; I sneered. &quot;Quite naturally, you&#39;d
+prefer to use your own. Quite right, too. Get it out
+of your hip-pocket while you&#39;ve got a chance. That&#39;s
+a new chum&#39;s way of carrying a gun, anyhow. I&#39;m just
+a bit surprised to see a practised killer like Mister
+&#39;Slant&#39; Allen resorting to it. No chance in the world
+to make an even break of it with a man with a gun in
+his side-pocket. Tail of your coat&#39;s always getting mixed
+up with your fingers just when you want to use them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page152" id="page152"></a>[pg&nbsp;152]</span>
+Allen had braced himself after my first taunt came so
+near to getting him going, and this second one&mdash;galling
+as it must have been&mdash;hardly moved him. Only the
+faintest flutter of a corrugation between the brows told
+that another scowl had been repressed. The half-surprised
+tap he gave to the bulge on his hip&mdash;a gesture
+that would most certainly have drawn a shot from me
+had I had a gun in hand&mdash;suggested that he really had
+forgotten that there was anything there. I am positive
+that I could have grabbed a revolver from the table
+and beaten him to it on the draw. A move so naïve on
+the part of an old gunman convinced me, even before
+he had spoken a word, that I had let my feelings send
+me off at half-cock.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I haven&#39;t a pistol in my hip-pocket,&quot; he said evenly.
+&quot;Never did carry one there, and wouldn&#39;t be likely to
+begin it if I was going gunning for a specialist like you.
+You&#39;ll have to take my word for that. Yes, and since
+I&#39;m going to ask you to take my word&mdash;my unsupported
+word&mdash;for a number of other things, it may be in order
+to try to make you believe that my word, when I give
+it to you straight, isn&#39;t quite&mdash;that it isn&#39;t on just the
+same plane with the rest of my doings.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was just a bit surprised that he didn&#39;t take out
+whatever it was that created that bulge in his hip-pocket,
+but hardly reckoned it worth while mentioning. I was
+fully assured that, far from seeking trouble, it was the
+one thing he had steadfastly resolved to avoid. That
+was enough for the moment. He was also about to speak
+of the one thing I was interested in above all others&mdash;the
+doping of Bell. There was every reason why I
+should encourage him to speak of that. The matter of
+Rona would come up in due course. He evidently had
+something to say about her also.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page153" id="page153"></a>[pg&nbsp;153]</span>
+&quot;Sit down,&quot; I said, and extended my cigarette case.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">He declined my fat gold-tipped Egyptians, heavily
+salted with <i>kief</i> (another accursed habit I had picked
+up in Paris), and lighted a slender Sumatra cheroot
+from his own case. It was not as a move of precaution
+(I was through with all pretence of that now) that I set
+the big lounging chair I shoved up for him so that he
+would sit facing the light. I merely wanted to watch his
+face. Yet even that was not necessary to satisfy me of
+his sincerity, at least for the moment. His every tone
+and gesture was sufficient proof of that.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;In the matter of the value of my word....&quot; Allen
+was losing no time in getting to the point. &quot;In the time
+you have spent mooching about the Islands, Whitney,
+you have doubtless heard me referred to by a good many
+hard names, such as pirate, murderer, thief, blackguard,
+jail-bird, crook, and so on without end. You&#39;ve heard
+all of these, haven&#39;t you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;All, and many others,&quot; I assented readily. His
+frankness rather appealed to me just then.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Quite right. Yet I dare say you didn&#39;t happen to
+hear the name of liar included among the number. If
+you did, it was used by some cove who had a grudge
+against me, and didn&#39;t care whether he stuck to facts or
+not. I don&#39;t mean that I haven&#39;t put over a lot of
+crooked deals in my time, nor that I haven&#39;t come out
+with a gratuitous falsehood now and then when it suited
+my purpose. I don&#39;t claim to be a George Washington.
+But I do mean just this: that when I have deliberately
+assured a man that a thing was, or was not so, I was giving
+him the dead straight of it to the best of my knowledge.
+And that&#39;s the way I&#39;m speaking when I tell you
+that I haven&#39;t a revolver on me, and that that dope
+I slipped into Bell&#39;s whisky at Kai had nothing to do
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page154" id="page154"></a>[pg&nbsp;154]</span>
+with his playing out on the voyage. As for the reason
+of that ...&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen frowned slightly and ceased speaking for a few
+seconds. When he resumed it was not to take up the
+thread where he had dropped it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I don&#39;t know whether you&#39;ll have difficulty in believing
+it or not, Whitney,&quot; he went on after a half-dozen
+puffs at his slow-burning cheroot; &quot;but this is the
+first time since I was packed out of Australia five years
+ago that I&#39;ve tried to explain to anyone anything I&#39;ve
+said or done&mdash;tried to make out a case for myself. That
+was simply because I didn&#39;t give a damn whether anyone
+approved of it or not. The reason I am doing it now&mdash;well,
+there are two reasons.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">He puffed quietly for a few moments again, as though
+gathering his thoughts. Then he continued: &quot;The first
+reason is that I owe it to you for the consideration you
+showed in the matter of not telling them at Kai what an
+ass I&#39;d made of myself. That was dead white, Whitney.
+I&#39;ve got to give it you for that. No one but a thoroughbred
+could have held his tongue for five minutes about a
+thing like that, especially seeing you were under no obligations
+of any kind whatever to me. And, for all I can
+learn, you&#39;ve held your tongue for a month. How do I
+know? Well, I know about Kai (the only ones I care
+much about anyway) through a letter Jackson got off to
+me from Samarai&mdash;after he&#39;d delivered you over to old
+&#39;Choppy&#39; Tancred to bring south. Got it the night
+before I left Townsville. It wasn&#39;t much of a literary
+effort, but he managed to say a few things that&mdash;things
+that I knew he wouldn&#39;t have said if you had given them
+the facts&mdash;all the facts about my departure in the <i>Cora</i>.
+As for Australia.... If you had been dishing up any
+inside dope in this nest of old women and busybodies,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page155" id="page155"></a>[pg&nbsp;155]</span>
+no fear that it wouldn&#39;t have come to me before this.
+I know them. Their tongues will waft gossip from Melbourne
+to Port Darwin quicker&#39;n the telegraph. My
+word, don&#39;t I know them!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Quickened puffs registered the bitterness of unpleasant
+memories as Allen fell silent for a brief interval. &quot;I&#39;m
+not fool enough to believe that you kept quiet here out
+of any regard for me,&quot; he went on presently. &quot;That
+wouldn&#39;t be it, for you haven&#39;t any. I don&#39;t blame
+you. As a matter of fact, I don&#39;t seriously care what
+Australia thinks anyway. I&#39;m through with them here
+for good and all. But the Islands are different. The
+rest of my life, such as it is, is going to be lived there,
+and the only men I have ever had any great respect for
+are living there now. So, whatever reason there was behind
+it, Whitney, I&#39;m deeply grateful to you for not
+showing me up in Kai. It was dead white of you.&mdash;I say
+it again. I&#39;ve thought of it a good many times since I
+got Jack&#39;s scrawl, and it was the first thing I intended
+to speak to you about today. Only, my slate got a bit
+upset. That little gun of yours deflected my thoughts,
+and then&mdash;but you saw how I got forced off on another
+tack.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The other reason&quot; (Allen hurried on as though anxious
+to avoid hearing any observations I might feel impelled
+to make on what he had just said) &quot;why I am going to
+the trouble of trying to clear up your suspicions in the
+matter of Bell&#39;s death is because, if I don&#39;t, there will
+be no hope of your granting the request I have come to
+make of you&mdash;and I can&#39;t run any chances of failure
+with that.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I didn&#39;t want to kill Bell, but&mdash;well, it seems that
+I was equal to playing a damn dirty trick to get him
+out of the way. I won&#39;t need to tell you why. I hate
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page156" id="page156"></a>[pg&nbsp;156]</span>
+to drag the girl into it, but it can&#39;t be helped. She must
+have bewitched me, I&#39;m afraid. Not intentionally.
+Quite to the contrary, she never gave me a look. I admired
+Bell&mdash;in spite of his rather standoffish way with
+me&mdash;as much as any man I ever met. That was the
+only reason I held myself in about the girl as long as I
+did. I don&#39;t know just what would have happened if
+the schooner hadn&#39;t come. Chances are, since I was
+getting pretty near the limit of my self-control, I would
+have blown off some other way.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The opportunity which I saw to get rid of Bell in the
+schooner was too great a temptation to be resisted. So
+far as getting him clean away with the <i>Cora</i> was concerned,
+I have only my own hot-headedness to blame
+for failing. I was simply asking for trouble when I
+went prancing down to take over the girl before the
+schooner even had her hook broken out; and I found
+it. No more than I deserved, though.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen paused while the old humorous grin spread over
+his face for a moment. Then: &quot;I trust you won&#39;t mind
+if I don&#39;t go into details about how I came to put my
+head into the noose,&quot; he said, still grinning. &quot;It wasn&#39;t
+very edifying, you know&mdash;from my standpoint, I mean.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;But it would have made no difference even if Bell
+had got away, while the girl and I remained behind on
+the island. She wouldn&#39;t have had anything to do with
+me anyway&mdash;at any rate, not while she had any reason
+to hope that Bell was still alive,&mdash;and probably she
+would have knifed me at the first chance for the part I
+had in getting him away. She would have found the
+chance, too, let me tell you. That girl creates her own
+opportunities&mdash;there&#39;s no holding her once she takes
+the bit in her teeth. What she wants to do, that thing
+she does. And what she wants a man to do for her,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page157" id="page157"></a>[pg&nbsp;157]</span>
+that thing <i>he</i> does. She&#39;ll put through what she&#39;s after
+if she has to go through hell for it&mdash;and no minding
+whom she takes with her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The queer unnerved look on Allen&#39;s face drew my first
+interruption. &quot;So it&#39;s come to that?&quot; was all I said.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Yes, it&#39;s come to that,&quot; he assented, the seriousness
+of his eyes belying the whimsical smile on his lips.
+&quot;But I&#39;ll be returning to that presently.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;About that dope I gave Bell,&quot; he went on&mdash;&quot;it was
+absolutely harmless. I bought the stuff in Macassar a
+few months ago, more out of curiosity than anything else.
+The old Sultan at Ternate had told me about it, and I
+was just a bit interested in its effects. It was pretty
+concentrated, though not a hundredth of the strength of
+the essence from the same plant that Rona took it for&mdash;the
+deadly poison, which has the same pungent smell. It
+was a considerable overdose of the stuff I took one night
+that put me on to the fact that, after a short spell of
+rather pleasant mental stimulation, it would drug a man
+to sleep for an hour or two. Hardly any after-effects
+at all, except a deuce of a thirst for liquor for a few
+days. I had talked about it with Doc Wyndham two
+or three times, and am perfectly certain of what I tell
+you.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It was the only stuff I could lay hands on that promised
+to do the trick. You see, I was afraid that if Bell
+wasn&#39;t drugged, he would become suspicious when I
+failed to return to the schooner, and come to look for
+me&mdash;perhaps even chuck up the stunt entirely. If he
+hadn&#39;t been pretty drunk (much the furthest along I
+ever saw him&mdash;probably on account of the beastly heat&mdash;you
+remember it?) he must have sniffed the half-dozen
+drops I put in his half-emptied glass of whisky while
+he was conning that old chart he had on the wall. It
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page158" id="page158"></a>[pg&nbsp;158]</span>
+was a light dose (I&#39;ve taken twice that much myself),
+and though he went under jolly fast&mdash;due to his being
+so far gone with whisky, probably&mdash;he was up and taking
+command of the schooner inside of an hour. And
+you&#39;ll remember how he was going right on ahead getting
+under way to catch the tide, even though I hadn&#39;t
+returned. The best nerves I ever saw in a man, bar none,
+that chap had. Will of iron and eyes for nothing but the
+thing he set out to do. There was a lot in common between
+him and the girl on that score. No wonder they
+were so strong for each other.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen fell silent again, stroking his cheroot between
+thumb and forefinger&mdash;the habit the correspondents had
+characterized as a sign of modesty. &quot;I hope you won&#39;t
+insist on my telling any more about the voyage than I
+have to in connection with Bell&#39;s death,&quot; he said at last.
+&quot;I hate to speak of it at all. The thing is almost as much
+of a nightmare in memory as it was in fact. You saw
+how things were on the schooner when we got away.
+Well, just picture them getting worse and worse day by
+day for&mdash;how long was it?&mdash;something over a week, I believe,
+but it seemed a lifetime. The whisky I kept bracing
+up with made it a lot easier for me to stand&mdash;kept
+me from going crazy and jumping overboard, as so
+many of the niggers did. But Bell&mdash;he didn&#39;t have
+the whisky&mdash;wouldn&#39;t have it. Yes, he kept up that mad
+joke of his about being a &#39;soba skippa&#39; to the end. That
+was what killed him&mdash;just that, and nothing else. It
+was beyond a being of flesh and blood to do what he set
+himself out to do&mdash;and live. He tried to (my God, how
+he tried!)&mdash;and died.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I never felt such pity for any living thing, unless it
+was old Recoil, my first steeplechaser, when he lived for
+twenty-four hours after staving in his chest against a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page159" id="page159"></a>[pg&nbsp;159]</span>
+stone wall. I was hardly more than a kid then. I lay
+in the straw of his box all that time with his battered,
+bleeding frame, and swore I&#39;d kill the first man that tried
+to shoot him. Then I pulled myself together and did the
+humane job myself. But I couldn&#39;t shoot Bell, and he
+wouldn&#39;t shoot himself. That would have been the easy
+way out (since he had steeled his will against taking another
+drink), but he wouldn&#39;t follow that short-cut either.
+Said he was&mdash;how did he put it?&mdash;&#39;goin&#39; to ride the wata
+wagon all the way to po&#39;t, an&#39; then fall off good and
+plenty.&#39; Some Yankee expression about keeping strict
+teetotal, wasn&#39;t it?</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It got to me worse than the crazy niggers&mdash;watching
+the agony of his mind and body contorting the muscles
+of his face, as he tried to hide what he was going through.
+The girl was a good deal of help to him for the first day
+or two, and he admitted that he was glad she had decided
+to join his &#39;li&#39;l&#39; pa&#39;ty at the last minnit.&#39; But even she
+failed to create a diversion as his cravings for whisky
+became more and more intense, and he seemed to try to
+avoid her as much as he could toward the last&mdash;probably
+because he couldn&#39;t hide his suffering from her. I saw
+that it was killing him&mdash;that he would never last out the
+voyage on the course he was heading,&mdash;and tried hard
+to make him see that it was only reasonable to allow himself
+at least enough whisky to ease off the tension on his
+breaking nerves. But he wouldn&#39;t listen to it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;&#39;I gave it out official,&#39; he said, &#39;that I was goin&#39; to
+keep soba on my next ship, if I eva got one. An&#39; soba&#39;s
+the wo&#39;d.&#39; To put an end to the matter, he turned his
+back on me and went for&#39;ard among the niggers.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;After that I tried to explain to Rona (I had managed
+to get on speaking terms with her as soon as she
+became satisfied that Bell had not been poisoned) how
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page160" id="page160"></a>[pg&nbsp;160]</span>
+things stood, in the hope that she would fall in with a
+plan I had for giving him small doses of whisky with
+the coffee he had taken to drinking with increasing frequency
+as the craving for liquor grew on him. She flew
+into a temper at once, however. Said that, far from helping
+me to give him whisky on the quiet, she would taste
+every cup of coffee after it was poured for him in the
+galley, and then take it to him herself. She ended by
+saying that if I tried that trick she would knife me with
+her own hands: in fact, rather regretted that she hadn&#39;t
+done it when she had a chance at Kai. I couldn&#39;t for the
+life of me see why the girl should take that attitude,
+when it was so plain that whisky was the only thing that
+would pull Bell through; but take it she did, and that
+was the end of it, at least as far as co-operation from her
+was concerned, I mean. That simply left it up to me
+to watch my chances and do the best I could on my own.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Bell had insisted on standing watch-and-watch with
+me from the first, usually, in his own watch, taking the
+wheel himself, probably because it gave him something to
+occupy his mind&mdash;and his hands. (He was beginning
+to tear the skin of the palms of his hands from
+clenching and unclenching his fingers.) What broke
+him finally was discovering that he was no longer
+fit for a trick at the wheel. His eyes went bad
+rapidly under the strain, and it was not long before
+he could not distinguish the readings on the compass
+card. He told me about it at once, but was confident
+he could manage to hold a course by the stars.
+This went on all right as long as it was clear. But one
+night, when it was squally and overcast, he lost the
+&#39;Cross&#39; (which had been giving him a shifting but fairly
+approximate bearing), and fell back on trying to keep
+her a couple of points off the wind. This would have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page161" id="page161"></a>[pg&nbsp;161]</span>
+done all right if the Trade had held from the southeast.
+But it hauled up to east in a squall, and Bell,
+following it around by the &#39;feel&#39; of it on his face, had
+the schooner all but onto the Baluka Reef and shoal at
+daybreak. I let him extricate himself to save his feelings;
+but he knew that both the Bo&#39;sun and I had
+twigged what had happened, and why, and it must have
+been the realization of the fact that he had become quite
+useless in navigating the ship that hastened the final
+collapse.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;He came on the following night for his watch&mdash;the
+&#39;graveyard,&#39; from midnight to four in the morning,&mdash;but
+made no objection when I stuck on at the helm.
+We were closing the tangle of the Barrier Reef by then,
+you see, and it wouldn&#39;t have done to trust the wheel to
+a nigger. In fact, when I went on at eight the previous
+evening, it was practically the beginning of the thirty-six-hour
+trick at the wheel that ended when we
+anchored off Townsville.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;When Bell let me stay on at the wheel at midnight,
+he showed the first voluntary signs of giving in, not in
+the matter of closing his lips to whisky&mdash;nothing could
+affect his decision on that score,&mdash;but to the other alternative.
+I mean that he gave up hope of holding on till
+he had brought his ship to port&mdash;gave up hope of living
+to the end of the voyage. Up to that time he had
+always tried to pass the whole thing off as a sort of a
+joke, running on with patter like that about the &#39;wata
+wagon.&#39; But he dropped all that from the moment I
+refused to give way to him at the wheel.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;&#39;Youah quite right, Allen,&#39; he said in a weary sort
+of voice, and went over and sat down on the rail of the
+cockpit. His voice was hollower still when he spoke
+again, maybe ten minutes later. &#39;Allen,&#39; he croaked,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page162" id="page162"></a>[pg&nbsp;162]</span>
+&#39;I&#39;ve got a hunch I&#39;m not up to pullin&#39; my weight in
+this heah schoona any longa. I&#39;m all in&mdash;no mo&#39;n so
+much ballast. Just a dead drag.&#39;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I didn&#39;t reply to that. I was too much awed&mdash;yes,
+awed&mdash;even to urge him again to take the drink I knew
+would be the saving of his mind&mdash;perhaps his life. He
+didn&#39;t speak again till after I roused him to prevent the
+main boom giving him a crack on the head as I put her
+about. (We were working through a nasty patch of
+broken coral&mdash;the outskirts of the Barrier&mdash;but scant
+seaway and fluky airs.) As he settled back on the
+weather rail of the cockpit he said, speaking very slow as
+though hard put to control his voice: &#39;Allen, I make
+it about two hundred miles to Townsville by youah
+noon position. Say thirty-six to forty hours&#39; sailin&#39;,
+with the wind holdin&#39; up. Do you reckon you an&#39;
+Ranga&mdash;good man, Ranga&mdash;do you reckon you an&#39; he ah
+up to pullin&#39; it off alone? I&#39;m&mdash;damn it all, I&#39;m seem&#39;
+hell-west-an&#39;-crooked just as we hit the dirty navigatin&#39;
+Allen, take my wud fo&#39; it, this soba skippa stunt ain&#39;t
+all it&#39;s cracked up to be&mdash;not by a long shot. I&#39;d rather
+ha&#39; had the plague by a damn sight, Allen.&#39;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;He wouldn&#39;t mention the other alternative&mdash;whisky&mdash;even
+then, and I simply didn&#39;t have the nerve to take
+advantage of the opening and suggest it to him outright.
+But I did what I thought was the best thing under
+the circumstances&mdash;waited for a stretch of open sailing,
+gave the wheel to a nigger, fished up a convenient bottle
+of whisky, and set it down just behind him against the
+cockpit rail. I didn&#39;t speak even then&mdash;just pressed his
+shoulder, tilted the neck of the bottle against his hand
+where it clutched the rail, and went back to the wheel.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I had the feeling (and I still have) that I was doing
+the decent and humane thing, just as I did when I put old
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page163" id="page163"></a>[pg&nbsp;163]</span>
+Recoil out of his misery; though the cases aren&#39;t quite
+parallel of course. But I knew it would force a crisis
+one way or the other, and that was what, in all sincerity,
+I thought was the kindest thing to do. If Bell drank
+(though it well might be that he would go on drinking
+until he fell in a stupor), it would surely save his life.
+What if he did get dead drunk? He wouldn&#39;t be any
+more useless in navigating the schooner than he was already.
+On the other hand, if he still refused to drink,
+the heightened temptation of the handy bottle would
+increase the tension and hasten the collapse of mind and
+body, which was now but a matter of a few hours at the
+outside. I think you&#39;ll agree with me, Whitney, that I
+did the kindest thing possible under the circumstances.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I wouldn&#39;t venture an opinion on that offhand,&quot; I
+temporized; &quot;but, in any event, it&#39;s the thing I would
+undoubtedly have done myself had I been in your place.
+There&#39;s no question in my mind on that point at least.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I&#39;m glad to hear you say that,&quot; he said warmly;
+&quot;especially as there was one person&mdash;a rather important
+person to me&mdash;who didn&#39;t approve of my action.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Bell&#39;s only acknowledgment of what I had done,&quot;
+Allen went on, &quot;was a sort of disjointed muttering.
+&#39;Many thanks, ol&#39; man. Nothin&#39; doin&#39;. Good intentions.
+Soba skippa to the fareyewell!&#39; (I think that was the
+word). He shoved the bottle along out of easy reach, but
+didn&#39;t even make a bluff at throwing it over the side. I
+have an idea that the reason for his restraint on that
+score was due to the fact that he remembered I had told
+him that the supply was running low (I had been putting
+an awful crimp in it), and didn&#39;t want to deprive
+me of it. He was quite considerate enough to think of
+that sort of a thing, even with his senses toppling, as
+they must have been from the beginning of the watch.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page164" id="page164"></a>[pg&nbsp;164]</span>
+&quot;It was a moonless night, and heavily overcast, so
+that I could just make out the blur of Bell&#39;s head and
+shoulders against the deckhouse where he sat hunched
+up on the port rail of the cockpit. But there was a
+crack opening up in the beastly binnacle, and through
+it an inch-wide welt of light slashed diagonally across
+his tortured face. One eye, the side of his nose and half
+of his mouth were sharply lighted up. The rest was a
+shadowy blank. The vivid gash of light, like a magnet,
+kept drawing my gaze away from the compass. That one
+eye, wide and staring, never blinked in the bright beam.
+The nostril, distending and contracting jerkily, was
+red, like that of a horse that has been galloped to the
+point of death. The teeth looked to be clenched through
+the lower lip, and blood was trickling over the lighted
+streak of clean-shaven chin. Not all his sufferings had
+made him miss his morning shave. Almost like a rite
+with him, that was.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Holdover from his Naval life,&quot; I suggested hastily,
+fearful less he should be tempted to digress upon irrelevant
+details.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I don&#39;t know just when it was that the end came,&quot;
+Allen resumed. &quot;I was expecting every moment that
+he would jump up and begin his restless pacings, as he
+had done on previous nights. But at six bells his position
+was still unchanged, and to blot out that beastly slash
+of light across his drawn face I threw a piece of canvas
+over the top and back of the binnacle, so that the beam
+from the crack was cut off. Just as the morning watch
+was called a nasty bit of a squall was threatening to
+bore in and give us a raking, though it finally passed
+astern of us and spun off down to leeward. My hands
+were full for some minutes preparing against the imminent
+onslaught, and it was not until the menace was past
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page165" id="page165"></a>[pg&nbsp;165]</span>
+and I had taken over the wheel from Ranga (who had
+relieved me when I went for&#39;ard to have a squint
+ahead for myself), that it struck me that Bell had
+been paying no attention whatever to all that had been
+going on&mdash;didn&#39;t appear to have shifted at all, in
+fact.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I was just going to call to him to suggest that he go
+below and turn in for a spell, when the nigger on the
+lookout in the bows sung out &#39;breaka&mdash;dead ahead!&#39; It
+was a near thing, but I managed to sheer off and avoid
+grounding on a patch of barely submerged coral, just
+becoming visible in the shimmer of the false dawn. As I
+knew that the main wall of the Great Barrier must be
+close at hand to lee, I was chary of letting her fall off
+very far in that direction. I had just ordered a man
+to stand-by to heave the lead at the first sign of shoaling
+water on the starboard bow, when the tail of my eye
+caught a glimpse of Rona stepping out on deck from the
+cabin companion way. (We had sulphured out the
+Agent&#39;s cabin and made it fairly comfortable for her use.
+It was out of the question her sleeping on deck, on account
+of the incessant squalls.) She headed straight for
+Bell, who was still hunched up on the weather rail of
+the cockpit, the outlines of his face just beginning to
+show in the ashy light of early morning.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;As her hand touched his shoulder she let out a shrill
+squeal and plumped down on her knees beside him. In
+doing this she must have bumped the whisky bottle,
+which had been rolling back and forth on the deck with
+the lurches of the schooner. It was with more of a hiss
+than a scream that she grabbed it up and flung it straight
+for my head. Oh, I should hardly say <i>straight</i>,&quot; Allen
+corrected himself, &quot;for Rona evidently can&#39;t throw any
+better than the run of her white sisters. The bottle
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page166" id="page166"></a>[pg&nbsp;166]</span>
+smashed against the wheel, deluged the cockpit with
+broken glass and one of my last half-dozen quarts of
+whisky. If I had not been pretty sure that Bell was
+already dead, the fact that the smell of the old familiar
+juice welling up from the deck didn&#39;t bring a twitch to
+his nostrils would have been enough to drive it home
+to me.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Without waiting to observe the effects of her throw,
+Rona launched herself right on after the bottle&mdash;only a
+shade better aimed. Unluckily, the cross-cut she took to
+my throat carried her right over the wheel&mdash;and at the
+very instant that the appearance of a second line of foam
+down to leeward confirmed my fears about our desperately
+scant working room. The instinctive lifting of my
+right arm to block the girl&#39;s grab at my face came near
+to bringing disaster. I fended the clutch from my throat
+all right, but the weight of her body falling across the
+wheel tore the spoke from my left hand and threw the
+schooner up into the wind.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Ranga&#39;s quick presence of mind was all that saved
+the situation. Jumping into the cockpit regardless of
+the broken glass cutting his bare feet, he grabbed the
+girl about the waist, disentangled her flying arms and
+legs from the wheel, and smothered her struggles against
+his side. I threw the wheel back an instant before she
+jibed, and then, for two or three seconds, things hung
+in the balance. Finally, very slowly, she filled away on
+the port tack again, and the immediate danger was over.
+Had the schooner gone about, nothing could have saved
+her from running onto the reef. There was not enough
+room left in which to wear her round.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Bell must have given up the fight along toward the
+end of the &#39;graveyard&#39; watch. I heard him muttering
+off and on for a while, but the last coherent words that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page167" id="page167"></a>[pg&nbsp;167]</span>
+came to my ears were, not unfitly: &#39;Nothin&#39; doin&#39;. Soba
+skippa to a fareyewell.&#39;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;That rub with the reef was the nearest squeak we
+had&mdash;though I can&#39;t say that I remember much about the
+navigation that took us through the Barrier and on to
+Townsville. Drunken man&#39;s luck doubtless. I was sure
+drunk, and no mistake, though both my legs and my head
+were grinding right along to the finish&mdash;only ceased
+functioning when there was nothing more to do.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The girl&mdash;when Ranga let her go again&mdash;went back
+and settled down by Bell&#39;s body. Wouldn&#39;t let anyone
+come near it. Only left it on the two or three further
+occasions that she took to fly at my throat when she
+thought I wasn&#39;t looking. I didn&#39;t want to lock her up
+(it was inviting the plague to force her to stay &#39;tween
+decks for too long), but managed to get around the difficulty
+finally by having one of the crew stand-by to push
+in and absorb the impact whenever she made a break in
+my direction. She gave up trying after that. Seemed
+to loathe the touch of a nigger. But with Ranga it was
+different. She grew quiet as soon as he picked her up&mdash;something
+like a kid with its nurse.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The big fellow was wonderful, by the way. Always
+doing the right thing without waiting for an order, always
+cool and quiet, always good-natured. Spent his
+spare time sitting on the taffrail and peeping to the sea-gulls
+on a queer little Malay flute he always carried in
+his belt&mdash;some kind of hollow stem, full of little wooden
+balls that gave a weird sort of ripple to the notes. First
+and last, Ranga was the man to whom the bulk of the
+credit was due for taking the schooner through. I still
+feel a bit guilty that I didn&#39;t divide the whisky with
+him. But perhaps it was best to stow it where I
+did.... You never know how a yellow man or a black
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page168" id="page168"></a>[pg&nbsp;168]</span>
+man will react to the stuff. It&#39;s hard enough guessing
+with a white man sometimes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen smiled whimsically as he lighted a fresh cheroot.
+He was through with the worst of the story and seemed
+a good deal relieved. It was plain enough that he spoke
+the truth when he said that the memory of it was still
+a nightmare, and that he hated to have to speak of it.
+He said a few words more in explanation of why he had
+not buried Bell at sea, which appeared to have been
+mainly because he was afraid the girl would have followed
+the body over the side. He had no misgivings
+about keeping it aboard, he said, as he was quite certain
+that it carried no plague infection. He mentioned incidentally,
+that they had found a lot of stick brimstone
+among the stores, and that the thorough smudging they
+gave the after quarters with this was probably responsible
+for the fact that the plague had not reappeared
+there. It had been impossible to devise a way to disinfect
+the big &#39;midships hold where the labour recruits
+were housed, on account of the more or less crazy condition
+of all of the niggers.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen looked at his watch, but went on with his story
+as though in no particular hurry. &quot;You&#39;re doubtless
+impatient to hear about the girl&#39;s turning up again,&quot; he
+said. &quot;You&#39;ve already heard of the rather remarkable
+escape she made from the Quarantine Station&mdash;Butler,
+one of the doctors, mentioned that he told you about it on
+your steamer. At the Station it was the theory that the
+girl had broken out so that she could kill herself on
+Bell&#39;s grave&mdash;that she was more or less off her head anyhow.
+That was a mistake, though a natural one. She
+had just one thing in view when she clambered out of the
+mad cell and over the wall: that was to lie low until I
+came out and then, watching her chance, try to make a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page169" id="page169"></a>[pg&nbsp;169]</span>
+better job of polishing me off than she had done on the
+schooner. She realized that they were on their guard
+against her at the Station, and that she might be kept
+under restraint indefinitely, or at least until I was out
+and gone beyond her reach.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Her mind was working well enough to make her
+reckon that that Chinese shawl (which everyone would
+have noted) was the one garment she had that could not
+fail to be recognized. So&mdash;it must have been something
+of a wrench for her&mdash;she left it on the bank of Ross Creek
+and went to seek a hiding place.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Luck was with her in the search. Locating the native
+quarter after wandering for a while, she circulated
+around until she came upon the signs&mdash;in Hindustani, I
+fancy&mdash;in front of the shack of an old East Indian drug
+seller and money changer. How she got around him I
+don&#39;t know; but at any rate she persuaded him to keep
+her there until I was out of quarantine. She even contrived
+to get the old rascal to spy out the refuge I had
+flown to&mdash;a bungalow just out of town, where I figured
+I would be a bit quieter than at the hotel. Then she
+took a hand in the game herself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It was on the second night after I came out, and I
+had turned in early. I had taken no precautions of any
+kind against attack. Never have bothered much with
+that kind of thing. The doors and windows were wide
+open. I had a servant&mdash;a Chino,&mdash;but he was sleeping
+in his own hut in the rear of the grounds.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It was the window she came in by, though she could
+just as well have used the door. I was more than half
+awake (hadn&#39;t been sleeping very well any of the time
+since my two-day snooze after landing from the
+schooner), lying on my back under the mosquito net,
+with no covers over me. It was probably her intention
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page170" id="page170"></a>[pg&nbsp;170]</span>
+to slip up quietly and get her hands under the net before
+disturbing me. She had no knife, by the way.
+They had taken that little Malay dagger away after she
+had tried to stick me at the Quarantine Station. As she
+would have had no difficulty in raising another through
+old Ratu Lal had she wanted it, I take it that she felt
+confident enough of doing the job with her hands. No
+idle dream that, either; you know something of the
+strength of them.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I sat up in bed in a dazed sort of way as her shadow
+darkened the window. (There was a bit of a moon,
+shining on that side of the house.) It must have been
+my movement under the netting that made her change
+her plan. Very naturally, she counted on my shooting
+first and asking questions afterwards. It was the rational
+and proper thing to do, and it is probably what
+I would have done had my pistol been handy. But, not
+dreaming of an attack (this was the day before old
+&#39;Squid&#39; Saunders turned up and took a jab at me), my
+gun was in my coat pocket. I have always carried it
+there&mdash;when I had a coat on&mdash;ever since I saw your
+little exhibition of pocket gunnery at Kai,&quot; he added
+with a humorous smile.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;As I was saying, the stir I made under the mosquito
+net forced the girl to speed up her schedule a bit. You
+saw the jump she made the time she caught up the
+schooner at Kai. Well, it must have been about that
+same kind of a spring over again. She never touched
+the floor between the low window ledge and my bed.
+Landed right on my chest, bringing down the net under
+her weight, and went to my throat with an instinct as
+sure as that of a fighting bulldog. She was choking me
+right through the net before I really knew what had
+happened.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page171" id="page171"></a>[pg&nbsp;171]</span>
+&quot;Of course, taking it for granted that she was dead, I
+didn&#39;t have the ghost of an idea it was Rona who was
+sprawling on my chest and shutting off my wind with
+steel fingers that seemed closing in to meet at the base
+of my brain. I didn&#39;t even know that it was a woman.
+In fact, the deadly pressure of that grip argued all the
+other way&mdash;that I was being throttled by a man, and a
+deucedly powerful one at that. If I did any speculating
+at all, I probably figured it as some kind of a thieving
+stunt. But a man fighting for his life&mdash;and that is
+precisely what I was doing&mdash;doesn&#39;t waste much time in
+conjecture. My immediate problem was a simple one.
+If that grip wasn&#39;t broken inside of a minute, it might
+stay there forever as far as my shaking it off was concerned.
+I had been choked before, and also done a bit
+of choking on my own account; so I knew to within a
+few seconds how long it is before the head of a man
+whose wind is shut off begins to reel.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Still quite the master of myself, I tried on, very deliberately,
+the best thing I knew for breaking a strangle
+grip&mdash;that simple little <i>jujutsu</i> trick of thrusting your
+arms between those of the man choking you, and then
+throwing back your shoulders and expanding your chest.
+Stiffening the chest muscles, I mean&mdash;of course you
+can&#39;t expand it with air while your windpipe is closed.
+That never fails if you are both on your feet, and will
+sometimes work even when you are on your back. Here
+the tangle of the net blocked the up-thrust of my arms,
+and I failed to get enough leverage to break the hold on
+my neck.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Then I tried my next best bet&mdash;that of turning over
+and over and sort of unwinding the grip on your throat.
+I was a shade less confident now. Time was getting
+short. I did some jolly active wriggling in trying to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page172" id="page172"></a>[pg&nbsp;172]</span>
+work along far enough to roll over the side of the bed,
+but again it was the net that defeated my effort. I
+was getting a good deal peeved with that bally canopy;
+and yet, in the end, it was the very thing that got me
+clear.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Nine times out of ten a man being held down and
+choked by another man&mdash;that is, if the choker knows
+his job&mdash;has no chance of doubling up in a ball and
+kicking his assailant off by straightening out his legs.
+If the man choking you flattens his body closely enough
+against yours, you simply haven&#39;t the room to start
+doubling your knees. My assailant knew his business
+right enough, but the folds of the net (some of the corners
+of which were still clinging to its frame), prevented
+his flattening in close to my legs. The sag of the woven
+bamboo bed springs also gave me a few inches of leeway.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;There was nothing deliberate or confident in the jerk
+with which I began drawing my knees up against my
+chest. I had already failed twice with what I rated as
+decidedly better bets than that one, and the time limit
+was nearly up. My head was already beginning to
+swim. It was neck or nothing this heat. The sheer
+desperation of my effort won out for it. The push of my
+knees against the chest of the incubus did not lift it
+quite enough to break its hold, but it did enable me to
+squirm my right foot up and get it firmly planted in
+the pit of the creature&#39;s stomach. Then, with all the
+strength left in me, I straightened out in a terrific kicking
+push.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;In reverse, the flight of the muscular body that had
+been holding me down must have been fully equal to that
+opening jump from the window. Indeed, I am almost
+sure that it hit the further wall before it did the floor.
+The hold on my neck was the only point of contact that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page173" id="page173"></a>[pg&nbsp;173]</span>
+did not break readily, and there the result was&mdash;as you
+saw a moment ago. As those steel-claw fingers would
+not give an inch, they simply ripped out through the
+flesh. I can consider myself dead lucky that they didn&#39;t
+hook onto my windpipe or jugular. Both of them would
+have come right along with all the flesh and hide those
+unrelaxing talons took with them.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It didn&#39;t occur to me for a few moments that I might
+have knocked out my assailant, and I was a good deal
+surprised when he neither returned to the attack nor
+made any break to escape. The laboured gasping in the
+darkness on the other side of the room quickly told me
+the reason, however. I had knocked the wind out of him
+with my mighty kick. I knew that spasmodic gasping
+for air meant that I wasn&#39;t going to be greatly troubled
+for a minute or two at least, so took my time about
+fumbling for my automatic and lighting the lamp.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;A bit dazzled by the light for a moment, I took
+the lanky yellow figure huddled up against the wall to be
+a Hindu coolie. The thin legs and arms were like those
+of the East Indian indentured labourers of the sugar
+plantations, and the two or three yards of white cloth
+trailing off along the floor suggested a Madrassi waist
+and shoulder rag. Presently&mdash;for that one rumpled
+wrapping was all she had worn&mdash;I saw that it was a
+woman; and then&mdash;but as a matter of fact I think that
+the girl spoke before I recognized her face.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;&#39;&quot;Slant,&quot;&#39; she piped out in that bird-like chirrup
+of hers; &#39;&quot;Slant,&quot; I guess I make a meestake. &#39;Scuse
+me, ple-ese, &quot;Slant.&quot;&#39;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Could you beat that for cheek? Trying to tear a
+man&#39;s throat out one minute, and asking him to &#39;ple-ese
+&#39;scuse&#39; her for it the next. And what do you think of
+a man who would tumble for it, especially after the way
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page174" id="page174"></a>[pg&nbsp;174]</span>
+she had made me jump through and roll over at Kai?
+But that&#39;s Rona; yes, and that&#39;s me. I tumbled, and&mdash;I
+may as well admit it&mdash;I am still tumbling.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Having the girl turn up like that&mdash;after I had been
+thinking of her as dead for a week or two&mdash;didn&#39;t give
+me quite the shock it would have if that voice had come
+out of the darkness without my seeing her first. It was a
+deuce of a surprise even as it was; but, when all is said
+and done, a pleasant one, in spite of the rather startling
+way she chose to&mdash;to re-materialize. I was glad to find
+that she was alive, whether it meant anything more to
+me than that or not.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;We didn&#39;t talk much that night&mdash;there wasn&#39;t much
+talk left in either of us as a matter of fact. Rona continued
+to croak and hiccup, while my own swollen vocal
+chords smothered every other word I tried to get past
+them. I managed to assure Rona that I quite understood
+her feelings against me (though I didn&#39;t entirely,
+and don&#39;t yet), and begged her to give me a chance to
+explain the way Bell had come to his finish. She admitted
+that she had begun to believe that she might have
+been hasty in her decision and action, and said she would
+be glad to hear what I had to say. She told me where she
+was in hiding and asked me to come there in the morning;
+also to do what I could to square her with the
+quarantine authorities for breaking out of the Station
+ahead of time, and on no account to let anything happen
+to old Ratu Lal for giving her refuge. She seemed to
+take it as a matter of course that I would do these things.
+You&#39;d have thought I was some sort of a <i>mayordomo</i>
+taking orders.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It was not very late and, luckily, the bungalow
+(which Ralston had occupied himself at times) had a
+telephone. I ordered a closed carriage sent out, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page175" id="page175"></a>[pg&nbsp;175]</span>
+also got the Quarantine Station and arranged for one
+of the doctors&mdash;Butler, the chap you talked with on the
+steamer&mdash;to come to the landing and wait for me to
+pick him up. They had been very decent to me at the
+Station, and I wanted to avoid having to explain things
+to a strange doctor.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Rona tied my neck up for me&mdash;very handily, too&mdash;and
+when the carriage came I bundled her in and gave
+the driver the direction which carried him along the
+edge of the &#39;foreign quarter.&#39; I dropped her at a corner
+not far from Ratu Lal&#39;s joint, promising to look in on
+her early the next morning. Butler was waiting for me
+at the landing when I got there, and I told him about
+Rona&#39;s coming to life, and its sequel, as we drove back
+to the bungalow. After he had dressed my neck I told
+him what I wanted him to try to do for me and sent him
+back to the landing, where his boat had hung on for him.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Rona was looking a bit white about the gills when
+I called the next morning, and complained that her
+stomach &#39;got mad&#39; every time she sent food down to it.
+I told her that she still had the best of me, as I didn&#39;t
+expect to be able to get any food down to my stomach
+for a couple of days yet. That seemed rather to buck her
+up, and she had a good laugh over it. Then we got down
+to business, and had an hour&#39;s yarn in the drug-scented
+quiet of old Ratu Lal&#39;s back room.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;As my Malay is fairly good, we talked without difficulty.
+I told her more or less what I have just told you
+about Bell and why I had given him the whisky. She
+said, rather grudgingly, that she thought she could
+understand why I had done as I did. Then I said a
+few things about&mdash;well, about my personal feelings
+toward her. Finally, I asked her point-blank if she
+would go back to the Islands with me. Told her she
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page176" id="page176"></a>[pg&nbsp;176]</span>
+could live anywhere she wanted, and in any way that
+she wanted. I didn&#39;t say that I was willing to marry
+her, because (since, if she has any religion at all, it&#39;s
+Hindu or Mohammedan) I felt that would make no difference
+to her one way or the other.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Am I really willing to marry her?&quot; (It was the lift
+of my eyebrows that suggested the query to Allen, for I
+did not speak.) &quot;Well, yes, I think I am, if she made
+that a condition. But I don&#39;t think the question is one
+likely to arise.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The girl took in the whole thing without giving away
+by word or look how it impressed her. When I had
+finished, she coolly suggested that I run along and square
+matters up with the quarantine people about her and
+Ratu Lal. She added that she would be obliged if I&#39;d
+look up her Chinese shawl for her. She also started to
+speak about her dagger, but changed her mind and said
+to let that go for the present. As for what I&#39;d been telling
+her.... Well, perhaps if I could see my way to
+dropping in again toward evening she might have an
+answer for me. High and haughty as a Sultana, she was,
+sitting cross-legged on a mat and pulling away at one
+of Ratu Lal&#39;s big &#39;hubble-bubbles.&#39;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I went to the Quarantine Station straightaway, and,
+in spite of the red tape tangling up a thing of that kind,
+managed to get them to agree to discharging the girl
+without anything more than a perfunctory call from a
+doctor to certify her free of plague. That done, the rest
+was easy. I told the story&mdash;omitting, of course, the
+girl&#39;s attack upon me&mdash;at the Police Station, and they
+agreed not to arrest Ratu Lal as long as the quarantine
+authorities were satisfied and lodged no complaint
+against him. They said they were only too glad of a
+chance to do me a favour. Then I got them to let me
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page177" id="page177"></a>[pg&nbsp;177]</span>
+have the shawl, and begged them to keep the news of the
+girl&#39;s turning up quiet as long as they could.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;&#39;Squid&#39; Saunders&#39;s little diversion that afternoon
+gave the pressmen something else to take up their minds,
+and the matter of the missing girl was forgotten, at
+least for the remainder of my time in Townsville. The
+fact that she did not drown herself must have leaked
+out since, but they probably haven&#39;t been enough interested
+in it&mdash;now that the hunt has followed me here&mdash;to
+wire it south.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;When I broke away from the official reception committee
+and dropped in on Rona at the end of the afternoon&mdash;impatient
+enough, I can tell you&mdash;she gave no
+sign that the matter I had come for an answer about was
+in her mind at all. She grabbed the Chinese shawl out
+of my hand with a yelp of delight, but almost dissolved
+in tears when she saw how the embroidery had been
+smudged and ruffled in her scrambles over trees and
+walls and ditches the night she escaped from the Quarantine
+Station. You may remember that it was a big peacock
+that was embroidered on the shawl&mdash;pretty nearly
+life-size&mdash;rather a fine piece of work, it always struck me.
+Well, ignoring me entirely, she spread that old peacock
+out over her breast&mdash;something in the way she used to
+display it when she wore the shawl in Kai&mdash;and began
+chirping and crooning and muttering to it like a dove
+to its nestlings. She would nuzzle into the plumage,
+smoothing the ruffled feathers with her lips, just like she
+was the old peacock preening himself. Every little bit of
+torn floss she would try to put back where it came from.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Stiff with funk, I sat quiet until she had gone all
+over the moulting old bird, but when she started in working
+down from his crest again, I thought it was time to
+remind her of my presence. I had never sat around
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page178" id="page178"></a>[pg&nbsp;178]</span>
+waiting on anybody like that before, Whitney; even my
+old nurse couldn&#39;t make me do it. So I cut in and told
+her that I had arranged things at the Quarantine Station&mdash;that
+she wouldn&#39;t need to go there again; also that
+old Ratu Lal need not worry any longer about a visit
+from the Police. Incidentally, I mentioned that I was
+making him a present of ten pounds to show my appreciation
+of his consideration in not claiming the reward
+offered for her.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;She took no notice of anything I said. Just went on
+crooning and preening and stroking down the ruffled
+feathers, giving a little sob every now and then as she
+came to a place where they were badly mussed up. Then
+I went off on another tack, saying that I knew of a shop
+in the town that carried Chinese embroideries, and suggesting
+it was possible a skilled needle-worker might
+be found there competent to undertake the restoration
+of the bird&#39;s damaged plumage. She deigned to cock up
+an ear to listen to that, but her only reply was a disconsolate
+shake of the head, as though anything like
+proper restoration was a matter beyond all hope.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;That quieted me for a while, but after twirling my
+thumbs through ten or fifteen minutes more nuzzling
+and crooning, my patience gave out. I jumped up to
+the accompaniment of a good lively string of oaths, and
+asked her point-blank if she had made up her mind about
+the matter we had been speaking of in the morning. She
+broke into a ripple of smiles at that, and cooed sweetly:
+&#39;Ye-es, I think &#39;bout that plenty, &quot;Slant.&quot;&#39; Then she
+slipped into voluble Malay and laid down a perfectly
+simple and direct proposal, on the fulfilment of the conditions
+of which she was willing to return to the Islands
+with me. It was not what I had expected,&mdash;not what
+anyone would have dreamed of expecting under the circumstances;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page179" id="page179"></a>[pg&nbsp;179]</span>
+yet ridiculously easy of fulfilment in the
+event a certain third party fell in with the idea. That
+third party is you, Whitney. That&#39;s the main thing I
+have come to see you about. Everything is up to you
+now. Perhaps that will make it easier for you to understand
+why I rattled on for an hour or more in the hope
+of putting myself right with you about Bell. I&#39;ve never
+tried to justify myself with any living man before, and
+probably will never do it again. But it had to be done
+this time, Whitney, and I hope I&#39;ve been successful.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">My nod might have meant almost anything, but I was
+not unwilling that Allen should interpret it in his favour.
+As a matter of fact, he had convinced me wholly that&mdash;after
+the abortive attempt at drugging in Kai&mdash;he had
+played straight with Bell. As for Rona&mdash;well, if he
+was also ready to play straight with her (and he had
+just about convinced me on that point, too), what was
+it to me? If she could forget Bell so easily, it was her
+own affair. If Allen were trying to carry her off against
+her will&mdash;that would be a different matter of course.
+But he was not. Plainly it was the girl herself who held
+the whip hand. The whole thing was a bit obscure yet,
+but what Allen had still to say might do something to
+clear it up. Without committing myself by more than
+that one nod, I waited for him to go on.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page180" id="page180"></a>[pg&nbsp;180]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XII<br />
+<small>A BAD MAN&#39;S PLEA</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">The</span> expression of nervous anxiety I had noticed
+several times since he came was on Allen&#39;s face
+again as he started to speak. &quot;It&#39;s a queer
+enough proposition,&quot; he began. &quot;You see, it&#39;s
+like ...&quot; He hesitated, stopped, got up and walked
+to the window, where he stood for a few moments,
+frowning and biting the end of his cheroot. Suddenly
+he turned to me with: &quot;Whitney, what do you say to a
+bit of a turn in the fresh air? I&#39;ve been talking more
+than I&#39;m used to, and this stuffy room of yours is getting
+on my nerves. We might walk out through the
+gardens to the Domain. I can tell you all that I have
+to tell out there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I did not need to look at my watch to know that it was
+getting on toward five o&#39;clock. Only the absorbing interest
+of Allen&#39;s narrative had prevented my becoming
+conscious of that fact before. My own nerves were less
+under control now, and the inevitable end-of-the-afternoon
+restlessness was surging strong upon me. But I
+was anxious to hear Allen out, and no reason occurred
+to me why it should not be in the open air. If there
+was any decision to be arrived at, that could be made
+on the morrow, or whenever I felt up to it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Right-o, Allen,&quot; I cried; &quot;I&#39;ll be glad to get out
+myself. I shall want to be back in about half an hour
+though.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page181" id="page181"></a>[pg&nbsp;181]</span>
+I was grateful for his restraint in not greeting
+that last with an indulgent smile, for I knew that
+he fully understood what it was that focussed my
+interest upon five o&#39;clock. It was very evident that the
+man had retained all the finer instincts of a gentleman,
+little opportunity that he had had to exercise them in
+the last five years.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I got my hat and stick, and, feeling sure I would have
+no use for them, put both the revolver and the automatic
+pistol into the drawer of the table upon which
+they had been lying. I was rather glad of the chance to
+show Allen that I had confidence in him to that extent
+anyhow.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Anxious to avoid recognition, Allen pulled on a pair
+of dark spectacles and drew the brim of his Panama low
+down over his forehead. Turning out of crowded Pitt
+Street, he removed the spectacles, and as we passed the
+entrance of the Botanical Gardens took off his hat and
+fanned his brow with it as he walked. He had not spoken
+so far, but with the deep breath he inhaled as he felt
+the springy turf underfoot his restraint passed from
+him.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It&#39;s a great relief to get clear of those damn walls
+and pavements,&quot; he said fervently, opening his coat to
+let the cool breath from the Bay strike his chest. &quot;I
+can&#39;t get used to them again. I&#39;ve been free of them
+too long now. But I&#39;m finished with them for good,
+I hope.&quot; Then, as we came out upon a broad path:
+&quot;Bear away to the left, if you don&#39;t mind. I want to
+take a squint at that bunch of palms as we pass.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As we came abreast of a big bed packed with a riot of
+dense tropical growths, he pulled up and appeared to be
+searching for something. &quot;Ah, there she is!&quot; he ejaculated
+presently, and pushed in close to a queer little
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page182" id="page182"></a>[pg&nbsp;182]</span>
+dwarf palm, which straggled drunkenly on a half-dozen
+spindling legs set something like those of a camera
+tripod. Pulling up the stamped metal marker, he gave it
+a quick glance and then handed it to me with a grin.
+&quot;The fruits of my first and only dip into botanical
+research,&quot; he remarked. &quot;What do you think
+of it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;<i>Pandanus Bensoni Allensis</i>,&quot; I read in large letters,
+and below: &quot;Habitat: Portuguese Timor. Very rare.
+The only other catalogued specimen is in the Royal
+Dutch Gardens at Buitenzorg, Java.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;So that <i>Allensis</i> stands for you, does it?&quot; I said, not
+a little impressed, as I handed him back the metal disc.
+Then added: &quot;And racing and polo cups weren&#39;t the
+only objects you collected.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The merest accident,&quot; he replied. &quot;I had always
+liked plants and flowers, ever since my nurse used to
+wheel me down this very walk in my pram. I suppose
+that gave me an interest in the tropical growths of the
+Islands, after they packed me off there. I thought this
+little fellow looked a bit on the unusual when I chanced
+upon it one morning in a low valley back of Deli; so I
+dug it up and shipped it to Sydney direct on the China
+Line steamer, which touches in there. It turned out to be
+a real find. Benson of Kew Gardens, the great authority
+on tropical palms, described it, and tacked my name on
+as the discoverer. The old cove&#39;s letter contained the
+only kind words addressed to me from the outside world
+in the last five years. And now look at them ...&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had come to expect that note of bitterness in Allen&#39;s
+voice every time he spoke of the past, and especially
+of his &quot;transportation&quot; to the Islands. He evidently
+thought that he had been badly treated; too badly for
+even the present wave of frantic adulation to make atonement.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page183" id="page183"></a>[pg&nbsp;183]</span>
+He was through with it for good. Several little
+things he had let drop indicated that.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The incident of the palm was interesting in throwing
+an illuminative crosslight on the gentler human side of
+a man who had generally been rated as without either
+gentleness or humanity. So, also, was the very evident
+appeal to Allen&#39;s sense of natural beauty made by the
+matchless panorama of the Bay as it unfolded to us from
+the far end of the point.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">We had skirted the Naval anchorage of Farm Cove,
+picked our way along the path below the ledges where
+benighted &quot;sundowners&quot; were wont to boil their
+&quot;billys&quot; and spread their &quot;blueys&quot; in the shallow wave-worn
+caves, and climbed up through the gums to the
+rocky lookout on the outermost tip of the sharply-jutting
+point. The clocks in the town behind us began
+chiming the quarters heralding the hour of five, and
+presently, on the first of the heavier strokes, the flotilla of
+trans-bay ferry-boats slid from their slips at the inner
+curve of the horseshoe of the Circular Quay and
+&quot;fanned&quot; out on their divergent courses to points on
+the opposite side of Port Jackson.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;That sight has never failed to quicken my pulses
+from the time I used to wait and watch for it as a kid
+down to today,&quot; Allen said with almost a thrill in his
+voice. &quot;It is the one picture that has remained clearest
+in my mind all these years I&#39;ve been&mdash;shut out from it.
+Did you ever read Henry Lawson&#39;s lines to &#39;Sydney-Side,&#39;
+written from somewhere in the West, I believe?
+Something like this they go:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&quot;&#39;Oh, there never dawned a morning in the long and lonely days,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">But I thought I saw the ferries streaming out across the bays&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And as fresh and fair in fancy did the picture rise again</span><br />
+<span class="i2">As the sunrise flushed the city from Woollahra to Balmain:</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page184" id="page184"></a>[pg&nbsp;184]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&quot;&#39;And the sunny water frothing round the liners black and red,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And the coastal schooners working by the loom of Bradley&#39;s Head;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And the whistles and the sirens that re-echo far and wide</span><br />
+<span class="i2">All the light and life and beauty that belong to Sydney-Side.&#39;&quot;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;A sentimentalist, too,&quot; I muttered to myself, the
+surprise of that revelation checking for a few moments
+the rising tide of my absinthe-hunger.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen led the way back to where a flat ledge of rock
+made a rough natural seat. &quot;&#39;Lady Macquarie&#39;s
+Chair,&#39;&quot; he explained, motioning me to sit down.
+&quot;Named from the wife of a former Governor who was
+supposed to slip away out here and enjoy the view. The
+Domain runs right back behind the Government House,
+you know. I always used to mooch along out here for a
+look-see every time I got a chance, partly for the fine
+prospect of the Bay and partly for the comprehensive
+visualization it permitted of what I might call &#39;The Rise
+and Fall of the House of Allen.&#39;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Haven&#39;t you an expression in the States to the effect
+that it&#39;s &#39;three generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves&#39;?
+Well, here in Australia we put the same
+natural law of evolution in the form of a conundrum
+and answer. It goes: &#39;How long does it take
+for an arrow to become a boomerang?&#39; The answer
+varies, but for the &#39;House of Allen&#39; it is: &#39;Four generations.&#39;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The arrow, you understand, is the &#39;Broad Arrow&#39;
+that marked the transported convicts, while the boomerang
+merely suggests something that rises, circles and
+returns to the point of departure. Well, from this place
+where we sit I can trace the full circle of the &#39;arrow-cum
+boomerang-cum arrow&#39; of the Allen quiver. Look! I&#39;ll
+show you. Follow me closely.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page185" id="page185"></a>[pg&nbsp;185]</span>
+&quot;Over there,&quot; he said, pointing seaward and easterly,
+&quot;are the Heads, in through which sailed the brig bearing
+Jim (alias &#39;Crab&#39;) Allen, convict, with a few hundred
+more of the scum of London, to the shores of
+Australia. That is, I&#39;ve always liked to fancy my distinguished
+progenitor sailed in through the Heads,
+though it&#39;s quite possible that the brig beat around
+into Botany Bay direct. Now&quot; (he pointed westerly to
+where the Paramatta wound out of sight between green
+hills) &quot;at the end of that deep cove over there is the
+slaughter house where the convict&#39;s son, James Allen,
+dealt in hides and hoofs and horns and laid the foundation
+of the family fortune, the fortune that wasn&#39;t seriously
+dented when the convict&#39;s grandson gave a
+hundred thousand pounds to a drought-relief fund and
+drew down a Baronetcy. That big red-brick pile among
+the trees on Darling Point&quot; (Allen was pointing east
+again) &quot;is the mansion of the late Sir James Allen,
+Bart., and now owned by his eldest son, the New South
+Wales Agent in London. Old Sir James&#39; second son,
+Hartley, was born in the south wing of that unsightly
+heap of red bricks.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;And here&quot; (this time he turned and pointed south
+where a sharp dagger-blade of inlet plunged deep into
+the heart of Sydney&#39;s lowest slums) &quot;is Wooloomooloo,
+where young Hartley Allen, descending from the soft
+refinements of Darling Point, found his level, organized
+his own &#39;push&#39; of rock-throwing, head-smashing
+larrikins and completed the social circle. The cycle of
+metamorphosis had begun its round. I was the throwback,
+Whitney. Old &#39;Crab&#39; Allen, the transported convict
+of Houndsditch, lived again in young Hartley Allen,
+whom most people thought of as a racing man and polo
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page186" id="page186"></a>[pg&nbsp;186]</span>
+player, but who had all the natural qualifications of an
+out-and-out crook.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I can trace all of my little moral obliquities, Whitney,
+back to old &#39;Crab,&#39; and, everything considered, I
+think he would rate me as rather a credit to his name,
+whatever contempt he might have had for my comparatively
+law-abiding father and grandfather, to say nothing
+of my pillar-of-the-state elder brother. &#39;Crab&#39; was
+transported as a consequence of his persistent disregard
+of his fellow townsmen&#39;s rights to their lives, wives and
+silver plate. I&mdash;well, I never did care much for silver
+plate.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">All this would have been intensely interesting to me an
+hour earlier, but now the fervour of my longing for my
+&quot;<i>solitude à trois</i>&quot; (as I was wont to call my séance with
+the long green bottle and the glass of cracked ice) was
+getting beyond control. The flowing lines of the reaches
+of cove and inlet glowing in the slanting light of the declining
+sun were becoming jerky and jagged and intershot
+with dazzling little spurts of light like one thinks
+he sees after receiving a crack on the head. The evening
+breeze lapped clammily about my chest and I fumbled
+clumsily with the buttons of my coat, trying to shut out
+the chill.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I ought to have been back at the hotel before this,&quot;
+I mumbled, getting to my feet. &quot;You had something
+more to tell me, hadn&#39;t you? You can do it as we walk
+back. I&#39;ve got to be going now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">By this time I wasn&#39;t in a state to observe things very
+carefully. Undoubtedly (as I&#39;ve thought it over since)
+Allen had been stalling to gain time and screw his nerve
+up to advancing the plan he had in mind. This being
+so, it must have jarred him a bit to have me call the turn
+so suddenly. I don&#39;t remember whether his face showed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page187" id="page187"></a>[pg&nbsp;187]</span>
+consternation or not. The one thing I recall was the
+quick movement of his hand to that hump on his right
+hip.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I did not recoil an inch. I am sure of that, for I felt
+no apprehension. I was beyond apprehension&mdash;save over
+delay. But Allen&#39;s hand came back empty. &quot;I&#39;ll tell
+you at once,&quot; he said brokenly. &quot;But please sit down.
+Don&#39;t go just yet. We&#39;ll have to come to a decision
+straightaway.&quot; Then, seeing I was turning to go: &quot;It&#39;s
+just this: Rona wants you to paint her picture&mdash;on the
+schooner&mdash;the <i>Cora</i>. Wants a picture done of the whole
+layout&mdash;ship, Bell, her, me, Ranga, niggers, everything.
+Says she&#39;ll pose for it on the schooner. Says I must
+pose too. Seems to be bitten with the idea of perpetuating
+the event for posterity, or something of the kind.
+Crazy scheme, but she&#39;s set her heart on it. Says when
+it&#39;s done, if she likes it, she may go back to the Islands
+with me. Nothing certain for me, but it&#39;s a chance and
+I&#39;ve got to make the most of it. Will you do it, Whitney?
+She says you&#39;ve always wanted to paint her picture,
+and now she&#39;s all for it. You won&#39;t turn it down,
+Whitney?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The incongruity of &quot;Slant&quot; Allen in the rôle of a plaintive
+pleader struck me with scarcely less astonishment
+than his strange and unexpected request. I was, however,
+totally unfit to cogitate upon either just then.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I&#39;ll think it over and let you know tomorrow,&quot; I said
+dully. &quot;Got to go now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It has to be decided here and now, once and for all,&quot;
+Allen answered firmly. &quot;Here!&mdash;&quot; This time there was
+no hesitation in the movement of his hand to the hip-pocket
+hump. When it came back it was holding a fat
+stubby flask&mdash;one of the thermos type, just coming into
+general use at that time.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page188" id="page188"></a>[pg&nbsp;188]</span>
+&quot;I know what&#39;s calling you away, Whitney,&quot; he said
+steadily, unscrewing the top of the flask and pouring
+into it a bright green liquid with a familiar smell and
+sparkle. &quot;On the off chance that we might be detained
+beyond the hour when you&#39;re used to depending upon it,
+I had this cooled at the Marble Bar&mdash;old hangout of
+mine&mdash;and brought it along with me. Don&#39;t use the
+stuff myself, but I know the hooks it throws into a man
+who does use it. Drink hearty!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">He handed me both the brimming screw-top and the
+flask itself. The contents of the former might have been
+drugged heavily enough to kill a horse for all I cared.
+It was absinthe beyond a doubt, and cold enough to frost
+the outside of the little nickled cup that held it. I gulped
+it down hungrily; replenished and repeated. The third
+cup I drank less greedily, letting my eyes rove slowly
+where the jerkily jagged zigzags of hill and headland
+and foreshore were smoothing into a softer fluency of
+contour. Sipping the fourth cup, I unbuttoned my coat
+to give more intimacy to the caress of the milk-warm
+evening breeze.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Not bad stuff, Allen,&quot; I breathed at last. &quot;Very
+good of you to think of it. What was it you wanted me
+to do just now?&quot; Five minutes later I had promised to
+meet &quot;Slant&quot; Allen at the railway station in time to
+catch the nine-thirty train for Brisbane, en route Townsville.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It appeared that Rona&#39;s ultimatum had stipulated that
+Allen was to be back in Townsville with me, ready to
+begin arranging for the picture, inside of ten days. The
+only northbound boat, the <i>Waga Tiri</i>, which would arrive
+within the limit, had already left Sydney but could
+be overtaken at Brisbane by entraining at once. Allen
+had booked sleepers for the express and wired for cabins
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page189" id="page189"></a>[pg&nbsp;189]</span>
+on the steamer before he called on me at the <i>Australia</i>.
+There was nothing left to do but throw together what
+things I wanted and get to the station.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was rather a wrench, checking myself after getting
+all poised for flight with the &quot;Green Lady,&quot; but not so
+hard as it would have been had I really &quot;got off the
+ground.&quot; The contents of Allen&#39;s flask were hardly
+more than a strong bracer. Once I got back to the
+hotel and into my packing, it was easy going, especially
+as my enthusiasm was mounting for the work ahead.
+To have Rona for a model at last! And for such a
+picture!</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The dramatic appeal of the thing grew on me with
+every passing minute. It was not, to be sure, quite the
+kind of a work I was best prepared to do. With my ambition
+to become a marine painter, I had gone in more for
+colour than for anatomy and drawing; but I was still
+confident that I could make good with anything that
+gripped my imagination strongly. And &quot;The Saving
+of the Black-birder&quot; (I had already given it a tentative
+name) fairly took me by the throat. I would not fail
+with it. Nay, more, I would triumph. Perhaps&mdash;why
+not?&mdash;Paris! Yes, &quot;The Black-birder&quot; should open a
+short-cut to my goal. The rails beneath the wheels of the
+speeding Brisbane Express were clicking <i>black-bir-der</i>&mdash;<i>black-bir-der</i>
+when I dropped off to sleep that night somewhere
+along toward the Queensland boundary.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That the morrow should bring some reaction from this
+fine frenzy was inevitable, but it was a comparatively
+slight one. That Allen had deliberately planned to draw
+me away and take advantage of my weakness for absinthe
+to gain my intervention in his favour was evident enough.
+Indeed, the consummate manner in which he turned the
+trick argued an almost pathological intimacy with the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page190" id="page190"></a>[pg&nbsp;190]</span>
+reaction of the insidiously subtle essence of wormwood
+upon the human brain. But I did not hold this heavily
+against him. It was plain that he had only done it to
+play safe in a matter respecting which he did not dare
+to take any unnecessary chances of failure. I could not
+but admit to myself that I would probably have fallen
+in with the plan ultimately in any event. There was
+no disloyalty to my friend in making him (as I intended
+to do) the central figure in a picture that I hoped would
+become famous in two hemispheres. On the contrary,
+what greater tribute was there I could pay to his memory?
+If Rona cared to flaunt that memory by going off
+to the Islands with Allen, it was her own kettle of fish.
+Besides, she had not gone yet; didn&#39;t even appear to have
+committed herself definitely in the matter.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">To minimize explanations and the possibility of complications,
+Allen and I had agreed to defer wiring our
+Sydney friends of our departure until after we were
+aboard the <i>Waga Tiri</i> in Moreton Bay. His message to
+the Chairman of the Reception Committee, and mine to
+Benchley at my Exposition, went ashore on the tender
+that brought us off, and the steamer was under way before
+they could have been put upon the wires. It was
+not until the next northbound boat brought the Sydney
+papers to Townsville that we learned what a wave of
+surprise and speculation had been started by our joint
+hegira.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In the course of the voyage Allen told me some few
+further details of developments in Townsville. Before his
+departure he had managed to induce Rona, for her own
+comfort, to move her headquarters from Ratu Lal&#39;s joint
+to the Medical Mission of the London Bible Society. The
+head surgeon of the Mission he characterized as &quot;a good
+old sport&quot; he had knocked up against in the Straits and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page191" id="page191"></a>[pg&nbsp;191]</span>
+the Dutch Indies. He was just like an ordinary missionary
+to look at, but redeemed in &quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; eyes by a
+real love of horses, and even&mdash;very much on the quiet&mdash;a
+shrewd interest in racing. &quot;It&#39;s in his blood. He
+can&#39;t help it,&quot; Allen explained laconically but comprehensively.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Explicit instructions had been left at the Mission
+that Rona was not to be worried about her spiritual future.
+She was to be just a &quot;straight boarder&quot; until
+Allen&#39;s return. She was well provided with money, as
+he had seen to having everything Bell had with him at
+the time of his death deposited to her account at a local
+bank. This had included eighty gold sovereigns, found
+in a money-belt around Bell&#39;s waist, and some hundreds
+of Chilean silver <i>pesos</i> he had brought off to the <i>Cora</i> in
+a canvas sack.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Ranga had been put up at the Sailors&#39; Home. There
+had been a flat refusal to receive him at first, on account
+of his colour, but this was promptly withdrawn when it
+was found the request came from Allen, whom the town
+was going pretty strong on delighting to honour just
+at that juncture. Allen, who seemed very fond of the
+big fellow, also saw that the latter was comfortably provided
+with money.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen did not speak again of the proposed picture until
+the steamer was nosing up to her buoy in Cleveland Bay.
+Then, after inquiring if I had everything I needed to go
+ahead with, he intimated that he would probably find
+Rona fretting to get things under way. &quot;She seemed to
+have some wild sort of an idea,&quot; he said, &quot;that the whole
+thing would be done on the schooner&mdash;that we all might
+move out there, bag and baggage, and make it our head-quarters
+until the picture was completed. She even
+wanted me to go out to that plague-rotten wreck with her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page192" id="page192"></a>[pg&nbsp;192]</span>
+and look the ground over before I left. I had no time
+for it, of course, and am jolly glad I didn&#39;t. Can&#39;t
+see what the good of it would have been anyhow. I
+was hoping I had seen the last of the damned hulk,
+though I suppose I can stick it for an hour or two in a
+pinch. I fail to see what she&#39;s driving at, but whatever
+it is you may as well make up your mind that she will
+have her way about it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I assured him that the picture would probably be
+mostly studio work as far as he was concerned, though I
+myself might want to sketch a few details on the
+schooner. It might save time, however, I suggested, if
+the whole lot of us went aboard before I began work so
+I could figure out a tentative grouping and get a general
+idea of the composition. Then I could make notes and
+sketches of whatever parts of the schooner would be
+included, and be ready to work on the individual figures
+as soon as I rigged up a studio.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page193" id="page193"></a>[pg&nbsp;193]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII<br />
+<small>THE SCENE OF THE FINAL DRAMA</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">We</span> spent the night at the hotel and went together
+to call on Rona at the Mission the
+following morning. The change in the girl
+was startling, far too great to be accounted for by the
+baggy Mother Hubbard that had replaced the close-clinging
+<i>sarongs</i> and <i>sulus</i> in which I had grown accustomed
+to seeing her at Kai. Her face was thinner and
+the former peach-like bloom of her cheeks had given
+way to a dusky sallowness. The curve of her lips had
+flattened&mdash;and hardened; hard, too, was the fixed stare
+of her great sloe eyes. To a stranger the pucker of
+concentration between her eyebrows might almost have
+suggested sullenness. The lines about her eyes and mouth,
+which spoke to me of suffering, might have seemed to
+another as stamped there by hate. She was still beautiful,
+but in a new way. It was a wild, fluttered sort
+of loveliness that haunted rather than allured. The
+woman before me could never &quot;sit Buddha,&quot; I told
+myself; those dreamy spells of repose had not punctuated
+her present life with intervals of Oriental peacefulness.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Decidedly reserved in her manner toward Allen, Rona
+tried to be warm in her greeting to me, but quickly
+showed signs of restraint and embarrassment. She became
+even more ill at ease when &quot;Slant,&quot; after genial
+old Dr. Oakes invited him out to see a new saddle horse
+that had just arrived from Singapore, excused himself
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page194" id="page194"></a>[pg&nbsp;194]</span>
+and left us alone. She sheered off so sharply from my
+first mention of the name of Bell, and became so palpably
+nervous at a couple of attempts I made to lead round to
+him by degrees, that I gave up trying to induce her to
+speak of him out of sheer pity. Even my inquiry after
+the health of &quot;Peeky&quot; of the embroidered shawl drew
+only a weary little smile and a sad shake of her riotous
+tumble of blue-black hair.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">She was ready enough to talk about the picture, though
+even in that connection I was at once conscious of a lack
+of real enthusiasm on her part. She seemed anxious to
+get it started, however, and said she supposed we would
+be going to live on the schooner in a day or two. She
+even confessed to having worried a good deal for fear the
+<i>Cora</i> would be broken up by a storm before the picture
+was made. When I told her that we would not need to
+live on the schooner, and perhaps would not have to make
+more than one or two short visits to it, she appeared a
+good deal put out for a few moments. She scowled
+angrily and started to speak; then thought better of it,
+bit her lip and held her tongue. She appeared a bit
+mollified when I said we would make our first visit, to
+plan the picture, just as soon as the quarantine people
+would disinfect the schooner for us. (That this had not
+been done yet I had already learned through &#39;phoning to
+the Station the night before.) She observed impatiently
+that she thought disinfection was a needless precaution,
+and I had to explain that it was not a matter of precaution
+at all on our part; that it was against the law for
+anyone to board a ship that had carried plague until it
+was disinfected, and that if we tried it on the <i>Cora</i> the
+whole lot of us would probably be clapped in jail and
+quarantined afterwards.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">She softened a little as I got up to go, and her &quot;Next
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page195" id="page195"></a>[pg&nbsp;195]</span>
+time I show you &#39;Peekie,&#39; Whit-nee&mdash;&#39;Peekie&#39; is a
+ver-ee sick bird,&quot; sounded almost like old times. The
+hand she gave me was hot and dry but unshaking, and
+the almost cutting grip of it tense with nervous force.
+I noticed that her finger nails, though trimmed closer
+than of old and no longer stained, were still of unusual
+length.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I found Allen, his face flushed with enthusiasm, putting
+the doctor&#39;s new colt up and down the sward before
+the Mission chapel in sharp bursts of terrific speed.
+The animal, Oakes explained to me, had been given to
+him by a petty Rajah of the Federated Malay States
+as a token of his appreciation of the doctor&#39;s success
+in removing a troublesome appendix from a favourite
+dancing girl some months previously. It was a chunky
+bay gelding, only his small head, full neck and a certain
+trimness of hock bearing out Oakes&#39; claim that he
+was out of a Mameluke imported direct from Bassorah
+by the Sultan of Johore. For the rest he favoured his
+Timor dam, and looked built for endurance and handiness
+rather than speed. The instant Allen was on his
+back, however, his sure instinct told him that the powerful
+little beast had swiftness as well as staying powers,
+and he was already itching to put his judgment to the
+test. A week later, having quietly entered him in the
+race of the day&mdash;the Planters&#39; Handicap&mdash;at the Townsville
+midsummer meet, he rode the gelding himself and
+gave the local betting public the worst jolt in North
+Queensland track annals by winning at two-hundred-to-one.
+Every pound that the wily Allen cleaned up on
+the race went to build the good Doctor Oakes, shortly
+transferred to Fiji, the largest and best equipped Medical
+Mission in all of Polynesia. The full story of what
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page196" id="page196"></a>[pg&nbsp;196]</span>
+the winning of that race meant to the game old missionary
+with the sporting blood has yet to be written.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">My plan of visiting the <i>Cora</i> to make a preliminary
+study of the &quot;Black-birder&quot; met with an unexpected
+check. The quarantine people had readily consented to
+give the schooner a rough disinfection, one that would
+make it quite safe for us to board her as long as we kept
+clear of the holds, which would require more drastic
+treatment. Before the formaldehyde squad got away,
+however, several cases of smallpox were reported in
+the native quarter, and all the available disinfecting
+apparatus was called upon for use there. It would be at
+least a week or ten days, we were told, before an outfit
+would be free for the <i>Cora</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Personally, I didn&#39;t mind the delay in the least; for
+one reason, because Rona&#39;s strange mood had quenched
+my initial surge of ardour for the picture, and, for
+another, because I had still to find a suitable place in
+which to work. Allen seemed to be worrying very little
+over the forced wait. &quot;I&#39;ve laid my bets to win or lose,
+and I&#39;ll be there to cash in after the finish,&quot; he said
+philosophically. He spent most of the time in the saddle,
+getting out mornings at daybreak to give the &quot;Missionary
+Colt&quot; (as he called the Oakes gelding) workouts
+on the quiet. As far as I could observe, he saw very
+little of Rona.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was the girl who really chafed under the inaction
+of waiting. Two or three times she sent for me to urge
+that we disregard the quarantine regulations and go off
+to the schooner. Allen mentioned that she had also
+begged him to take her out for a look-see at the <i>Cora</i> on
+the quiet. How she spent her time I did not know.
+Oakes told me that she went out for long walks every
+day, sometimes going toward the hills and sometimes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page197" id="page197"></a>[pg&nbsp;197]</span>
+along the shore. I found freshly picked tiger-lilies on
+Bell&#39;s grave the day I visited it, and it occurred to me
+that the gathering of these might have furnished the
+motive for the solitary walks. But if she was still
+devoted to Bell&#39;s memory, why wouldn&#39;t she speak of
+him?&mdash;and why the plan to go off to the Islands with
+Allen? The girl&#39;s conduct was quite beyond my understanding.
+That was one thing I was sure of, at least.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Meanwhile I went ahead looking for a place I could
+turn into a studio. It had been Allen&#39;s idea that the
+suburban bungalow he occupied after coming out of
+quarantine would be suitable, but I was compelled to
+veto it on account of the poor light&mdash;a consequence of
+the dense tropical growth surrounding it. The same difficulty&mdash;light&mdash;ruled
+out a number of other attractive
+places that were offered me, and I was about to close
+with a rather squalid little shack near the beach as a
+last resort, when Allen got wind of a temporarily vacant
+house on a big sugar estate, some miles from town.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">This little gem of a hillside bungalow had been built
+by the sugar people for a sub-overseer of the plantation,
+who had gone to Melbourne to meet and marry a girl
+from home. As the lucky chap had been given a three-months
+holiday for a honeymoon in New Zealand, the
+local manager of the sugar company decided that there
+could be no objection to my occupying the nest in the
+interim; in fact, he was sure his directors would be
+highly honoured to have their property used by so distinguished
+an artist, and for so laudable a purpose.
+He hoped I would not hesitate to call upon him for help
+at any time. He would see to it that the servants already
+hired against the return of Borton and his bride reported
+at once, and that Borton&#39;s trap and saddle horses were
+placed at my immediate disposal.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page198" id="page198"></a>[pg&nbsp;198]</span>
+I was greatly pleased with my find for a number of
+reasons besides the fact that it had a large and well-lighted
+living-room that could be made all I could ask
+to work in. Not the least of these was its location. Several
+hundred feet above the sea, its wide verandas caught
+cool currents of the Trade wind that the sultry lower
+levels never knew. Infinitely refreshing, too&mdash;both in
+fact and in suggestion,&mdash;I found the splendid stream
+which circled close under the rear wall, forming, where
+a mossy ledge reared a natural dam, a deep, clear pool to
+which I could jump from my bedroom window. The revitalizing
+effect of an early morning plunge, I had found
+by long experience, was beyond comparison the best
+antidote against the insidious absinthe poisoning paralyzing
+body and brain at the end of the night.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A couple of hundred yards further down the stream
+took a swift run through a verdant tunnel of fern fronds
+and overhanging palm leaves, before it leaped in a fine
+compact spout of green and white over the verge of a
+creeper-clad cliff, to a lucent hyacinth-lined basin thirty
+feet below. From there, quieter of mood and mind
+after its hillside gambols, it meandered by pleasant
+reaches across a broad belt of shimmering sugar cane,
+beyond which it disappeared in tangled growth of
+primeval bush. By dark ways and devious, broadening
+and deepening in the lower levels, it finally lost itself
+in the mangrove swamp that fringed the sea fifteen miles
+to the northward.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I mention this stream particularly because of the
+part it was destined to play in the final act of the drama
+of the <i>Cora Andrews</i>. For a similar reason it may be
+in order to say a few words about the great flume, which
+took off from the stream at the pool below the waterfall
+and led down to the big central sugar mill on the shore
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page199" id="page199"></a>[pg&nbsp;199]</span>
+of the first deeply indented bay north of Townsville.
+It was built, following the successful Hawaiian practice,
+for the purpose of floating the cut cane from the fields
+to the mill, a method which, wherever the natural conditions
+were suited to it, had proved both cheaper and
+more expeditious than the old system of transporting the
+succulent stalks by tramway and bullock carts.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The flume itself was built of imported Oregon pine
+planks, and was carried on a trestle of rough-hewn blue-gum
+and <i>jarra</i> trunks. In section, the box of the flume
+was about four feet wide by three feet deep. The water
+it carried&mdash;about a quarter of the normal flow of the
+stream that fed it&mdash;varied in depth according to its
+velocity. The latter, of course, depended upon the grade
+of the flume, this varying from two or three per cent. in
+the broad upper valley to all of fifteen per cent. in a
+couple of short steep pitches near the coast.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was interested in this flume from the first time I saw
+it. In the course of a visit to Hawaii some years previously,
+I had found no end of sport in what was called
+&quot;sugar-fluming&quot;&mdash;riding from the mountainside plantations
+down to the mills seated on a water-propelled
+bundle of sugar-cane. On my inquiring of the local manager
+if the highly diverting stunt was practicable here,
+he had answered with a most emphatic negative. &quot;You
+could go down the flume all right,&quot; he said, &quot;but the
+volume of water is so great that you could not stop yourself
+by holding to the sides even where the grades are the
+slightest. On the sharp inclines, where the flume runs
+down to the mill, a team of bullocks couldn&#39;t hold you
+back. Only one man ever tried the feat deliberately,
+and we were picking fragments of him out of the <i>bagasse</i>
+for a month. Also spoiled a lot of sugar&mdash;everything
+from the juice in the vats to the unfinished article in the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page200" id="page200"></a>[pg&nbsp;200]</span>
+centrifugals had to be thrown away. Same thing has
+had to be done on the several occasions coolies have fallen
+into the flume while at work. Jolly costly accidents
+for the company. I hope that you&#39;re not contemplating....&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I hastened to assure him that, after what he had told
+me, I most certainly had ceased any contemplations I
+might have allowed myself to indulge in up to then.
+Still I couldn&#39;t help picturing in my mind what sport
+could be got out of the thing if only some sort of buffer
+were rigged up at the lower end. That prompted me, a
+day or two after I was settled in the bungalow and while
+time was still hanging on my hands, to put my horse
+down the bridle-path along the flume when I went out
+for a ride in the cool of the afternoon. After that I
+lost all interest in &quot;sugar-fluming&quot; as a sport. It was
+just conceivable that a man of great strength and agility
+might stop himself by gripping the sides of the flume at
+several points in the first five or six miles, but from
+where the sharp descent to the coast began I was inclined
+to agree with the manager&#39;s statement, that the drag of
+a man&#39;s body in the pull of the racing stream would
+take a team of bullocks off their feet.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I dismounted and leaned over the edge of the flume
+where it ran through a narrow cut in the rock at the
+brow of the great basaltic cliff that followed the curve
+of the beach of the bay. This was the upper end of the
+first of the two sharp drops and the water, which was
+running within a foot of the top of the flume a hundred
+yards above, and here flattened down to a scant six inches
+in the bottom, grey-green and solid like a great endless
+belt of flying steel. The butt of my riding-whip was all
+but jerked from my hand as I touched it lightly to the
+speeding water, and a curving fan of spray was projected
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page201" id="page201"></a>[pg&nbsp;201]</span>
+up into my face and over the sides. The evidence
+of such a solidity of kick in running water seemed almost
+beyond belief, until I recalled having heard how a jet
+escaping from the pressure pipe of a hydro-electric
+plant somewhere in the American West had penetrated a
+man&#39;s body, cleanly, like an arrow.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">My desire to ride the flume died then and there,
+though even yet I couldn&#39;t help regretting that there
+wasn&#39;t a level stretch above the jump-off, where a man
+could check his headway and crawl out. It would have
+been rattling good sport down to there, but beyond&mdash;sheer
+suicide. There was, it is true, a couple of hundred
+yards of perhaps five per cent. grade between the
+first steep pitch over the edge of the cliff, and a second
+one, even steeper, that seemed to run almost directly
+upon the roaring, churning mass of cane-crushing machinery
+that began at the upper end of the big mill.
+Even there the water was lightning-swift, however,
+so that a man, once over the edge of the first pitch, looked
+to be less than a thousand-to-one shot in bringing up
+before going on into the second. And that would have
+been&mdash;how was it the manager put it?&mdash;more &quot;spoiled
+sugar&quot;&mdash;another &quot;jolly costly accident for the company.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The bridle-path I had been following continued on
+along the flume to the mill, but, desiring to strike the
+main highway to Townsville as quickly as possible, I
+put my sure-footed little Timor mare down what appeared
+to be an abandoned road graded into the face of
+the cliff. When I finally came out in the rear of what
+was plainly the remains of an ancient water-driven cane-crushing
+mill, I realized that the old grade by which I
+had descended must have been the bullock-cart road
+from the plantation. The mill was a picturesque old
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page202" id="page202"></a>[pg&nbsp;202]</span>
+ruin, with its mossy water-wheel, crumbling roof and
+sprawling pier, and I made mental note of the lovely
+little cove as a place well worth returning to with paintbox
+and easel when opportunity offered.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Returning through the town, I had the good luck to be
+hailed from the sidewalk by my bluff old friend, Captain
+&quot;Choppy&quot; Tancred. He was southbound with the <i>Utupua</i>
+again, he said, but she was going to go to drydock
+immediately on arrival in Sydney and he was going to
+command the <i>Mambare</i>&mdash;a new steamer just turned out
+on the Clyde for the company&mdash;and start north the following
+day. It was hard luck missing his week at home
+with the wife and nippers at Manley, but his promotion
+to a ship on the Singapore run was some consolation.
+He would be back in Townsville again in a little over a
+week, and, as he had a lot of sugar to load for the Straits,
+hoped to have the time for a good yarn with me. It
+must have been more from habit than anything else (for
+the old boy should have read enough about me in the
+papers by this time to be convinced that I was not a
+fugitive from justice), that he repeated his injunction
+that I must not fail to let him know if there was ever
+anything he could do for me&mdash;&quot;ye&#39;ll ken wha&#39; I mean,
+lad.&quot; And, equally from habit, I assured him that I
+&quot;kenned wha&#39;,&quot; and would not fail to call upon him in
+my extremity.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As I had nothing but what I had brought with me on
+the steamer to move, and as the house was practically
+ready for occupancy, I was comfortably settled in my
+hillside bungalow at the end of the third day after our
+arrival from the south. A Chinese cook and house-boy,
+a Hindu groom, a couple of New Hebridean blacks as
+roustabouts, and Ranga as general factotum, gave me
+a very tidy and self-contained establishment. Ranga
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page203" id="page203"></a>[pg&nbsp;203]</span>
+I had taken to at once. He was quick-minded and quick-handed,
+extremely good-natured, and ready to do anything
+at any time of the day or night. I resolved to
+keep him with me indefinitely as a personal servant&mdash;that
+is, if it fell in with his own inclinations after he
+had given me a fair trial.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I made a number of rather successful studies of Ranga
+by way of getting my hand in again, and that suggested
+that it might be profitable to put in the days of waiting
+by trying what could be done along the same lines
+with the others who were to figure in the picture. Allen,
+although busy with his secret training of the Oakes colt
+(all unknown even to the good missionary, by the way, who
+thought that &quot;Slant&quot; was merely borrowing the gelding
+for his morning ride), found time to come up and give
+me several sittings. It was easy to see that he hated the
+whole thing, and was only going through with it as a part
+of the bargain with Rona. The latter, after promising
+me faithfully to come, was reported missing on all of the
+three occasions I sent the trap for her. As her whim
+was at the bottom of the whole mad plan, I was not a
+little mystified at the girl&#39;s action. Also, as it was she
+whom I was most anxious to do full justice to in the
+picture, I was a good deal annoyed. Allen had no explanation
+or excuse to offer for her, saying the girl had
+him pocketed at every turn anyhow, but volunteered
+to try and round her up for me himself as soon as the
+Planters&#39; Handicap was out of the way, and he had a
+bit more time on his hands. For all of his light way of
+speaking, I knew that he was as hard hit as ever, and had
+thrown himself into the training of the &quot;Missionary
+Colt&quot; only to give him something else to think about.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Two unostentatious acts of kindness on the part of
+Allen in the course of the week which followed added
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page204" id="page204"></a>[pg&nbsp;204]</span>
+fresh refulgency to his halo of popularity. Townsville
+had gone madder than ever about him following his sudden
+and unexpected return from the south, and the
+same appeared to be true of the rest of the country. In
+all sincerity, he had tried to do both of the things I
+have referred to strictly on the quiet, and that they
+became public was only a consequence of the zeal of the
+fresh army of &quot;war correspondents&quot; that had been
+rushed north again to camp upon the hero&#39;s trail.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">One of Allen&#39;s little kindnesses was an appeal, in his
+own name, to the Governor of Western Australia to have
+dismissed the proceedings that had been instituted to
+bring &quot;Squid&quot; Saunders back to be locked up for the
+twenty-three and a half years which still remained to be
+served of his original twenty-five-year sentence. This
+appeal was accompanied by a promise to send the ex-convict,
+immediately he was released, back to the Islands
+at Allen&#39;s expense.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Doubtless the momentary magic of Allen&#39;s name had
+something to do with the Westralian Governor&#39;s complaisance.
+In any event, &quot;Squid&quot; Saunders was out of
+jail and off as a first-class passenger on one of the
+Solomon Island boats inside of a week. Allen, the correspondents
+were not long in learning, had bought the
+ticket, footed all of the very sizable telegraph bills,
+and given the purser of the steamer a hundred pounds
+in gold to be handed to &quot;Squid&quot; when he was disembarked
+at Bougainville. The correspondents, long
+baulked of any real &quot;Allen stuff,&quot; went to that story
+like hungry hounds.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But scarcely was the &quot;Squid&quot; Saunders story onto the
+wires before it was followed by the news of Allen&#39;s astonishing
+win of the Planters&#39; Handicap with the rank
+outsider, Yusuf, at two-hundred-to-one. That win was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page205" id="page205"></a>[pg&nbsp;205]</span>
+spectacular enough in itself, but when, on the heels of it,
+was flashed the word that not only the thousand-guinea
+purse hung up for the race, but approximately twenty-five
+hundred pounds paid to Allen by the &quot;tote&quot; as well,
+had been donated to the owner of Yusuf to forward the
+realization of his long-cherished dream&mdash;the erection of
+a modern medical mission in Fiji&mdash;the climax was
+capped. Australia echoed anew with acclaim of the
+&quot;philanthropist hero&quot; (it was now), and press and pulpit
+moralized and maundered afresh on the Hon.
+Hartley Allen&#39;s goodness of heart and greatness of soul.
+The clamour of the people of the country to see their
+idol in the flesh fused the Townsville wires from every
+direction. It was all very well that the incomparable
+heroism of the saving of the <i>Cora Andrews</i> should be
+perpetuated upon canvas, but why should the pushful
+American artist drag the hero off before his own people
+had a chance to do him homage? Let the artist rise to the
+occasion with a display of that famous &quot;Yankee hustle&quot;
+they had heard so much about and get the job over
+&quot;right quick.&quot; It was the man himself they wanted;
+let the picture wait if it couldn&#39;t be finished straightaway!</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page206" id="page206"></a>[pg&nbsp;206]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV<br />
+<small>HELL&#39;S HATCHES OFF</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">That</span> may give some hint of the state of mind of
+Australians when, waiting on the tip-toe of expectancy
+for word of the next dashing act of their
+hero, they received a message of quite another tenor.
+It was the Sydney <i>Herald</i> man who sent the message
+that swept the country like the blast of a hurricane. He
+wired just the bare facts and no more. His imagination,
+even his reasoning faculties, as he confessed in a
+later dispatch, were numbed for the moment, temporarily
+paralyzed by the staggering shock of the horror he had
+looked upon.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The Hon. Hartley Allen was found at an early
+hour this morning&quot; (ran the telegram) &quot;bound, gagged
+and lashed to the wheel of the schooner <i>Cora Andrews</i>,
+which has been aground for some time at a lonely spot
+on the beach of Cleveland Bay, several miles north of
+Townsville. Allen, who was taken to the General Hospital
+as soon as he was brought back to town, is a raving
+maniac and not expected to live out the day. From
+information in the hands of the police, there is no doubt
+that the worse-than-assassin was the ex-convict, &#39;Squid&#39;
+Saunders, recently released from jail and deported to the
+Solomons through Allen&#39;s generous efforts on his behalf.
+He is known to have escaped from his northbound
+steamer at Cairns, stolen a fishing sloop, and is believed
+to have headed back to Townsville to carry out the dastardly
+act his disordered brain has evidently nursed for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page207" id="page207"></a>[pg&nbsp;207]</span>
+years. As the police seem likely to yield to the popular
+pressure to employ bloodhounds in running down the
+fugitive, his capture is probably the matter of but a few
+hours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was a fairly sane, reasonable-reading dispatch, that.
+None but a man who had felt his blood turn to ice-water
+at the sight the <i>Herald</i> man had looked upon that morning
+could appreciate how much credit he deserved for
+stating the facts so coherently. For myself, at the moment
+the launch brought us back from the <i>Cora</i> and put
+us ashore at the landing, I would have been incapable
+of writing my own name correctly. There was only one
+thing I could do&mdash;nay, would have had to try to do if
+the world had been disintegrating beneath my feet&mdash;and
+I did it. That is why so much of the next thirty-six
+hours is a blank in my mind.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="indent">It was on a Saturday that Allen had made his spectacular
+killing in winning the Planters&#39; Handicap, and
+on Sunday afternoon, to escape the importunities of
+Townsville generally and the correspondents in particular,
+he had ridden up to pay me a visit at my hillside
+bungalow. I had missed the race (through another appointment
+for a sitting with Rona, which, like the others,
+she had failed to keep), and so took the occasion to get
+some account of it at first-hand from Allen. He was in
+high spirits over his success, but rather inclined to be
+put out with the impulsive Oakes for breaking down in
+church that morning and proclaiming to all and sundry
+the real source of the thirty-five hundred and odd pounds
+that had fallen at his feet like manna from the skies.
+What had come nearest to flooring Melanesia&#39;s leading
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page208" id="page208"></a>[pg&nbsp;208]</span>
+bad man, I think, was that the missionary had publicly
+announced his intention of naming the new medical mission
+at Suva after the donor!</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen also, somewhat to my surprise, was not averse
+to speaking of the &quot;Squid&quot; Saunders episode. &quot;The
+only redeeming thing about the old ruffian,&quot; he observed,
+&quot;is his affection for that girl of his&mdash;the red-haired one,
+I mean&mdash;the black-and-tans don&#39;t signify. Rather a
+remarkable girl, that one, Whitney. She was one of the
+kind that must either soar to the high places or wallow
+in the low ones, and I&#39;ve been sorrier than I can tell that
+I was slated to&mdash;well, not to start her winging for the
+heights exactly. I really wasn&#39;t a lot to blame in
+the matter, but&mdash;that isn&#39;t either here or there. Old
+&#39;Squid&#39; <i>thinks</i> I was, and will go on thinking so till
+his dying day&mdash;or mine. I tried to get the old reprobate
+to call it quits when I shipped him off the other day.
+Do you think he would? No fear. Not the &#39;Squid.&#39; Indeed,
+considering the bother I had wangling him out of
+serving that Kalgoorlie sentence of his, he was rather
+nasty. He asked me if I was trying to buy him off for
+fear he&#39;d get me in the end. There wasn&#39;t much I could
+say to that under the circumstances, so I just let him go.
+Now the purser of the <i>Nawarika</i> wires me from Cooktown
+to say that the &#39;Squid&#39; slipped ashore at Cairns
+and failed to show up again before sailing time. Purser
+says he still has the hundred quid I gave him to slip
+Saunders when they put him off in the Solomons. I
+have turned the wire over to the police, but have asked
+them to sit tight unless Saunders shows up in this section
+again. I hate to drag the old fire-eater into a new
+mess, especially after all the trouble I had getting him
+out of the old one. So I hope he won&#39;t be fool enough
+to come mooching south again. Don&#39;t suppose he will,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page209" id="page209"></a>[pg&nbsp;209]</span>
+but&mdash;I&#39;ll be keeping an eye lifting just the same against
+the loom of a vitriol bomb on the weather skyline.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen tapped his coat significantly at those last words,
+and that reminded him that there were two or three little
+things about &quot;pocket-gunnery&quot; he wanted me to coach
+him up on. Nailing a foot-square of discarded canvas
+to the swelling bole of a bottle tree down by the stream,
+we put in a half-hour of &quot;by-and-large&quot; practice at it.
+Allen, thanks to his natural gift for judging distance
+and angle, proved a very apt pupil.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">By way of return for his gunnery lesson, &quot;Slant&quot;
+volunteered to show me a few tricks of knife-throwing,
+in which he was reputed to have no equal in the Islands.
+&quot;I&#39;m about as much of a walking arsenal as you were
+the time you waited for me at the <i>Australia</i>, Whitney,&quot;
+he said with a grin, as he produced a broad-bladed dagger
+from a sheath slung unobtrusively on his right hip.
+&quot;This knife, by the way,&quot; he went on, tilting it lightly
+across his forefinger, &quot;is balanced especially for throwing.
+They are made in Lisbon, mostly for export to
+Brazil I understand, where they seem to go in for that
+kind of stunt a good bit. I bought it from the skipper
+of a Portuguese gunboat at Deli, who also taught me the
+principles of chucking it. First and last, I&#39;ve had a lot
+of sport out of practising with it, and have an idea I
+would have an even break with the <i>Capitano</i> himself
+when my hand&#39;s in. I was very grateful to old &#39;Squid&#39;
+for handing it back to me the other day. I only hope
+he won&#39;t be forcing me to pass it on to him again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen&#39;s skill with the wicked-bladed <i>facon</i> was decidedly
+impressive. If anything, he was a shade more
+accurate in planting the point of it than I was with a
+bullet from my pocket. Little luck as I had in throwing
+it, I was quite as fascinated with the appearance and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page210" id="page210"></a>[pg&nbsp;210]</span>
+&quot;feel&quot; of the formidable weapon as Allen had been with
+my target revolver in Sydney. &quot;I trust you won&#39;t have
+to part with it again, to Saunders or anyone else,&quot; I
+said as I handed it back to him.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Before he mounted for his ride back to town, I mentioned
+to Allen that Rona had left me in the lurch again
+the day before, and intimated that, unless she began to
+show more interest in the picture, I would have to consider
+packing up and going back to Sydney. As a matter
+of fact, the girl&#39;s perversity had already been responsible
+for effectually dampening down my first flush of enthusiasm,
+and I began seriously to doubt my ability to make
+a success of the picture when the way was clear to work
+at it. Allen begged me not to be discouraged, and assured
+me again that he would look up Rona himself on
+the morrow and see if he couldn&#39;t get some line on what
+she was sulking about. He also said he would see if the
+quarantine people couldn&#39;t be prodded along to get at
+the job of disinfecting the <i>Cora</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Rona still failed to show up on the following day, and
+in the evening I was unable to get &#39;phone connection
+with Allen&#39;s bungalow in an endeavour to learn if he had
+seen her. Dr. Butler, whom I got on the wire at the
+Quarantine Station, said that Allen had rung them up
+that morning, urging them to get a move on with the
+<i>Cora</i>. They had told him that they were planning to
+send a squad off before the end of the week. As word
+had just come to them, however, that men were seen
+climbing over the schooner that afternoon, they had decided
+to clean up the job in the morning. As long as the
+ship remained in her present condition, he said, she
+would continue a possible spreader of disease. She
+should have been attended to before. If I cared to go
+off with them, he added, he would pick me up at the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page211" id="page211"></a>[pg&nbsp;211]</span>
+landing at eight o&#39;clock. I thanked him and told him
+I would be glad of the chance to look things over before
+going to work.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I drove down early in the morning, taking Ranga with
+me on the chance that Allen and Rona might care to go
+off and plan a tentative grouping. A black boy cutting
+weeds with a sickle in front of Allen&#39;s bungalow told
+me that &quot;white marster stop townside&quot; for the night
+and had not yet returned. At the Mission I found Oakes
+a good deal perturbed. The day before, he said, Allen
+had called just after lunch, talked with Rona a few
+minutes, and then borrowed Yusuf and gone off for a
+ride. He had not returned at dusk, but during the
+night the horse, dangling a broken bridle rein, had come
+galloping back to his stable. The missionary was fearful
+the rider had been thrown and stunned, and had
+been lying all night on the road. He had sent out boys
+to search soon after daylight. He was not sanguine of
+an early report from them, as Allen on his rides always
+avoided the metalled main highways to save his horse&#39;s
+feet. No, Yusuf&#39;s knees showed no signs of his having
+stumbled. He was as sure-footed as a goat and as gentle
+as a kitten. Not in the least given to shying or bolting.
+Besides, the colt wasn&#39;t foaled that could unseat Hartley
+Allen. Of course, he must have struck his head against
+a low-hanging limb in galloping some bush path, but that
+was unlikely. Hartley had his wits too much on the alert
+to be caught like that. He was beginning to be just a bit
+suspicious of foul play. Had I heard that &quot;Squid&quot;
+Saunders had left his steamer at Cairns and was believed
+to have sailed south in a stolen fishing-boat? He was
+just about to call up the Police Station and tell them of
+Allen&#39;s disappearance when I came.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Rona had been off on one of her long walks the previous
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page212" id="page212"></a>[pg&nbsp;212]</span>
+afternoon, Oakes said in answer to my inquiry, and
+was not yet up. He had spoken with her through her
+window, just after Yusuf came back, in the hope that
+she might be able to give him some hint of the road
+Allen had taken. The latter had not mentioned where
+he was going, she said. She herself had been &quot;away
+inland&quot;&mdash;Oakes had encountered her on his weekly
+round through the plantation villages. She was a tireless
+walker, and very restless&mdash;altogether a strange character.
+I did not disturb the girl, as I reckoned there
+was no use in taking her off to the schooner until Allen
+was along to talk our plans over.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It would have seemed that this word of Allen&#39;s disappearance,
+taken in conjunction with the fact that men
+had been seen on the wreck of the <i>Cora</i> the previous
+day, might have given me just a shade of preparation
+for what I saw as I followed Butler and the <i>Herald</i> man
+over the schooner&#39;s side an hour later. But it was not so,
+probably because my mental faculties were at their dullest
+at so (for me) unwontedly early an hour. If the
+news had come to me in the afternoon, possibly I would
+have traced some connection between the two events,
+and so have been at least slightly braced and stiffened
+for the coming shock. As it was, I bumped into it all
+unset, and the staggering impact of it came near to bowling
+me over.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It had been Dr. Butler&#39;s theory, propounded as the
+launch put away from the landing, that the figures descried
+on the <i>Cora</i> the afternoon before were those of
+blacks or coolies, attracted to the hulk by the hope of
+loot. As a matter of fact, he said, they would doubtless
+have made quite a haul, as nothing but the ship&#39;s papers
+had been taken ashore on the day of her arrival. Considerable
+&quot;trade&quot; and all of the personal effects of her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page213" id="page213"></a>[pg&nbsp;213]</span>
+former officers had been left for removal after disinfection.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As we came out into the bay the coast to the northward
+began to open up, and presently the wreck of the <i>Cora</i>,
+heeled sharply to port with the foremast over the bows,
+became visible against the deep green of the mangroves
+a couple of miles distant. Butler studied the hulk closely
+through his glasses as we closed it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Looks as though I had another guess coming,&quot; he
+remarked finally, lowering the binoculars with a puzzled
+air. &quot;Someone aboard her now. Seems to be jiggering
+the wheel. Can&#39;t be a pirate stunt, can it? Wouldn&#39;t
+be possible to drop a petrol engine into her, block up the
+hole and get off to the Islands on the quiet? But of
+course not. That&#39;s a drydock job&mdash;&#39;count of the propeller
+and shaft.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At a quarter of a mile he raised his glasses again.
+&quot;Chap at the wheel&#39;s the only man in sight,&quot; he reported.
+&quot;He don&#39;t seem to have spotted us yet. Must
+be deaf, not to hear the explosions of our exhaust. Ah,
+perhaps that accounts for it! He&#39;s an old cove&mdash;big
+shock of white hair. &#39;Bout time he was getting his
+helmet on, though, with this sun beginning to bore into
+the back of his neck. Ahoy, there!...&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But there was no reply. The lone white-haired figure
+was still jiggering at the wheel when the launch, nosing
+in cautiously in the up-boil of reversed propellers, slid
+past the <i>Cora&#39;s</i> stern and the loom of her counter cut it
+off from our view.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A moss-shiny Jacob&#39;s Ladder hung over the starboard
+side amidships, where a section of the &quot;nigger-wire&quot;
+had been cut away, doubtless when the labour-recruits
+were disembarked. Butler climbed up first, then the
+<i>Herald</i> man (who had come off on the Doctor&#39;s invitation
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page214" id="page214"></a>[pg&nbsp;214]</span>
+to see the ship made famous by the great exploit
+of the Hon. Hartley Allen), and then myself. Butler
+lingered at the ladder for a few moments, giving
+orders to his men about bringing the disinfecting paraphernalia
+aboard; so it was given to the newspaper man
+to be the first to go aft and discover that the moving,
+gibbering white-haired wretch lashed to the wheel of the
+schooner represented the sum total of the mental and
+physical remnants of the man whose doings he had been
+detailed to chronicle.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The horrified reporter uttered no sound&mdash;simply froze
+and stood rooted to the deck in amazed consternation. It
+was as though the basilisk stare of the maniac&#39;s eyes had
+turned the flesh and blood of his rangy frame to stone.
+When he stirred finally, it was to tip-toe softly back
+two or three paces to where I, in turn, had frozen in my
+tracks. It was his hand on my shoulder and his white
+face thrust close to mine that broke my own trance. Then
+the both of us must have retreated another step or two,
+until we bumped into Butler, similarly petrified with
+horror.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I am almost certain that not one of the three of us
+made any outcry, or even uttered a word, so paralyzing
+was the effect of the apparition at the wheel. The first
+sound I definitely recall as breaking in upon those muffled
+mowings from the cockpit was a booming gasp as
+Ranga&#39;s mighty chest sucked in a lungful of air, and
+then the big Malay&#39;s quiet &quot;&#39;Scuse me, Tuan,&quot; as he
+started to shove past between me and the deckhouse.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The yellow giant had seen too many men, white and
+black, lose their minds and their lives on that reeking old
+schooner to let the snapping of one more brain, or the
+parting of one more life-line, ruffle unduly his solid Oriental
+composure. He had been fond of Allen, however,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page215" id="page215"></a>[pg&nbsp;215]</span>
+and I could see that he was shaken, though not, like the
+rest of us, unnerved. There was a rumble of concern and
+anxiety even in that respectful &quot;&#39;Scuse me, Tuan,&quot; as
+he started to push past the blockade the cowering forms
+of three lesser men had made in the narrow passage.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Ranga&#39;s steadiness was good for the rest of us. Butler
+checked the Malay with upraised hand and, muttering
+something about his duty as a doctor, started aft, the
+<i>Herald</i> man and I pushing in his wake. If it had been
+possible for the fear-distorted features of the wreck of
+&quot;Slant&quot; Allen to express extremer terror, that heightened
+degree was registered when Butler extended his
+opened clasp-knife to begin severing the lashings. I have
+no wish to attempt to describe that hell-haunted face.
+Indeed, there will be scant need of my doing so, for there
+can be few readers of this record who are not already
+familiar with its tortured lineaments. It seared itself
+into my brain with a white heat of intensity that left no
+room for any other image. At the moment it seemed as
+though it must be blazoned there as long as my body was
+quick with the spark of life, or at least until my reason
+recoiled at the horror of it and tottered from its throne.
+A little later, when the dread face itself had been hidden
+from my sight, a light seemed suddenly to flash out in
+the distance, and in groping toward it I found relief.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The ghastly shadow of the Hon. Hartley Allen
+was standing wedged in between the wheel and the binnacle-stand,
+his wrists lashed to the spokes of the former
+and a maze of tangled line binding his knees to the latter.
+The lashing was a length cut from the taffrail-log-line,
+another piece of which had been used to secure a gag of
+wadded oakum. The only wound visible (save for the
+wrists chafed through to the white cords of their tendons
+in his desperate tuggings to tear free) was a half-inch-wide
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page216" id="page216"></a>[pg&nbsp;216]</span>
+incision on the right inner side of the neck, evidently
+made by the point of a knife pressed in close to
+the swell of the jugular vein. As this cut was hardly
+more than a deep prick, it seemed probable that the
+knife had been used, not to inflict injury, but rather to
+compel the victim to remain quiet while he was being
+secured.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As the wrist lashings fell away, Allen lurched savagely
+forward with a throaty &quot;g-rrr&quot; and did his best
+to claw Butler&#39;s throat with his fingers. His strength
+was spent by his night-long struggles, however, and
+Ranga easily smothered the attack in the crook of his
+interposed arm. The removal of the gag did not, as
+might have been expected from the way the chest had
+been labouring, release a frantic scream. The passages
+of the throat, although the neck revealed no evidences
+of having been choked&mdash;recently, that is,&mdash;appeared to
+be swollen almost shut. The windpipe would carry air
+to the lungs, but every effort to expel it violently seemed
+to clap a sort of automatic muffler on the vocal chords.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen collapsed limply into Ranga&#39;s arms when his leg
+lashings had been cut, but he would not swoon. The
+dread of the damned continued to stream from his staring
+and unbelievably dilated eyes; those hoarse heavings
+of throat-throttled shrieks continued to issue from his
+gaping mouth; every time a hand or foot was freed, he
+continued to strike or kick with it to the limit of his
+pitifully drained strength.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Butler said that the only hope of saving the man&#39;s
+mind, and probably his life as well, was to rush him to
+the hospital and put him under an opiate as quickly as
+possible. Ranga picked up the tortured body carefully,
+as he might have handled a struggling kitten, and passed
+it down to the launch. Butler had the forethought to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page217" id="page217"></a>[pg&nbsp;217]</span>
+have us all sprayed with the disinfectant before we went
+over the side, so as to minimize the chances of our carrying
+off any plague germs.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Just as the launch was about to shove off, Ranga
+begged the coxswain to hold on for a moment, and went
+clambering back up the latter. He ran aft, picked up
+something from the deck, and came back tucking his
+little Malay flute into the waistband of his dungarees.
+He had dropped it in the cockpit, he explained.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">About all I can recall of the run back to the landing
+was the interminable number of times the <i>Herald</i> man
+insisted on telling us that he had been talking to Hartley
+Allen all the while the latter had been shifting into his
+jockey togs for the Planters&#39; Handicap, and of how Butler,
+each time, replied: &quot;And he slept in my pajamas all
+the time he was in quarantine.&quot; Possibly I said equally
+trivial things; but I don&#39;t recall them. I was conscious
+of a great pity for the plight of the man for whom I had
+come to have a genuine liking, and a dull sort of wonder
+as to how the tragedy might have happened and who was
+responsible for it. But the haunting horror of that fear-stricken
+face hung like a curtain in front of my mind,
+dimming or blanking everything behind it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At Butler&#39;s suggestion, he&mdash;with Ranga to help&mdash;took
+a carriage at the landing and drove direct to the hospital
+with Allen, while the <i>Herald</i> man and I went in my trap
+to the Police Station to report to the Chief. The latter
+had recently come to his present job from Charters
+Towers, where he had made something of a name for himself
+by breaking up a gang of outlaws who had long been
+doing pretty much as they pleased in that rough and
+ready bonanza town. He was a chap of great determination,
+energy and courage, but of little subtlety&mdash;rather
+the type of a Western American sheriff than a city police
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page218" id="page218"></a>[pg&nbsp;218]</span>
+chief. I had met him at the Club two or three times,
+and liked him for his steady eye and open straightforwardness.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Chief was a little impatient at the <i>Herald</i> man&#39;s
+repetitions of the togs-shifting episode, and possibly also
+of my own wooden silence; but he got to the salient facts
+readily, and was no less forward with his deductions
+therefrom.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;&#39;Squid&#39; Saunders beyond a doubt,&quot; he pronounced
+decisively. &quot;His sloop was sighted twice between here
+and Cairns, the last time only fifty miles to the north&#39;ard.
+He could have landed night before last easy. Any of the
+lagoons running back into the Caradarra Swamp would
+hide his sloop. That would have given him all day yesterday
+to scout for Allen. Why the schooner I don&#39;t
+quite twig. But the &#39;Squid&#39; was always adding devilish
+little embroideries to his jobs, and leaving a man to rot
+on a plague ship has all of his ear-marks. Never mind,
+I&#39;ve had two launches patrolling the north coast for him
+since yesterday morning. He must have landed before
+they got there. But they&#39;ll nab him if he pulls out with
+the sloop again, and if he doesn&#39;t, <i>I&#39;ll</i> nab him. I hate
+to do it with a white man, but I&#39;m going to put Rawdon&#39;s
+&#39;nigger-chasers&#39; on his trail. I&#39;ve got &#39;Squid&#39;s&#39;
+old suit of clothes&mdash;the one he threw away when Allen
+bought him a new outfit&mdash;stowed away here, and I fancy
+a sniff of it will be enough to put them on the scent
+with. If I don&#39;t miss my guess, Mr. &#39;Squid&#39; Saunders
+will be enjoying our bed and board again before another
+twenty-four hours has gone by.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Chief dropped his professional manner for a few
+moments as we arose to go. &quot;Allen was a good friend of
+yours, Mr. Whitney,&quot; he said, laying a kindly grip on
+my shoulder. &quot;I don&#39;t wonder that you&#39;re a bit dazed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page219" id="page219"></a>[pg&nbsp;219]</span>
+by the thing. Rather puts a damper on the picture, I&#39;m
+afraid. Going up the hill now, are you? Good&mdash;a bit
+of a rest will steady you no end. Ring up this evening
+and we&#39;ll give you the news. It won&#39;t be long before we
+have our man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The <i>Herald</i> man, with the Chief&#39;s approval, rushed off
+to the telegraph office to dispatch his wire. I drove
+round to the hospital to pick up Ranga and inquire for
+news of Allen. Butler came down to see me in the
+reception-room and reported that it had taken an astonishing
+quantity of morphine to have any effect upon the
+patient, but that he was at last beginning to grow quieter.
+His heart action was very irregular and there was no
+saying yet what turn things might take. He asked me to
+let Ranga remain at the hospital for a day or two. They
+were short of orderlies as a consequence of the smallpox
+epidemic, and the big Malay was a very useful attendant
+on account of his strength, quietness and good
+sense. As they were trying to avoid the necessity of
+putting Allen in a strait-jacket, they wanted someone
+in the room able to handle him if he became violent again
+on coming out from his opiate. I told him to keep Ranga
+as long as he was needed.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page220" id="page220"></a>[pg&nbsp;220]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XV<br />
+<small>THE FACE</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">The</span> Chief of Police&#39;s allusion to the picture had
+started a nebulous idea in my head, but it took it
+several hours to crystallize. Driving alone up
+the hill, my mind gravitated dully to the matter of the
+identity of the perpetrator of the unspeakable outrage.
+I found myself speculating as to whether or not the Chief
+of Police, had he known of Rona&#39;s previous attacks upon
+Allen, would have been as ready as he was to attribute
+the guilt to &quot;Squid&quot; Saunders. And would he&mdash;had he
+known of them&mdash;been able to trace any connection between
+Rona&#39;s repeated attempts to induce Allen to go off
+to the schooner with her and the fact that the crime had
+been committed there? And didn&#39;t it look just a little
+as though Rona&#39;s whole strange plan for having a picture
+painted was only a subterfuge to open the way for a
+carefully plotted revenge? And yet, if she had done all
+this, she surely must have had&mdash;or thought she had&mdash;a
+good reason for doing it. But had not Oakes established
+a clear alibi for the girl when he met her &quot;away
+inland&quot; the same afternoon men had been reported to
+have been seen on the schooner? Probably, but not certainly.
+Oakes himself had said that she was &quot;a great
+walker&quot; and &quot;very restless.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was conceivable that the girl might have doubled
+back and waylaid Allen on the road. Or perhaps she
+had met him by appointment. He had admitted that
+he was becoming increasingly subject to her will. But
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page221" id="page221"></a>[pg&nbsp;221]</span>
+how could she have induced him to go off to the schooner,
+and how had they gone? No boat had been sighted along
+the beach (we had looked for one through Butler&#39;s
+glasses on our return to the landing), and none was
+reported missing from the harbour. The Chief had inquired
+on that latter point while we were with him at
+the Station.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">And how had Rona, or anyone else for that matter,
+been able to get the better of such a man as Allen, fully
+armed and on the alert as I knew him to have been, and
+noted for his resourcefulness in emergency? That train
+of thought reminded me that we had found no arms on
+Allen when we released him. His right coat-pocket was
+empty, and so was the knife-sheath on his right hip. But
+his pocketbook, containing a considerable amount in
+notes, had not been taken.... It was all too much for
+my tired brain, which, ready enough to suggest questions,
+was quite incapable of grappling with them.
+When I drove into the home clearing I was wondering
+whether the broken glass I had noticed in the bottom
+of the cockpit was that from the whisky bottle Allen
+had told me Rona had thrown at him the morning Bell
+gave up the fight.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was horribly tired, both in mind and body, and hoped
+that, with a glass or two of absinthe to relax my nerves,
+I might be able to sleep at least through the heat of the
+noonday. Shifting into my pajamas,&mdash;after telling
+Suey, my China boy, that I would not want lunch and
+not to disturb me until I sent for him,&mdash;I crawled under
+the mosquito-net and tried to drop off. But it was no
+use. No sooner would I begin to doze than the expiring
+images of my thoughts would shuffle up and sharpen
+with a steel-clicking suddenness into the dread likeness
+of The Face, with its dilated eyes boring me to the spine.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page222" id="page222"></a>[pg&nbsp;222]</span>
+At the end of a couple of hours of fevered tossing, I
+gave it up, threw off my pajamas, stepped to the low
+back-window ledge and took a header into the cool green
+pool below. The Face dissolved as the thrill of the refreshing
+embrace of the water ran through my blood,
+but only to return when, after donning a fresh suit of
+drills, I began a restless pacing of the floor of the big
+living-room&mdash;my studio. Always it flashed a pace or two
+ahead of me, floating backward as I advanced upon it
+and swinging with me at the end of the room. I could
+not wheel swiftly enough to lose it, and it made no difference
+whether my eyes were opened or closed. I tried
+it both ways.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was in the course of an experimental lap I was trying
+with my hands over my eyes that I bumped into the
+big rectangle of canvas I had prepared in advance
+against the day I should be ready to start work on
+&quot;The Saving of the Black-birder.&quot; Ten seconds later
+I was pawing over my colours with feverish haste. The
+idea swimming in my head had crystallized. It was, in
+effect: <i>Put The Face on canvas and it will cease to haunt
+and harrow your mind</i>. That sounded reasonable. Certainly
+The Face couldn&#39;t be in two places at once, and
+if I once got it anchored to the canvas I could cover it
+up when I wanted to get away from it. It would all
+depend upon how faithfully I did my work, something
+told me. If the face on the canvas was a replica of
+the other to a hair, to a line, to the fear in the hell-haunted
+eyes, then the phantom face would enter into it
+and become subject to my control. If not&mdash;then I would
+never know sleep nor peace while I continued to live.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">No artist can ever have approached a task under empire
+of the flaming intensity I threw into this one. I was
+painting to save my reason, perhaps my life. That is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page223" id="page223"></a>[pg&nbsp;223]</span>
+not a figure of speech. I mean it quite literally, for I am
+convinced to this day that I stumbled upon the only
+path that would have led me clear of complete mental
+and physical collapse.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There was a rather remarkable coincidence in connection
+with the way I started to work. Nothing told me
+that those first nervous slashes of my brush signalized
+the beginning of a picture the fame of which was destined
+to reach the outposts of the civilized world before the
+year was out. All thought of &quot;The Black-birder&quot; was
+erased from my mind. I had no idea of a picture in my
+head. I was not even beginning to work upon a figure.
+I was only conscious that I was going to put all I had
+into the task of reproducing&mdash;recreating, if that were
+possible&mdash;with coloured pigments a phantom of my
+brain&mdash;a face&mdash;The Face.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had no thought, I say, of beginning a picture. I
+sketched nothing in, not even the outline of the haunting
+shadow I was going to try to capture. A very few
+minutes after I began squeezing out colours onto my
+palette I was smearing them upon a patch of the big
+six-feet-by-ten expanse of woven cotton in front of me.
+The coincidence I have mentioned became apparent
+some weeks later, when I discovered that, of all the sixty
+square feet of canvas before me, the something less than
+one square foot upon which I concentrated my paint
+and energies for the next thirty hours chanced to be in
+exactly the place it <i>had</i> to be for the result of my effort
+to assume its proper place in a somewhat intricate composition.
+I will tell of that in due course.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Save for the strain of the terrible tension under which
+I worked, the task to which I had set myself proved absolutely
+the simplest I ever attempted. It seemed that I
+could not go wrong. It was not like painting a face
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page224" id="page224"></a>[pg&nbsp;224]</span>
+from memory, nor yet like painting one from a model.
+It was more like colouring a photograph, for the image,
+terrible as life, was right there on the canvas at the end
+of my arm. At first, as I tried to visualize it at shorter
+range than the five or six feet at which it had been floating,
+it was a bit hazy; but presently my intense concentration
+of mind had its reward. The dreadful phantom drew
+nearer, increased in detail, and finally sharpened into
+clear focus at the tip of my brush. After that I became
+just a meticulously faithful retoucher, working in a
+trance.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was toward the middle of the afternoon when Suey
+came in to ask if I was going to be home for dinner.
+He was becoming used to my queer ways, and, when I
+failed to take any notice of his reiterated query, came
+over and touched me on the shoulder. I &quot;came out&quot;
+with a start, but gathered my wits quickly. I told Suey
+that I should probably be working steadily for the next
+day or two and would want nothing to eat until I was
+finished. If he would bring me a bowl of cracked ice
+every hour and see that no one was allowed in to bother
+me, it would be all I should want of him. He replied
+with a laconic &quot;Can do,&quot; and backed out toward the
+kitchen as though I had asked for curry-and-rice for
+dinner, or ordered something else equally rational and
+matter-of-fact.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I settled back into my spell of tranced concentration
+with scarcely an effort, working swiftly and surely, with
+never a pause. The &quot;drawing&quot; was all done for me,
+and even in the matter of colours there was no hesitation.
+Exactly the proper shade or tint drew my brush
+like a magnet; and always it was applied with telling
+effect.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The sunset shadows of the western hills were driving
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page225" id="page225"></a>[pg&nbsp;225]</span>
+their black wedges across the satiny sheen of the light-flickering
+levels of the waving sugar-cane when I became
+aware that a sound I had been conscious of for some
+time had suddenly changed and intensified. If my mind
+had tried to catalogue the clear notes that had been
+floating in through the north window, it was probably
+to credit them to a certain bell-bird friend of mine who
+was in the habit of ringing his vesper chimes from a
+leafy chapel in the big bottle tree toward the end of the
+afternoon. But there was nothing bird-like in the quick
+staccato of eager yelps that had been responsible for
+bringing me, with ears and interest a-cock, out of my
+trance. &quot;Dogs closing in for a kill,&quot; I muttered to myself,
+realizing that it had been the distant baying of
+hounds on a hot scent that I had confused with the more
+imminent chiming of my Austral bell-ringing neighbour.
+The sounds came from a long way off&mdash;probably from
+somewhere in the dense bush beyond the farther borders
+of the cane fields. It was a northerly hauling of the wind
+that brought them down to me so clearly. The air had
+been charged and electric all day, and the breaking up
+of the trade wind indicated that a hurricane was mustering
+its forces somewhere up among the Islands. I had
+not looked at the barometer on the veranda, but knew
+that it must be registering a considerable fall.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The crack of a single shot drifted down the wind as
+the yelping reached its climax. Then all was quiet in
+the distance, with only an occasional cackling guffaw of
+a &quot;laughing jackass&quot; ripping across the silence that
+brooded nearer at hand. I didn&#39;t know what there was
+to hunt in that particular neck of Queensland, but
+thought it might be kangaroos or dingoes. It wasn&#39;t of
+enough interest to waste time in speculating upon it,
+just then in any event.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page226" id="page226"></a>[pg&nbsp;226]</span>
+Daylight had given way to twilight, and twilight to
+moonlight, before I stopped work again, this time to respond
+to an insistent ringing of the telephone bell.
+Oakes&#39; deep voice came excitedly over the wire. &quot;I
+thought you would be interested to know that Rawdon&#39;s
+dogs tracked down &#39;Squid&#39; Saunders this afternoon,&quot; it
+said. &quot;He has just been brought in. Bullet through
+his shoulder, but not a serious wound. The report went
+around that he had confessed to the attack on Hartley
+Allen, and the town went wild. Only the Chief&#39;s nerve
+prevented a lynching, and there may be trouble yet.
+Never saw the people so excited.&quot; In response to my
+inquiry about Allen, Oakes said that he had been drugged
+to sleep early in the afternoon, and that there was no
+use trying to forecast what turn things would take until
+he came out.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;That clears Rona, at any rate,&quot; was my thought as
+I drained a glass of iced absinthe and picked up my
+brush again. I found it just a shade harder materializing
+The Face than it had been at first, but managed it
+at the end of a minute or two of close concentration.
+Save for an occasional pause for a sip of absinthe, I
+worked steadily on through the night.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="indent">To make clear what transpired the following day, it
+will be well to set down at this point a few things which
+I only learned in a conversation with the Chief of
+Police after the last act of the drama was played to a
+finish and the curtain rung down. Contrary to the understanding
+of Dr. Oakes, and all the rest of the people of
+Townsville with the exception of the Chief of Police and
+a couple of his assistants, &quot;Squid&quot; Saunders had <i>not</i>
+confessed. From what he <i>had</i> said in the presence of
+all his captors, however, it was easy to see how the story
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page227" id="page227"></a>[pg&nbsp;227]</span>
+had originated. He admitted quite freely to Rawdon,
+after the latter had called off his dogs and was lending
+a hand to plug up the puncture in &quot;Squid&#39;s&quot; shoulder,
+that his one purpose in returning had been to settle his
+account with &quot;Slant&quot; Allen. He also said that he would
+rather be strung up straightaway than to be sent back to
+West Australia and begin, at sixty, serving out a twenty-odd-year
+sentence.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That was about all Saunders said at the time of his
+capture, but later, after expressing himself to the Chief
+of Police to similar effect, he went a little further. He
+averred frankly that curiosity had always been one of
+his most pronounced characteristics, and, while he entertained
+only the kindliest feelings for whoever it was that
+had been responsible for tying up &quot;Slant&quot; Allen and
+leaving him alone to meditate upon his past, he couldn&#39;t
+help wondering about the identity of a man able to pull
+off such a cleverly thought-out and executed piece of
+business. Might he not suggest to the Chief that the
+latter try to find some trifle that this bright-minded and
+quick-handed cove had left behind on the schooner, and
+see if those sharp-nosed&mdash;yes, and sharp-teethed&mdash;dogs
+of his couldn&#39;t be put on the owner&#39;s trail. They appeared
+a very likely lot of hounds, especially that big
+black-and-tan brute with a chewed ear, who had broken
+away from the ruck and fastened his teeth in the
+&quot;Squid&#39;s&quot; calf.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">This all struck the straightforward, open-minded
+Chief as entirely reasonable. It was only fair to Saunders,
+too, and since saving him from the mob that afternoon
+the Chief had come to take a sort of proprietary
+interest in his prisoner. Going off to the schooner in
+the morning he found a small fragment of red rag in the
+cockpit, which, though it was greasy and dirty, did not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page228" id="page228"></a>[pg&nbsp;228]</span>
+show signs of exposure to the weather, and must, therefore,
+have been left comparatively recently. It was a
+six-by-eight-inch piece of flowered red calico, of the kind
+used by the natives of all parts of the South Seas for
+waist-cloths. Even if he wasn&#39;t able to locate the particular
+<i>sulu</i> from which it was torn, the Chief reckoned
+that it would give the dogs something to go by.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Rawdon&#39;s &quot;nigger-chasers&quot; were of a foxhound-bloodhound
+cross that the old ex-bushranger had bred
+especially for the purpose of chivvying down runaway
+blacks from the sugar plantations. The swart sextette
+displayed a very encouraging interest in the greasy rag
+the Chief brought them to sniff; so much so, indeed,
+that they were far from drained of enthusiasm at the
+end of a bootless day&#39;s nosing up and down the coast
+for tracks that gave back the same ingratiating aroma.
+It looked quite good enough to warrant going on with
+the game the following morning, Rawdon pronounced,
+as he started back on foot for his kennels on the southwest
+outskirts of town. (The old chap had some kind
+of a theory about its being destructive to a hound&#39;s
+keeness to tote him around on wheels: also, he had stumbled
+upon many trails where he least expected them, even
+in the town.)</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Rawdon was striding a couple of blocks ahead of his
+two helpers when, crossing the town end of the main
+westerly highway to the hills, the dog he was holding in
+leash&mdash;the big black-and-tan with the chewed ear, by far
+his keenest-nosed hound&mdash;broke away and set off up the
+side of the road in full cry. As there was no hope of
+trying to overtake him on foot, Rawdon waited for the
+other dogs to come up and catch the scent, cautioning his
+men to hold them well in leash and not to hurry until
+he rejoined them. Then he ran back a quarter of a mile
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page229" id="page229"></a>[pg&nbsp;229]</span>
+to the Police Station to summon the Chief and get a
+horse.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">This was about seven o&#39;clock in the evening of Wednesday,
+the day after we had found Hartley Allen bound
+to the wheel of the <i>Cora Andrews</i>.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="indent">At the moment the big black-and-tan hound tore his
+leash out of Rawdon&#39;s hand and started to burn up the
+footpath beside the westerly hill road, I had been streaking
+a small patch of canvas with coloured pigments for
+something like thirty hours in a desperate endeavour to
+drive a phantom out of my brain. I was near to the end
+of my labours and&mdash;I could sense it already&mdash;close to
+victory. I had made a hard fight for it and I deserved
+to win. Using absinthe sparingly&mdash;as a fuel and a food
+rather than as a stimulant&mdash;and drawing upon my nerves
+for everything the drug would not provide, I had kept
+going steadily and was finishing strong.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There had been but one interruption since the night
+before. Early in the forenoon Captain &quot;Choppy&quot; Tancred
+had called up to say that he had brought his new
+command to anchor in the harbour the previous evening,
+and that, as he had a good twenty-four hours&#39; loading to
+do, he hoped that we could find time to foregather for
+a bit of a yarn in the course of the day. Would I come
+down and have lunch with him at the hotel, or would he
+drive up to me? He would rather prefer the former,
+as the barometer was down and he ought to remain where
+he could get off to his ship in a hurry if it came on to
+blow. I made the best excuse my wandering wits could
+frame, and hung up. The old boy&#39;s voluble protests were
+still clicking in the receiver as I returned it to its hook.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had a hard time materializing my &quot;model&quot; again
+after that break, and it was fifteen or twenty minutes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page230" id="page230"></a>[pg&nbsp;230]</span>
+before I was sure enough of it to resume work. For a
+while, in the back of my brain, there was a flutter of
+apprehension that old &quot;Choppy&quot; would take it into his
+head to come up anyhow, and I was desperately afraid
+that I might not be able to &quot;connect&quot; again after another
+interruption&mdash;that I would fail to focus The Face
+at the one moment of all when I most needed it. There
+would have been comfort in that thought twenty-four
+hours earlier, but by now a desire to finish the portrait
+for its own sake seemed to have entered into me.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But my fears were groundless. &quot;Choppy&quot; was properly
+rebuffed, and had no intention of poking in where
+he &quot;wasna weelcom&#39;.&quot; (He told me so himself later.)
+There was no further interruption, save the negligible
+one of Suey and the cracked ice, sharp on every hour.
+As the sunset faded and the twilight flooded the valley
+with luminous purple mist, I was finished&mdash;or nearly
+finished. The Face was all but complete on the canvas
+now, and all but erased from my brain. It had taken an
+intense effort of concentration to hold it while I put the
+last touch on that writhen lip, as it curled back in a snarl
+from the bared teeth. But I did it. And now&mdash;just a
+stroke in that whorl of iris to accentuate the abnormal
+dilation, to fix the horror in that ghastly stare! Slowly
+the image sharpened in my brain. Again the fear-haunted
+eyes held my own. Now! I was just darting
+my delicately poised brush forward when the sound of
+voices from the veranda arrested the colour-daubed tip
+a hair short of the blurring eye its touch would have
+made a hopeless smudge. &quot;Maskey&mdash;no can do!&quot; came
+in Suey&#39;s brusque <i>pidgin</i>; and then, following a sudden
+scuffle and the sharp click of the latch, a familiar chirrup
+floated to my ears. &quot;Let me in, Whit-nee! Hur-ree,
+ple-ese, Whit-nee!&quot; was what it said.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page231" id="page231"></a>[pg&nbsp;231]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI<br />
+<small>A SUDDEN VISITOR</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">As</span> a rider reins in his stumbling horse, so did I rein
+in my stumbling nerves. It was now or never, I
+told myself. If those final touches were not given
+before I stirred from my tracks, they would never be
+given. I closed my eyes and my ears&mdash;not with my hands
+but by a sheer effort of will&mdash;and then, inch by inch, as
+though I were dragging it by the throat, brought the
+phantom prototype back and forced it to merge with the
+face on the canvas. The tip of my brush flashed twice,
+thrice. Then I relaxed the tentacles of my will, and as
+the phantom face, receding, blurred to blankness, it left
+behind, where a wisp of green-smeared camel&#39;s hair had
+touched the canvas, an expression of hell-haunted terror
+streaming from the unnaturally dilated eyes of the <i>completed</i>
+picture-face.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was breathing heavily, like a coolie who throws down
+his back-breaking burden at the end of a hard climb,
+when I tossed aside my brush and palette, but no wretch
+of a human pack-mule ever knew the depth of relief that
+was mine. A carrier could only experience the physical
+satisfaction of feeling his back was freed of a load: mine
+was the spiritual ecstasy of knocking off the shackles
+that had threatened to bind my soul. And now I was
+free to rush to the arms of the &quot;Green Lady&quot;! No
+more need of rationing my absinthe. I spilled the remaining
+contents of the bottle at my elbow in the bowl
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page232" id="page232"></a>[pg&nbsp;232]</span>
+of half-melted cracked ice, and wolfed it greedily over
+the tilted brim.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Ple-ese, Whit-nee, I have the great hur-ree.&quot; Again
+came the click-clack of the imprisoned latch and the thud
+of a knee or shoulder against the door.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;One moment, Rona!&quot; Steadied and alert, I set down
+the emptied bowl, threw a hastily-snatched couch-cover
+over the canvas so that the space upon which I had
+worked was hidden, and stepped to the door. Already
+I felt the exaltation and relief of having banished the
+dread phantom. And the picture face on the canvas&mdash;how
+easy it was to blot out! The hanging corner of an
+old steamer-rug....</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Rona pushed in eagerly as I swung back the door,
+Suey relaxing his restraining grip and backing away
+noiselessly at my reassuring nod. All the old verve
+showed in the girl&#39;s high-flung head and flashing eye.
+Sullenness, depression, sadness alike were gone, replaced
+by an air of eagerness, of suppressed excitement. She
+was still wearing the baggy <i>holakau</i> the lady missionaries
+had wished upon her, but with it&mdash;looped over her
+breasts and under her shoulders <i>sarong</i>-fashion&mdash;was the
+peacock shawl, outlining softly the lithe curves of shoulder
+and hip and flowing clingingly in folds of amber and
+scintillant opalescence below her knees.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Whit-nee, I come to make the good-bye,&quot; she gushed
+cooingly, catching her breath. &quot;Tonight I take boat go
+Seengapo. Whit-nee, I come here to tell you I ver-ree
+sor-ree I make you troubl&#39; &#39;bout the pick-yur. I tella
+you lie, Whit-nee. I cannot&mdash;make&mdash;the pick-yur. Bel-la,
+he say&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At that instant a strange thing happened. Two or
+three times since she entered the room, Rona&#39;s eyes,
+as though drawn there irresistibly, had wandered from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page233" id="page233"></a>[pg&nbsp;233]</span>
+mine to what could have appeared to her no more than
+a corner of plaid rug hanging over a broad blank of
+tightly stretched canvas. She had done this again as she
+started to speak, and it was a slight widening of her eyes
+that caused me to turn and follow her glance. The
+hastily-flung rug was slowly slipping back off the easel.
+The fringed corner hanging down in front was rising.
+Possibly a draught from the open door had started the
+movement, or perhaps the swishing blows a wind-lashed
+tree was dealing the side of the house. Whatever was
+the cause, the effect was that of an invisible hand slowly
+drawing up a curtain.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Rona&#39;s tongue framed the sentence that was in her
+mind, but the words came brokenly as her puzzled wonderment
+increased. As her double-syllabled rendition of
+Bell&#39;s name fell from her lips the accelerating slide of
+the curtain quickened to a run, and, with a flirt of
+green fringe, the masking corner disappeared over the
+top of the frame. The Face&mdash;&quot;Slant&quot; Allen&#39;s hell-haunted
+face, tortured and terrible&mdash;glared out at her
+from the broad white field of the canvas.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There was sheer amazement in the down-drop of the
+girl&#39;s lean jaw and a suggestion of terror in the gasp
+with which she filled her deflated lungs. But the piercing
+&quot;<i>ey-yu</i>&quot; with which that air was forced out again
+was a battle-cry. Fortunately, I was standing a couple
+of paces nearer the canvas than was she; but even with
+that handicap in my favour it was a near squeak. I
+caught the gleam of a flashing blade and a quick grab
+sunk my crooked fingers deep into the flesh of a thrusting
+arm. Hurling the arrested figure back toward the
+door, I stooped and picked up a knife&mdash;that beautifully
+balanced Portuguese throwing-knife that Allen and I
+had been flinging at the swelling bole of the big bottle-tree
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page234" id="page234"></a>[pg&nbsp;234]</span>
+the previous Sunday. To this day I do not know
+whether Rona thought she was attacking a reincarnation
+or a ghost, or was only bent on destroying an uncannily
+life-like portrait that awakened savage memories.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I swished the fallen rug from under the easel and
+rehung it&mdash;evenly this time&mdash;before turning to confront
+Rona, where she was readjusting&mdash;with raised elbows
+and twinkling thumbs&mdash;the hitch of the peacock shawl in
+the opposite corner of the room. She had scrambled to
+her feet again, but gave no sign of returning to the attack.
+Her eyes were snapping with anger and excitement,
+but I did not have the feeling that she entertained
+any especial personal resentment against me for the
+rough handling I had given her.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;So it was you after all,&quot; I said slowly, fingering the
+tapering blade of the tell-tale knife.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Her lips moved as though in reply, but if she said
+anything coherent it was drowned in the roar of a sudden
+gust of wind that buffetted the bungalow at that
+moment. I turned to the girl again after closing the
+north windows. Her eyes were fixed on vacancy now,
+and her head, with the clean-cut chin slightly elevated,
+was turned sideways in an attitude of listening. As the
+banging of the trees died down my own duller tympana
+registered a new vibration&mdash;and yet not quite new&mdash;something
+that I had heard very recently. Ah, now I
+had it! The baying of a hound, very near and very
+eager. A red-hot scent beyond doubt, I told myself.
+But why were Rawdon&#39;s &quot;nigger-chasers&quot; running at
+that hour, and into the teeth of a rising hurricane?
+There was questioning in both our glances as the girl&#39;s
+eyes met mine, but in hers certainly no hint of fear.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Before either of us spoke a firm, quick step sounded
+from the back of the house, and a moment later, following
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page235" id="page235"></a>[pg&nbsp;235]</span>
+a light tap on the door, Ranga entered from my
+bedroom. If he was surprised at Rona&#39;s presence, or at
+her somewhat dishevelled appearance, he gave no sign
+of it. Nor was there about me&mdash;now that I was holding
+the knife behind my back&mdash;anything to suggest to the
+Malay that he had stumbled upon a situation in the least
+out of the normal.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Tuan &quot;Slant&quot; was sleeping heavily, he said, and so
+he had snatched the opportunity to come up for some
+of his own Borneo tobacco and a change of clothes. They
+had nothing in the hospital large enough for him. Tuan
+&quot;Slant&quot; was growing stronger in body, but&mdash;he finished
+by tapping his temple and shaking his head dubiously.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A heavier broadside of the gathering storm shook the
+house again, this time sending a shudder through its
+stout frame and wringing a vibrant <i>ping</i> from the
+tautened &quot;hurricane cables&quot; that guyed its windward
+corners. Out of the heart of that blast came the bell-mouthed
+baying of the nearing hound. He was still
+sounding his clear bugle notes as he swung in through
+the gate from the road, but down the driveway, with the
+incense of the burning trail conjuring visions of an
+imminent quarry in his brain, he began tearing his throat
+with harsh, savage yelps of eagerness. I was looking
+for his charge to come against the closed front door,
+but a sudden shower of claw-spurned gravel rat-a-tat-ing
+against the glass of the French windows told that he had
+wheeled in his tracks and was circling to the rear of
+the house. A yell and a clatter of saucepans from the
+kitchen, a scramble of slipping claws upon the hardwood
+floor of the back hallway, and in from the open
+door of my bedroom&mdash;drooling-fanged, bloody-eyed and
+bloody-minded&mdash;came dashing that black bolt of canine
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page236" id="page236"></a>[pg&nbsp;236]</span>
+fury, closing on his cornered quarry for the death-grapple.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Ranga, on entering, had moved a step or two aside
+from the door, a survival doubtless of his training at
+sea, where an idle man blocking a companionway or a
+ladder is liable to be taught manners by a rap on the
+head. Rona was still in the corner to which I had hurled
+her. I was at the opposite corner, near the big canvas
+and twenty feet or more from the girl. The flying hound
+tried to check himself at the doorway, but the polished
+floor gave him no grip for his claws. Down on his
+haunches, with forefeet poked rigidly ahead, he slid the
+full width of the room, tobogganing on a smooth-running
+Samoan mat for the last half of the distance.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">With the certainty of Rona&#39;s guilt fixed in my mind
+by her possession of Allen&#39;s knife, I had no doubt, from
+the moment the hound&#39;s baying indicated it had turned
+into the clearing, that it was hot on her trail. But even
+so, the brute&#39;s entry by the bedroom door had been so
+unexpected and so swift that I had not stirred from
+my tracks to the girl&#39;s defence when the snarling animal,
+shooting across the room, brought up against the wall
+close beside her. Even Ranga, leaping forward instantly
+as he had, was scarcely past the middle of the floor when
+the beast regained its balance and bearings almost at the
+girl&#39;s feet. Drawing back into the angle of the walls and
+crouching low like a cornered cat, Rona awaited the attack,
+while Ranga, barehanded, and I with the throwing-knife
+rushed in to her aid. Without an instant&#39;s hesitation,
+the savage beast spun to a full right-about and,
+brushing the girl&#39;s advanced knee as though it was no
+more than the piano stool, launched itself full at the
+throat of the yellow man.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Ranga&#39;s counter was swift, sure and terrible. He
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page237" id="page237"></a>[pg&nbsp;237]</span>
+might have been fighting bloodhounds barehanded from
+childhood, for all the surprise and dismay he showed at
+the sudden attack. Where my own instinct (if I had not
+tried to side-step the charge completely) would have
+been to grapple for the brute&#39;s throat from beneath, he
+simply struck&mdash;or rather grabbed&mdash;down from above.
+The impact crushed the snarling beast to the floor, but
+when Ranga raised his arm again he was gripping his
+struggling canine adversary by the scruff of the neck.
+Or rather, I thought it was the scruff. In reality his
+grip was a bit more inclusive.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Holding the floundering black form at arm&#39;s length
+with no more effort than if it had been a terrier, Ranga
+suddenly tightened his hold. I saw the hound&#39;s red-lidded
+eyes grow slant and elongated like a Chinaman&#39;s
+as the skin of its scalp was drawn backward in the relentless
+vise closing from behind; then a grinding snick
+cut short an unearthly scream of pain, and the hound
+was dangling limp and lifeless with a crumpled spine at
+the end of a gibbet of knotted yellow muscle. Ranga
+tossed lightly aside what a moment before had been a
+flying bolt of wrath, and where the great head doubled
+under against a flowered chintz window-curtain I saw the
+sprawling outline of a tooth-torn ear, doubtless the scar
+of a fight with a luckier ending.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In its strangely terrible tenseness, the electrically
+charged silence that succeeded has no parallel in my
+experience. Not a word was spoken. The only sound
+was the banging of the wind-wrenched trees against the
+house and the nearing mutter of the thunder in the
+north. The significance of the fact that it was Ranga
+the dog had been trailing was lost upon neither Rona
+nor me, nor yet upon the big Malay himself. The latter
+met my questioning glance steadily for a moment, but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page238" id="page238"></a>[pg&nbsp;238]</span>
+it was the girl&#39;s piercing stare of fierce concentration that
+drew and held his troubled black eyes. While one might
+have counted fifty those two stood and (as I have since
+understood) communed with eye and mind. It was a
+sudden thunder-clap that broke the connection and
+checked the interflow of thought. Ranga had not winced
+at the blinding flash and close-following crash, but Rona&#39;s
+higher strung nerves fluttered for an instant, and the
+wire was down. But Ranga&#39;s words indicated that the
+message was about complete.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Yes, I did it, Tuan,&quot; he said quietly, turning toward
+me as though answering my unspoken question. &quot;It had
+to be, Tuan, and&mdash;yes, I did it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was not until afterwards I recalled that it was to
+Rona I addressed my protest. &quot;But &#39;Slant&#39; swore to
+me that he did not kill Bell; that he was in no way
+responsible for his death, first or last.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A spasm of passion twisted the girl&#39;s face to the seeming
+of an ape&#39;s as she caught the drift of my words,
+and her reply was almost a scream. &quot;Not ke-el Bel-la?
+&#39;Slan&#39; do worse than ke-el. He&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The chorus of the leashed pack that checked her words
+came from so close at hand that it made itself heard
+above the now unbroken roar of the storm. There was
+the clang of shod hoofs on a metalled road, too, and I
+thought I could distinguish the shouts of men. The
+hunt was closing in for the kill.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I think I go now, Tuan. I like the better to fight
+outside.&quot; Ranga&#39;s voice was as quiet and controlled as
+when he had told me the news from the hospital a few
+minutes before; but there was the lust of battle in his
+flashing eyes, eagerness for action in the quick heave of
+his chest.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There was no time to debate and decide the question as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page239" id="page239"></a>[pg&nbsp;239]</span>
+to who had committed the outrage upon Hartley Allen,
+or of what justification there might have been for it. One
+thing only was clear to me, and that was that I was not
+going to throw either Rona or Ranga to the dogs&mdash;no,
+nor to the law either&mdash;if there was any way of avoiding
+it. My mind&mdash;as was always the case when I had fasted
+long and drunk absinthe sparingly&mdash;worked with lightning
+swiftness.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Don&#39;t fight unless you have to,&quot; I said, stepping
+closer to Ranga as the wind and thunder threatened to
+drown my voice. &quot;Follow down the stream over the
+falls. Jump won&#39;t hurt you&mdash;plenty of water at the
+bottom. That&#39;ll throw off the dogs. Then follow the
+path by the flume down to the sea. The rain&#39;ll kill
+your trail for the dogs. It ought to be starting any
+minute now. Wait for me on the pier by the old
+sugar mill. I&#39;ll come for you in a boat as soon as I
+can.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Baring his teeth in a quick grin of comprehension,
+the big fellow wheeled and started for the front door.
+I caught his arm and checked him just in time. &quot;This
+way!&quot; I shouted. &quot;Through my bedroom window.
+Beat it! <i>Lekas!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Again that intelligent tooth-flash of understanding.
+Ranga&#39;s foreshortened bulk was making a blurred blot
+against the blue-green lightning flash playing across the
+rear bedroom window as I turned to answer a heavy
+banging at the front door. Everything considered, I
+have always felt that I got away fairly well with the
+situation with which I now found myself confronted.
+It was Harpool, the Chief of Police, who staggered into
+the room, bracing back against the push of the still rising
+wind. The flutter of the lightning revealed two or
+three horses in the driveway, and three or four men
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page240" id="page240"></a>[pg&nbsp;240]</span>
+following a bunch of howling dogs around the corner
+of the house.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was on the point of opening up at the Chief with a
+facetious sally about the way he was sending his hounds
+around to frighten my lady visitors, when I chanced to
+glance to the corner where Rona had been, and lo&mdash;I
+had no lady visitor! The girl was gone, but whether
+under the couch or out of one of the windows I could
+not guess. So I only gaped rather stupidly and said
+nothing, leaving the Chief to open the attack. I was
+glad the face on the canvas was covered, and only wished
+there had been time to throw something over the crumpled
+remnants of the big black-and-tan.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I am quite satisfied it isn&#39;t you we want, Mr. Whitney,&quot;
+Harpool began, with a shade of embarrassment,
+I thought. &quot;But the fact remains that Rawdon&#39;s hounds
+have followed a live scent straight to this house, and I
+have every reason to believe they are on the trail of the
+man who tied up Hartley Allen. Perhaps you can
+explain&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I think I can,&quot; I cut in, anxious to gain time for
+the fugitive, but realizing that no end would be served
+by trying to conceal his identity. &quot;You&#39;re right that it
+was a hot scent. Just a few degrees too hot for your
+canine deputy there in the corner. It&#39;s the end of <i>his</i>
+trail, I&#39;m afraid.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Chief strode over to the limp corpse and turned
+it with his foot. &quot;Who killed this hound?&quot; he demanded
+angrily, regarding me suspiciously for the first time.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Not I, Chief,&quot; I replied jauntily; &quot;but can&#39;t you
+guess? You can see for yourself that he hasn&#39;t been
+shot&mdash;or clubbed&mdash;or poisoned. Well, then&mdash;look at that
+neck. Do you know of more than one man in these
+parts capable of snapping a bloodhound&#39;s spine between
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page241" id="page241"></a>[pg&nbsp;241]</span>
+his thumb and forefinger?&quot; (I added that little thumb-and-forefinger
+touch with malice aforethought, for I
+wanted to impress upon Harpool&mdash;for whatever it might
+be worth&mdash;that it was no old broken-down of a &quot;Squid&quot;
+Saunders that he was going to try to run to earth out
+there in the darkness.)</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Chief&#39;s honest eyes opened with amazement as
+the answer dawned upon him. &quot;You don&#39;t mean the
+big Malay?&quot; he ejaculated incredulously. &quot;Why, he has
+been tending Allen like a sister for two days. Everyone
+in the hospital has been speaking about his devotion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;No other,&quot; I answered. &quot;Ranga came up from the
+hospital less than half an hour ago to get a shift of
+togs. Five minutes later that hound came tearing in
+through the back entrance and flew at his throat&mdash;right
+here in my studio. You see the result. That fellow can
+drop a horse with his fist&mdash;a dog is no more than a flea
+to him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I can hardly believe it,&quot; said the Chief, shaking his
+head; &quot;but the fact remains that if the hound went for
+him, he&#39;s our man. I hope we won&#39;t have to shoot
+him.... But Rawdon will never stand by and see his
+dogs pinched out like that. This fellow was his best
+hound by a mile. Drive him crazy when he finds it&#39;s
+been dished. Gawd, that neck might have been run over
+by a steam tram! What in hell&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A bedlam of howls and yells and savage oaths rising
+from the rear of the house at this juncture broke in upon
+the Chief and caused him to bolt on the double through
+the door of the corridor leading to the kitchen. The
+unearthly racket, with the rattle of pistol shots spattering
+through it, made me certain that Ranga had run
+afoul of the hunt at his first jump. Shuddering at the
+thought of the terrible fight that must ensue, I pushed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page242" id="page242"></a>[pg&nbsp;242]</span>
+on after Harpool, reaching the further end of the corridor
+just in time to catch his reeling form as he staggered
+back from a bullet that had burned his scalp the
+instant he opened the kitchen door. Astride the sill of a
+kicked-in window sat old Rawdon, his bearded face distorted
+with fury and pain, coughing, sneezing, cursing,
+and firing impartially at all parts of the long, low room.
+Under the sink, almost at Rawdon&#39;s feet but quite out of
+pistol range, crouched Suey, blinking blandly and rubbing
+his almond eyes. He it was who was the author of
+an unpremeditated diversion which was the only thing
+in the world that prevented Ranga being nabbed at the
+outset.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The late black-and-tan, in following Ranga&#39;s trail, had
+entered the kitchen by snapping his way through the
+light screen door. To prevent his lines being thus penetrated
+a second time, the foxy Celestial, when he heard
+the main pack rallying to the attack, closed and bolted
+the heavy outside door of his domain and, with a little
+surprise packet in his hand, took station beside the little
+swinging window above the sink. Waiting with true
+Oriental restraint till the clamouring enemy was compactly
+bunched upon the porch outside, Suey gently
+raised the screen and emptied the contents of a can of red
+pepper into their midst. The paprika appeared to have
+been pretty fairly divided between three of the most oncoming
+of the dogs and their equally forward master.
+The hounds quit for the night, then and there, but the
+old bushranger&#39;s fighting spirit urged him on to make
+the best stand he could with his automatic. Considering
+the way he was being racked with coughs and sneezes,
+and that he only blazed away at the creak of an opening
+door his streaming eyes could not locate, his shot that
+welcomed the Chief was by no means uncreditable. It
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page243" id="page243"></a>[pg&nbsp;243]</span>
+cut a neat furrow through Harpool&#39;s stubby pompadour
+and even drew a drop or two of blood.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Chief&#39;s fervent swearing stayed Rawdon&#39;s murderous
+hand just as he had finished fumbling a fresh
+clip of cartridges into his emptied &quot;thirty-eight&quot; and
+was about to start fusillading anew. Roaring mad as he
+was, his first thought was for the dogs. &quot;Get a wet rag
+round the muzzles o&#39; Dingo an&#39; Jackaroo &#39;fore you let
+&#39;em inter this &#39;ell &#39;ole,&quot; he growled between sneezes.
+&quot;Our bloke&#39;s somew&#39;ere in this &#39;ere &#39;ouse,&quot; he went on,
+laving his smarting eyes at the water-tap of the sink
+above Suey&#39;s jack-knifed form. &quot;Don&#39;t let &#39;im slope
+by the front door, Chief, now we&#39;ve got &#39;im in &#39;is &#39;ole.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Sloped already,&quot; snapped Harpool laconically, adding
+that most of the sloping had been done while Rawdon
+was setting his dogs on a &quot;bally Chink cook.&quot; In a
+few terse sentences the Chief explained the way things
+stood, giving it as his opinion that their man would be
+trying to follow the stream right across the plantation
+and down through the belt of bush to the mangrove
+swamps. The loss of the big black-and-tan was so great
+a calamity for the old bushranger that it had the effect
+of sobering rather than further exciting him. His red
+rage burned white and flamed inwardly rather than outwardly.
+&quot;I&#39;ll know &#39;ow to even up for &#39;im killin&#39;
+Starlight w&#39;en I gets that bloody wombat in a patch o&#39;
+dry bush. Nice bit o&#39; a torch that greasy &#39;ulk o&#39; &#39;im&#39;ll
+make. Come along! We&#39;ll &#39;ave a better chance o&#39; makin&#39;
+a quick bag if we get &#39;im in sight &#39;fore the rain
+starts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There were still left two dogs with undamaged
+&quot;noses.&quot; Fearful that these, if they took the bridle-path
+down the right side of the creek, might pick up
+Ranga&#39;s trail where he would have left the stream at the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page244" id="page244"></a>[pg&nbsp;244]</span>
+pool, I made bold to suggest a plan calculated to carry
+them wide of that danger point. &quot;Why don&#39;t you
+ford here,&quot; I said, &quot;and push straight across the plantation
+to the end of the big loop the stream makes round
+the nigger village? Your man will be all of an hour
+making that point if he wades by the stream. You can
+make it through the cane in twenty minutes and be waiting
+there to bag him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Chief was inclined to favour the plan&mdash;until
+Rawdon cut in sarcastically with: &quot;An&#39; wot&#39;s to pervent
+the bloody bloke&#39;s givin&#39; us the slip a &#39;undred
+times &#39;tween &#39;ere an&#39; there? One hound down each side
+o&#39; the stream&mdash;that&#39;s the only way to be sure o&#39; clappin&#39;
+our &#39;ooks inter &#39;im.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That was sound reasoning of course&mdash;from Rawdon&#39;s
+standpoint,&mdash;and I didn&#39;t dare urge my plan any further.
+Ten minutes later, when a sudden eager baying
+came down the wind from the direction of the waterfall,
+I felt sure my worst fears were realized. It was, therefore,
+with only the faintest hopes of success, that I pulled
+myself together to take the first step in making good my
+promise to pick up Ranga at the pier of the old sugar
+mill.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The priceless Suey had crawled out from under the
+sink as the sounds of the hunt grew faint, and turned
+to tidying the kitchen as though cleaning up after a pack
+of bloodhounds was just a pleasant little incidental of
+the day&#39;s work. When I ordered him to get me out a
+fresh bottle of absinthe he did not even forget the
+cracked ice. I told him I should probably be away for
+most of the night, and that if Rona showed up in the
+interim to see that she was made comfortable till my return.
+&quot;All lightee girl-ee. Otha fell-ee too much peppa
+can have,&quot; he said decisively. I told him to do what he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page245" id="page245"></a>[pg&nbsp;245]</span>
+liked to Rawdon, but to give the Chief a shake-down if
+he asked for it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Quaffing a couple of glasses of raw absinthe, I filled
+a flask, pulled on a pair of riding-boots and a raincoat,
+and pushed out onto the veranda. The wind had not
+increased greatly in force, but the lightning and thunder
+were flashing and crashing almost simultaneously overhead,
+and the first big drops of rain were beginning to
+spatter. The moon was hidden behind a dense pall of
+black cloud, so that it was by the incessant flicker of the
+lightning that I sized up the three saddle-horses tied at
+the side of the driveway and picked the rangy waler of
+the Chief as the likeliest rough-weather beast. I had no
+compunction to taking him, as the bunch would be breaking
+away anyhow as soon as the sagging bottom of the
+cloud overhead dropped its contents on them. I preferred
+not to have my own saddle-horse left standing in
+the town if it could be avoided. There would be enough
+tell-tale posts on the course I was going to try to negotiate
+without deliberately planting another one.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The cane fields in the valley were glistening with the
+opening volleys of the rain as I spurred across the clearing,
+stabbing the night with silver gleams in the lightning
+flashes as the bayonets of massed troops throw off
+the rays of the sun. The wind was behind me as far as
+the main road; then side-on, but broken by the wall of
+the thick-growing trees. I put the waler at top speed,
+anxious to cover all the distance possible while the footing
+was good. I was halfway to town before the storm
+let go in real earnest, and from then on it was about as
+much of a swim as a ride, especially after the hillsides
+began to spill off on the lower levels. My mount was a
+sensible beast, evidently no stranger to tropical cloudbursts.
+He took the initiative readily when I ceased
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page246" id="page246"></a>[pg&nbsp;246]</span>
+to urge him, and kept plugging right on through the
+storm at a good steady business-like jog. Nothing but
+my good fortune in getting a jump on the rain prevented
+my going out in this first lap of my race, as all
+of the four bridges I had to cross must have washed
+away within a very few minutes from the time I put
+them behind me. Indeed, one of the two horses I had
+left in the driveway, after both had broken away as I
+had anticipated, was drowned in trying to flounder
+through an open crossing.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The worst of the terrific downpour was over as I rode
+into the town, but the wind&mdash;as was to be expected&mdash;was
+blowing with increased force. Everyone had been
+driven indoors by the rain, so that it was in an empty
+street I dismounted and left my horse, knowing that he
+would be pawing at his own stable door within a very
+few minutes. The rest of the way to the landing I
+covered on foot. As I had feared, the creek was empty
+of launches. I would have to see what could be done
+at the Burns, Phillip offices, which, busy with manifests
+and other odds and ends of business incident to an imminent
+steamer sailing, were still lighted up. It was an
+alternative I was very reluctant to resort to, as I had
+been hoping that my visit to Captain Tancred might be
+managed on the quiet. Just as I turned to go a red light,
+bobbing past the outer end of the jetty, caught the tail
+of my eye, and, on the off chance that it might be a craft
+I could hire, I held on at the steps. Smartly handled
+in the nasty cross-lop, a small but powerful steam launch
+bumped in alongside the landing stage.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Can I get you to take me off to the <i>Mambare</i>?&quot; I
+demanded of the uniformed youth who came bounding
+up the steps.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Glad to do it, sir. This is her launch,&quot; was the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page247" id="page247"></a>[pg&nbsp;247]</span>
+cheery reply. &quot;Just in for clearance papers. Be back
+in a jiffy. Climb aboard and make yourself comfy in the
+cabin.&quot; Then, as an apparent afterthought: &quot;You&#39;re
+sailing with us, aren&#39;t you? Can&#39;t take off visitors at
+this hour. No way to get back. Getting under way at
+midnight.&quot; He had so little doubt that I was a belated
+passenger, perhaps delayed by the rain, that my
+nod was quite sufficient to reassure him. Five minutes
+later we were shoving off for the run back to the line
+of lights where the <i>Mambare</i> tugged at her moorings.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The sea was white with foam outside the jetties, but
+with waves and wind almost dead astern the sturdy little
+launch made very comfortable weather of it. It was
+by no means as bad as it had been coming in, said the
+young officer, who turned out to be a freight clerk. As
+the gangway was already raised and the launch had to
+come in anyway, we remained aboard her and were
+hoisted right up and swung in to the chocks on the
+<i>Mambare&#39;s</i> boat-deck. My companion hurried at once to
+his office to go over his pouch of papers, while I, locating
+it without asking anyone for directions, went forward
+to the Captain&#39;s cabin under the bridge.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The faint shadow of constraint on Captain Tancred&#39;s
+face as I entered disappeared the instant his ready mind
+divined I had come to him for help. &quot;So they&#39;re after
+ye at last, lad,&quot; he said, sympathy and satisfaction
+queerly blended in his deep voice. &quot;Weel, noo, tell me
+a&#39; aboot it. I ken we&#39;ll be findin&#39; a way oot for
+ye.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I told him all that he needed to know as quickly as
+possible, making a point, however, of omitting to state
+that the man I wanted him to smuggle away to the
+Islands had confessed to committing the outrage upon
+Hartley Allen. &quot;Slant&quot; was an old friend of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page248" id="page248"></a>[pg&nbsp;248]</span>
+&quot;Choppy&#39;s,&quot; and I felt sure that the latter, far from
+being a witting party to helping the man who had attacked
+him escape from justice, would undoubtedly lend
+every aid to placing him where he would receive his just
+deserts. Luckily, the quixotic old Scot was not a man
+to ask searching questions. He was plainly disappointed
+that it was not I who was fleeing the law, but there was
+ready consolation in the fact that a friend of mine, in
+very sore straits, might be saved from being torn to
+pieces by a pack of bloodhounds if he was picked up at
+a certain point on the north coast before morning.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">We located the cove of the old sugar mill on the chart
+without difficulty, and in his bulky volume of &quot;Sailing
+Directions&quot; found the comforting assurance that it afforded
+especially good shelter in a northerly blow.
+There was no surf, it was stated, and the shore was almost
+steep-to. This was all in our favour. He was sailing
+at midnight, the Captain said. The hurricane was central
+over the New Hebrides, so it was only the tail of it
+flirting across the Great Barrier&mdash;nothing he would
+dream of sticking in harbour for. Doubtless he would be
+able to find an excuse to heave-to off the cove, while I
+piloted the launch in to get our man. Then, if I didn&#39;t
+care to return and take a pleasure voyage with him to Insulinde
+and the Straits, I could drop off and make the
+best of my way home.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Captain had just finished telling me how he had
+made a point of bringing his old launch crew with him
+from the <i>Utupua</i>&mdash;&quot;the lads I use for speshul wark,
+ye ken&quot;&mdash;when the freight clerk who had brought me
+off entered the cabin with a number of papers and letters.
+On the top of the pile was a red envelope marked
+&quot;Rush.&quot; &quot;Choppy&quot; tore the letter open at once. The
+up-flop of his grizzled side-burns at the sudden flexing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page249" id="page249"></a>[pg&nbsp;249]</span>
+of the jaw muscles at their roots gave me warning of
+the coming jolt.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;We&#39;ll nae be gettin&#39; under wa&#39; the nicht, Ryerson,&quot;
+he said quietly to the freight clerk. &quot;Will ye be sae
+guid as to bid the Chief an&#39; the Mate to step this wa&#39;.
+Mair carga the morrow,&quot; he added by way of explanation.
+To the Chief Engineer, when he came, the Captain
+merely countermanded an order for steam on the capstan
+at seven bells, and warned him to keep the pressure
+in the boilers high for fear the steamer might part a
+mooring cable if the wind increased. The Mate he
+ordered to be ready to handle a consignment of silver
+bullion and ingot copper that would come in a tug from
+the <i>Moresby</i> as soon as she arrived from the south in the
+morning. He also told him to have the crew of the
+steam launch called away at once, so as to put &quot;yon
+gentleman&quot; ashore as quickly as possible. If the Mate
+was lively about it, &quot;Choppy&quot; suggested, he might find
+that the fires of the launch had not yet been drawn from
+her trip to the landing. If so, that would save time in
+getting up steam.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Not until all of this was ordered did he turn to me
+with: &quot;The de&#39;il&#39;s ain luck, lad. Nae gettin&#39; awa&#39; afore
+eight bells, noon, the morrow. Shipment frae Broken
+Hill catchin&#39; up wi&#39; us in the <i>Moresby</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;That means that the game&#39;s up and you&#39;re sending
+me back because there&#39;s no hope of doing anything?&quot; I
+asked in dismay.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Nae, nae, lad,&quot; he soothed. &quot;No&#39; so fast. Just a
+wee bit o&#39; a shift o&#39; program, that&#39;s a&#39;. True I&#39;m sendin&#39;
+ye ashore in the launch, but when she comes back
+I&#39;m hopin&#39; tae find oor mon in yer place. Do ye ken
+noo wha&#39; I&#39;m drivin&#39; at?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Do you mean to send the launch all the way round
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page250" id="page250"></a>[pg&nbsp;250]</span>
+from here?&quot; I demanded in astonishment; &quot;and then to
+keep him aboard here in the harbour for ten or twelve
+hours before you sail? Isn&#39;t that asking for trouble
+both ways? Even if the launch stands up against the
+gale outside, aren&#39;t you done for if they come off from
+town and make a search of the steamer?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Old &quot;Choppy&#39;s&quot; blue eyes twinkled merrily at the
+latter suggestion. The police never did seem to have any
+luck in searching his ships, he laughed. As for the
+launch&mdash;it was new, its engine was unusually powerful,
+and it would have &quot;Pisco&quot; at the wheel. &quot;Pisco,&quot; he
+explained, was a Chilean who had been with him for
+years, and had never been known to fail at a pinch. He
+thought that combination ought to win out. I didn&#39;t
+mind a bit of slap-banging off the point, did I? That
+settled it. If he was willing to risk his own launch and
+his own career to save <i>my</i> friend, it was not for me to
+hang back. Fifteen minutes later we had been lowered
+over the side and were rounding under the <i>Mambare&#39;s</i>
+fine clipper bows into the teeth of the gusty norther. It
+had been agreed that I should pilot &quot;Pisco&quot; to the
+rendezvous and deliver my man into his care.
+&quot;Choppy&quot; undertook to do the rest.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">What the hard-bit old sea-dog had characterized as a
+&quot;bit o&#39; slap-banging&quot; off the point proved to be a frontal
+attack upon as ruffianly a bunch of headseas as it was
+ever my lot to face in anything smaller than a ninety-ton
+schooner. Stoutly built and over-engined as she was, the
+launch was quite equal to the task of driving her nose
+through the waves, but&mdash;not being built for submarine
+service&mdash;proved a dismal failure at getting rid of the
+solid green water that deluged her as a consequence.
+Knot by knot, cursing fluently in picturesque <i>roto</i> Spanish
+the while, &quot;Pisco&quot; rang down the engine, until
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page251" id="page251"></a>[pg&nbsp;251]</span>
+finally the pugnacious little craft ceased tunnelling the
+bases of the seas and contented herself with boring neat
+round holes in their curling crests. By this method she
+shipped no more water than her scuppers could put
+back where it came from. The only fear now was that
+enough spray might splash down her squat funnel to
+quench the fires, and to minimize the chances of this, the
+resourceful &quot;Pisco&quot; made the lookout stand so that his
+broad chest would receive and deflect the heaviest rushes
+of the threatening flood. Fortunately, the distance to be
+run head-on to the seas was comparatively short. Once
+round the point the alteration of course brought the
+wind and the waves on the starboard beam, and though
+she now just about rolled her side-lights under, it was
+fairly quiet going compared to the buffeting outside.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I gave &quot;Pisco&quot; his course for the first leg in by the
+lights of the big sugar central, and then, as we opened up
+the inner bay, gave him a bearing on the notch&mdash;barely
+guessable against the overcast west&mdash;where the old cartroad
+grade pierced the brow of the cliff. The clouds
+were racing overhead and the baffling cross-gusts on the
+surface would have made it bad business for a sailing
+craft. But for a launch the task was a comparatively
+simple one. The loom of the old mill was discernible
+against the darker opacity of the cliff at a couple of hundred
+yards, and the right-angling lines of the pier at
+half that distance. As the latter was sure to have been
+built of the eternally-lasting <i>jarra</i>, I knew that it would
+be as solid and serviceable as the day it was abandoned.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had not thought it best to risk dampening Captain
+Tancred&#39;s enthusiasm by confessing that I thought it
+was a good ten-to-one against my man&#39;s turning up at
+the rendezvous. Indeed, I could see no grounds whatever
+for hoping that Ranga had shaken the pursuit&mdash;already
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page252" id="page252"></a>[pg&nbsp;252]</span>
+at his heels&mdash;and won through to the appointed
+place. Nothing short of a miracle could have compassed
+it, I told myself. It was on the off chance that the
+miracle had been wrought that I was keeping my promise.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;&#39;Bout half a point to sta&#39;boa&#39;d, Tuan. Way nuf now!
+Steady!&quot; That deep rumbling voice from the darkness
+was a welcome surprise. &quot;Pisco,&quot; heeding the quiet directions,
+brought his launch alongside the broad solid
+flight of steps as neatly as he would have laid her up to
+the <i>Mambare&#39;s</i> gangway in broad daylight.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Ranga was coming down the steps&mdash;with a slowness
+which I attributed to the fact that they were probably very
+slippery&mdash;when I heard a thud on the deck behind me,
+such a sound as a heavy, soft bundle thrown down from
+above might have made in striking. A second or two
+later there was an ejaculation of astonishment somewhere
+aft, probably from &quot;Pisco,&quot; I thought, as the
+words were Spanish. I did not try to puzzle out the purport
+of them at the moment, as my attention was occupied
+with Ranga, who seemed to be hesitating at the last
+moment about coming aboard. Twice or thrice he drew
+back his foot from the rail, as though uncertain of his
+balance. And when the great bulk of him finally did
+surge forward, it was with a lurch that took all my
+strength to check it and prevent his reeling on across the
+narrow bow and over the other side. He steadied himself
+slowly, with a great intake of breath. &quot;Sorry&mdash;make
+trouble,&mdash;Tuan. Now&mdash;I go aft.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I am leaving you here, Ranga,&quot; I said quickly, for
+I was getting nervous about a movement of lights I had
+observed along the flume in the rear of the big sugar
+mill. &quot;Captain Tancred will look after you on the
+steamer, and put you off wherever you want to go. He
+also has some money for you. Good luck!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page253" id="page253"></a>[pg&nbsp;253]</span>
+The big fellow took a long shuddering breath, and
+when he spoke it was as though he had rallied himself
+from a spell of faintness by sheer force of will. &quot;Some
+day, Tuan&mdash;I pay you back&mdash;for all you do. So long.&quot;
+He turned with painful deliberation and started to edge
+along aft. I was a bit surprised that he had not grasped
+my extended hand, but could not be sure that he had
+been aware of it in the dark. It did not occur to me
+until afterwards that he had not used his own hands on
+the rail of the stairway in descending, and that he had
+seemed to shoulder his way back to the cockpit rather
+than to grope. I waited until his swaying shoulders
+ceased to blot the blinking of the phosphorescent seas
+astern, and then swung off to the stairs.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;All clear!&quot; I called softly to &quot;Pisco,&quot; as I felt the
+solid step underfoot. &quot;Shove off when you&#39;re ready.
+<i>Buena fortuna!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was doubtless &quot;Pisco&#39;s&quot; ejaculation in Spanish a
+few moments before, lurking in the back of my mind,
+that prompted me to speed the spirited coxswain in his
+own tongue. On the heels of that &quot;<i>Buena fortuna!</i>&quot;
+the words he had spoken flashed up in my memory.
+&quot;<i>Cristo! Porqué la muchacha?</i>&quot; It could hardly have
+been a sarcastic dig at Ranga&#39;s hesitancy in stepping
+aboard, I reflected as I mounted the slippery&mdash;astonishingly
+slippery&mdash;steps. He would not have expressed it
+quite that way in that case. A sudden slip in a slimy
+patch at the head of the steps put an end to conjecture
+for the moment, and when I regained my feet the answer
+was written across the cabin doorway of the turning
+launch. The lamp inside had&mdash;purposely&mdash;been turned
+very low, and the blurred silhouette of the figure that
+came groping out to where Ranga had collapsed on a
+cockpit transom might easily have been that of any one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page254" id="page254"></a>[pg&nbsp;254]</span>
+of old &quot;Choppy&#39;s&quot; true and tried launch crew. But
+wet amber silk reflects a deal of light, and there was only
+one peacock shawl in the world&mdash;or in that neck of the
+world at least.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page255" id="page255"></a>[pg&nbsp;255]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII<br />
+<small>DOWN THE FLUME</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">The</span> lights had disappeared from the flume as I
+turned to go, and, rather than take the chance of
+another fall, I decided to use my small electric
+torch in finding a solid footing. The lacquered crimson
+reflection of the fluttering disc of light instantly revealed
+the cause of the slipperiness I had encountered. The
+whole end of the pier was criss-crossed with thick trails
+of blood, with great spreading pools here and there where,
+whoever shed it, had stood or sat. The blood on my
+hands and raincoat, where they had come in contact with
+Ranga&#39;s reeling frame, proved beyond a doubt that he
+was badly hurt. That explained his unsteadiness on his
+feet, and also the fact that he had avoided shaking hands
+with me. Very likely, indeed, his hands were unfit to
+use. Tired to the verge of exhaustion though I was, my
+blood leaped at the thought of the battle royal the splendid
+fellow must have fought&mdash;and won. I was expecting
+to come upon traces of the fight at any moment as I
+picked my way in past the ruined mill to the foot of the
+old grade leading to the top of the cliff.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As I left the planking of the pier behind two sets of
+footprints appeared in the wet, firm earth of the path at
+the side of the road. Both were made by bare feet, but
+the larger ones&mdash;plainly Ranga&#39;s&mdash;were broken and irregular,
+and saturated with blood. There could be no
+doubt that his feet, like his hands, were frightfully
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page256" id="page256"></a>[pg&nbsp;256]</span>
+torn. The small prints pressed very close to the side of
+the large, indicating that Rona was either supporting the
+wounded giant or being supported by him. From the
+fact that the smaller impressions were deeply indented, I
+figured that the former was the case&mdash;that she was helping
+him. The girl, evidently, was not badly hurt&mdash;perhaps
+not at all.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Where the path I was following joined the bridle-road
+at the brink of the cliff, the trail of blood turned off down
+the foot of the flume toward the big sugar mill. The
+battle royal must have been fought somewhere in the
+depths of the dense tropical growth that filled the rocky
+fissure in the cliff followed by the flume. What grim
+secret the black hole held would have to wait for the
+coming day to reveal. My way home led in the opposite
+direction, and there was some question in my mind
+as to whether or not I had the strength for the full
+course.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Fortunately for me the flume had been built along
+ridges and high ground, so that the trail following it had
+not been exposed to heavy flooding in the torrential rains
+of the early evening. I found it hard and firm underfoot
+for the most part, and by no means hard to follow
+without resorting to my electric torch. It would have
+been very easy going had I not been so nearly all in,
+but even as it was, by using my absinthe sparingly as
+I had done while painting, I managed to keep plugging
+steadily on toward home.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At one time something very near a panic seized me for
+a while, when the thought flashed through my mind that
+the great quantity of Ranga&#39;s blood soaked up by my
+boots and my clothes would undoubtedly leave a trail
+that Rawdon&#39;s hounds, should they chance to nose into
+it, would be quite justified in mistaking for that of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page257" id="page257"></a>[pg&nbsp;257]</span>
+Malay himself. Even if I succeeded in holding the beasts
+off with my revolver, my presence there, and in such a
+state, would call for a lot of explaining. If the Chief
+once became suspicious, I told myself, it would undoubtedly
+upset my plans to get Ranga away, to say
+nothing of involving both myself and Captain Tancred
+in a serious scrape. I was in a miserable state of funk
+until the cheering thought entered my head that Ranga
+had probably killed not only the dogs, but probably
+Rawdon and the Chief as well. That reflection reassured
+me immensely, and, buoyed in mind and body, I trudged
+on confidently to the foot of the waterfall.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had noticed from time to time along the way that
+the flume, in its less inclined stretches, was overflowing
+its sides. The reason for this became evident when I
+reached the intake, at the side of the pool under the falls,
+where I discovered that the gate, usually only partly
+raised, was wide open. A flow of more than double the
+normal was rushing out of the rain-swollen stream and
+into the flume.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was too tired to speculate upon how this might have
+happened. It was touch-and-go with my tottering knees
+all the way up the steep, slippery path to the top of the
+cliff; but, with three or four breathing spells and the
+last of my absinthe, I managed it, and came out at last
+upon the greensward rimming the bathing-pool under
+my bedroom window. It was comparatively quiet here,
+now that the roar of the falls was deadened by distance,
+which was doubtless the reason that I heard for the
+first time a racket from the other side of the plantation
+that must have been going on right along. It was rather
+a lucky thing that I <i>did</i> hear that noise before I turned
+in. Had I not done so, it is hardly likely that it would
+have occurred to me that it might be a wise precaution to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page258" id="page258"></a>[pg&nbsp;258]</span>
+remove my boots before entering the house, and then
+to strip off and burn carefully in the kitchen range everything
+that I had been wearing. It was all I could do to
+keep awake until the irksome job was over, but, since
+it was evident from the ki-yi-ing and cursing that was
+floating down the wind that Ranga had not made a
+clean sweep of Rawdon and his pack, I reckoned that
+it well might be the means of preventing unpleasant
+complications.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">My arduous climb up from the old sugar mill had
+served a useful purpose in one respect. The hard physical
+exercise had sweated the poison of the absinthe out
+of my system and relaxed the near-to-breaking tension
+my nerves had been under for thirty-six hours. I fell
+into a good normal hard-workingman&#39;s sleep the moment
+the mosquito-net closed behind me. And the best
+of it was that, when a pandemonium outside awakened
+me a little after sun-up, I tumbled out upon my feet in
+full possession of all my faculties. This was a mighty
+fortunate circumstance, for the rather delicate situation
+with which I was confronted called for something better
+on my shoulders than the usual &quot;absinthe-holdover&quot;
+head.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Harpool and Rawdon, it appeared, had experienced a
+beastly night. Losing a hot scent that had been picked
+up at the foot of the waterfall immediately after leaving
+the bungalow, they had been forced to take refuge in
+one of the labour villages during the deluge. Dragged
+out by the bloodthirsty Rawdon before the rain had
+ceased to fall, they had spent the night &quot;working&quot; the
+fringes of the bush in the hope of stumbling upon the
+trail of the elusive fugitive. The net result of this was
+the drowning of two more hounds and the driving of the
+baffled bushranger to the verge of distraction. Returning,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page259" id="page259"></a>[pg&nbsp;259]</span>
+dead beat, in the early dawn, they had encountered,
+at the intake of the flume, a scent so strong that even
+the paprika-dosed noses of Suey&#39;s victims followed it
+readily. Swarming up the cliff in full cry, the hunt
+came on to whirl in a mad war dance round the bungalow
+and put a period to my morning slumbers.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The maniacal Rawdon was the worst difficulty, and
+I honestly believe that only the Chief&#39;s restraining presence
+saved me from the necessity of winging him with a
+revolver bullet to prevent his setting fire to the bungalow.
+That &quot;bloody wombat&quot; had dodged him once from that
+shack and he wasn&#39;t going to take chances on its happening
+again. The Chief and I finally induced him to
+leave his &quot;ring of death&quot; intact round the bungalow
+and come in and search for himself. That gave me a
+chance for a quiet word with Harpool, whom I did not
+want to have push on to town for fear he would start a
+search that might extend to the <i>Mambare</i>. Indeed, he
+admitted he was afraid that his man might have doubled
+back to Townsville and got off to the Singapore boat,
+which had doubtless sailed at midnight. He had lost a
+badly-wanted counterfeiter a fortnight ago that way.
+The skippers never seemed very keen to co-operate in a
+search of their ships. Too many little smuggling games
+of their own probably.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I suggested to Harpool that he have a bath, a change
+of clothes&mdash;my togs were about his size&mdash;and a snack of
+early breakfast. Afterwards&mdash;since his horse was gone&mdash;I
+would drive him down in my trap. In the meantime
+he could ring up the Police Station and give any
+orders he thought desirable by &#39;phone. (This latter suggestion
+I made in full knowledge of the fact that the
+line must be down for over a mile. I had seen myself
+where uprooted trees were responsible for wide hiatuses.)
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page260" id="page260"></a>[pg&nbsp;260]</span>
+If it was in any way possible without arousing his suspicions,
+it was my intention to detain Harpool until I
+was sure the <i>Mambare</i> had sailed.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Chief fell in with my suggestion readily, and felt
+so much bucked up after a bath and a couple of whiskies-and-soda
+that he did not appear seriously upset when
+the telephone turned an irresponsive ear to him. Like the
+straightforward gentleman he was, he accepted at once
+my assurance that Ranga had not entered the house again,
+and took no hand in Rawdon&#39;s wild scrimmages, which
+carried him from cellar to garret with no other result
+than the brushing of a bit more of the bloom off &quot;Honeymoon
+Bungalow&quot; with the soles of his hobnailed boots.
+Madder than ever after his vain search, he surlily refused
+my invitation to remain for a cup of the coffee
+that his Chink friend of the night before was already
+preparing in the kitchen, and slogged off down the
+road, followed by three draggled hounds and two cursing
+helpers. I was a good deal cheered by the thought that
+it was unlikely that any of them would be getting
+through to town, without swimming, for another twelve
+hours at least.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Before he left Rawdon turned over to the Chief the
+little piece of red rag he had been using to put the dogs
+on the scent with. It was at this time that Harpool told
+me of &quot;Squid&quot; Saunders&#39; suggestion, and of the visit
+to the schooner in search of a clue. I did not tell him
+that I recognized the rag as one which Ranga had used to
+wrap his little Malay flute in, and that it had undoubtedly
+been left there the morning the big fellow
+helped carry Hartley Allen to the quarantine launch.
+It was interesting, however, to know that Ranga was
+absolutely guiltless of the outrage to which he had
+confessed. I thought I could just conceive how a well-guarded
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page261" id="page261"></a>[pg&nbsp;261]</span>
+passion for the girl might have prompted that
+chivalrous attempt to shield her from suspicion; but
+why had Rona herself committed the ghastly crime?&mdash;and
+how? It was many months before I was to have an
+answer to those questions, and they came from the lips
+of the last person from whom I could have expected
+them.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Direct and straightforward as ever, Harpool was
+visibly impressed by my suggestion that Ranga had probably
+remained hidden near the fall until the pursuit had
+passed, and after returning to the bungalow and finding
+it dark, had retraced his steps and adopted the
+desperate expedient of trying to escape the dogs by riding
+down the flume. That reminded him that they had
+found the gate of the intake closed when they first
+reached it, and that it had occurred to him at the time
+that the fugitive might have done this so that he could
+walk down the bottom of the flume without risk of being
+carried away by the water. This would account for the
+patch of scent the hounds found at that point. The
+Chief said that he was for pushing along the path by the
+flume, but that Rawdon scouted his theory, insisting that
+their man had jumped back into the water and gone on
+wading downstream. The hound-master had carried his
+point, but, to be on the safe side, they had ratcheted up
+the gate to its full aperture and turned a stream down
+the flume heavy enough, he was afraid, almost to carry
+the sugar mill into the sea. And that reminded me
+(though, obviously, I could not speak of it) that I had
+not heard the roar of the mill&#39;s machinery when I paused
+at the brow of the cliff. There was no doubt it was hung
+up for some reason. Was it possible that Ranga had
+made his escape after coasting right down into the
+crushing gear? But of course not. He would never have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page262" id="page262"></a>[pg&nbsp;262]</span>
+been able to get away unpursued, even if he had survived.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I welcomed for two reasons Harpool&#39;s suggestion that
+we ride down the flume and investigate as soon as breakfast
+was over. It would keep him away from town until
+the <i>Mambare</i> had sailed for one thing, and, for another,
+it would give me a chance to fathom the mystery that
+lay at the end of that trail of blood leading down into
+the rift in the cliff. It seemed probable to me that both
+Rona and Ranga, after the former had overtaken him&mdash;probably
+at the foot of the fall&mdash;had started down the
+flume on foot. Whether there would be any indications
+of what had befallen when the water overtook them
+remained to be seen.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The gate was still wide open when we rode along beside
+the intake, but halfway down to the coast we met
+a man from the mill who said that he was going up to
+shut the flow off so that a break near the lower end
+could be repaired. The wires were down from the storm,
+he said, making it impossible to &#39;phone directions to the
+plantation office. The break was a bit of a mystery, he
+added. Flume opened right out. There were indications
+that some large animal&mdash;perhaps a bullock&mdash;had
+been carried down&mdash;probably washed in at the upper end
+while the stream was at flood. Funny part of it was,
+though, that there was no trace to be found of the bullock
+below the break. Must have been washed right on
+into the sea.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Harpool pushed on eagerly after hearing that significant
+piece of news, and we reached the head of the first
+steep pitch at the top of the cliff some minutes before
+the water had ceased to flow. As I did not care to have
+the Chief discover the trail of blood leading down to
+the sea for a while yet, I proposed that we tie our horses
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page263" id="page263"></a>[pg&nbsp;263]</span>
+here and walk down the top of the flume on a narrow
+board that evidently had been placed there for the use
+of workmen when repairs were necessary. It proved
+ticklish going&mdash;both on account of the incline and the
+elevation,&mdash;but nothing to trouble seriously a man with
+a sure foot and a steady head. Harpool, who was up
+first, led the way, I following closely.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">If the power of the flying bolt of water in the bottom
+of the flume had been impressive on the occasion of my
+first visit, it was a vast deal more so now, both on account
+of the greatly increased volume of flow and because of
+my certain knowledge that a human being&mdash;perhaps two
+of them&mdash;had gone down that chute, where I had been
+assured that a team of bullocks could not hold a man&mdash;and
+survived.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The foot-wide board on which we were walking was
+nailed to the left side of the flume. The top of the
+right side was a rough line of unplaned two-inch pine
+planks. Harpool had only taken a step or two when he
+brought up short with an exclamation of surprise and
+horror. &quot;Look at that top board on the other side!&quot;
+he shouted; &quot;raw, red meat all the way from here right
+out of sight round the bend at the bottom!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I looked, shuddered, shuffled my feet uncertainly, and
+brought my staring eyes back to the precarious footing.
+&quot;Push on!&quot; I implored quaveringly; &quot;my head&#39;s
+beginning to swim as it is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The roar of violently falling water came to my ears
+as we rounded the bend at the lower end of the steep
+incline, and just ahead was the break. The whole right
+or seaward side of the flume had opened out and the
+flood was pouring to the rocks below in a spreading
+forty-feet-high cataract. The ghastly smear along the top
+ran on unbroken, right out to the end of a loose plank,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page264" id="page264"></a>[pg&nbsp;264]</span>
+which was kicking spasmodically under the impulse of
+the released stream of water shooting under it. The
+Chief, pointing to a ragged fragment of bloody cuticle,
+wedged in a joint of the line of boards on which we were
+standing, delivered himself of what I believe was his only
+approximately correct diagnosis of any feature of the
+whole affair.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The fact that piece of skin and toe-nail were torn
+off on this side of the flume directly opposite the bulge,&quot;
+he said, &quot;would seem to indicate that the brake our man
+made of his right arm flung over the top plank of the
+other side must have finally brought him to a stop here.
+Then he must have doubled up crosswise of the flume,
+with his feet against the place where that skin is torn
+off and his back against the end of that plank that is
+sprung loose. When he straightened out that great rack
+of bone and muscle of his something had to give way, and
+it seems to have been the flume. Probably the force of
+the water, where his body deflected it against the side,
+was of some help; but it must have come jolly near to
+staving in his ribs where it drove into him at right
+angles.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Perhaps it did,&quot; I said. &quot;We can&#39;t tell till we find
+him.&quot; I was not anxious to hurry up the search by
+any means; but I felt that it would be better to move
+on to a place where I could grow dizzy without the risk
+of plunging forty feet onto a pile of broken rocks. The
+Chief, with ready consideration, hastened forward, and
+my faintness passed quickly when I felt the solid floor of
+the crushing level of the mill beneath my feet.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It appeared that they had knocked off early the previous
+evening for want of cane. At the time, the superintendent
+said, he thought the flume had been carried
+away by flood water. He had only evolved the bullock
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page265" id="page265"></a>[pg&nbsp;265]</span>
+theory when he went out at daylight and found the
+blood and meat smeared along the planks. The bullock
+must have got wedged in finally, he thought, and the
+water had piled up behind it and sprung out the side.
+They had not found the carcass yet, but, as there was
+a very sharp slope down to an in-reaching neck of the
+cove, it was not impossible that the rush of water had
+rolled it right on into the sea. Neither Harpool nor myself
+thought it worth while to ask him if he had found
+any bullock&#39;s hair among the &quot;meat.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Going down through the silent mill to reach a lower
+level before doubling back to the foot of the flume, a
+weird sort of sputtery peeping caught my ear while we
+were traversing the boiling-room. Something vaguely
+familiar in the sound caused me to trace it to its source
+behind one of the big vats. The <i>virtuoso</i> proved to be
+a lanky Australian sugar-boiler, whiling away the idle
+hour blowing across the holes in a queer little bamboo
+flute. One of the blacks had found it in the last run of
+the <i>bagasse</i>&mdash;the crushed cane&mdash;a while ago, he explained.
+Someone must have dropped it in the flume.
+Funny thing that it had been so slightly crushed in
+coming through the rollers. He gave it to me readily
+when I told him that I was a collector of primitive
+musical instruments. Said he had a much better one&mdash;made
+in Germany and all bound with brass&mdash;in his home
+in Maryborough. I took it on the off chance that I might
+some day be able to give it back to Ranga. I knew how
+greatly he was attached to it, and, since flutes like that
+were only made in one little pile-built village on the coast
+of Ambon, how hard a time he would have to replace it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I played up the superintendent&#39;s &quot;washed-into-the-sea&quot;
+theory for the Chief&#39;s benefit as long as I could,
+but finally he circled round and hit the double trail of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page266" id="page266"></a>[pg&nbsp;266]</span>
+footprints that led down to the end of the old pier. The
+idea that Ranga had ridden the flume alone was so firmly
+rooted in his mind however, that he agreed at once with
+my suggestion that the smaller prints must have been
+made by an idle boy from the hung-up mill, who had
+perhaps trailed the blood on his own account, in the hope
+of getting the bullock meat. As I myself had made a
+point of keeping on the grass to the side of the path, my
+trail of the night was not discovered.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The poor devil must have thrown himself over here
+and been finished by the sharks and &#39;gators,&quot; Harpool
+shouted up to me from where, at the foot of the
+steps of the old pier, he stood beside the black-filmed pool
+that had drained from Ranga&#39;s wounds as he steadied
+himself for a few moments before lurching over to the
+bow of the launch. The Chief also said something more
+about coming back with a boat next day and searching
+the beach for anything that might remain. I didn&#39;t
+follow him very closely, for, just at that moment, a trim
+clipper bow slid out past the end of the southern point.
+Knowing a certain old brass-cylindered spy-glass would
+be training landward from the bridge that followed, I
+opened and closed my arms swiftly in a surreptitious
+wave of farewell. Good old &quot;Choppy&quot; must have been
+standing very close to the whistle-cord, for his reply
+came instantly. The wind carried the toots that must
+have sprung from the heart of two woolly steam-puffs in
+the opposite direction, but I caught the message just the
+same. &quot;All&#39;s well!&quot; was what old &quot;Choppy&quot; signalled
+in answer to my wave. His &quot;puff-puff&quot; talk was a deal
+easier to understand than his English.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was no longer in Australia when the <i>Mambare</i> returned
+from her maiden voyage to Singapore, so her skipper&#39;s
+report came to me in Paris by letter. He had put
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page267" id="page267"></a>[pg&nbsp;267]</span>
+both of my friends ashore in Macassar, he said, safe,
+sound and comfortably heeled for &quot;siller.&quot; He had become
+much attached to both of them in the course of
+the voyage, and couldn&#39;t thank me enough for putting
+him in the way of giving them a bit of a lift. He trusted
+I wouldn&#39;t fail to command him whenever another opportunity
+of the kind presented itself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The night that I sent Rona and Ranga off from the
+pier of the old sugar mill in the <i>Mambare&#39;s</i> launch
+marked the beginning of one of the strangest and most
+picturesque friendships the Islands ever knew; picturesque
+in the striking background the strongest and
+most terribly-scarred man in the South Pacific made for
+the hauntingly appealing beauty of the most interesting
+woman, and strange&mdash;more than passing strange&mdash;in
+that there was none who could say that their relations
+were ever other than those of mistress and servant.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page268" id="page268"></a>[pg&nbsp;268]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII<br />
+<small>THE MASTERPIECE</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">The</span> third day after the <i>Mambare</i> sailed found me
+southbound for Sydney, with Paris as my ultimate
+objective. The thought that a striking&mdash;possibly
+a great&mdash;picture might be painted about the face I had
+already done came to me the first time I threw back the
+veiling rug and encountered poor Allen&#39;s terror-haunted
+eyes staring back into my own. In deciding to finish the
+work in Paris I missed whatever chance I might have had
+of doing something really worth while. That I did
+finally complete a picture that was striking, arresting&mdash;something
+to set the tongues of the art world wagging
+for many a day&mdash;was due to the effort I had already
+made&mdash;The Face.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">With small chance of being able to do anything for
+Hartley Allen&mdash;at that time believed to be permanently
+insane,&mdash;there was no reason for my remaining longer
+in Townsville. As nothing that the good Chief of Police
+had learned&mdash;or ever did learn, so far as I know&mdash;was
+calculated to connect me with his failure to run Ranga
+to earth, he, naturally made no objection to my leaving.
+The whole affair was a complete mystery to him. The
+disappearance of Rona was rated only as a minor mystery.
+The amusing part of it was that it never occurred
+to the dear man to connect the two. The last thing that
+I fixed my glass upon as my southbound boat steamed
+out of the harbour was a confused mass of wreckage,
+blurring darkly against the mangroves a few miles north
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page269" id="page269"></a>[pg&nbsp;269]</span>
+of the town. It was all that the late storm had left of
+the grounded labour schooner, <i>Cora Andrews</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Missing the P. &amp; O. boat by twenty-four hours at Melbourne&mdash;too
+late to overtake it by train to Adelaide,&mdash;I
+found the next sailing was a <i>Messageries Maritime</i>
+steamer. Rather than wait a week for the next Orient
+liner, I booked for the French boat. This was all against
+my better judgment, especially in the light of the fact
+that I had work ahead. The one most effective influence
+I had known in keeping my use of absinthe at a point
+where it was not entirely beyond my control was the
+scathing if unspoken contempt of men of my own race
+for another of that race addicted to the insidious Latin
+habit. The nearest thing to a clean break-away I had
+ever made up to this time came after a stony-faced
+Cockney steward on a transatlantic Cunarder, who had
+put my whisky-drunken cabin-mate to bed one night as
+a matter of course, slammed the door with a snort when
+he surprised me pouring absinthe into cracked ice the
+following afternoon. In France, in French colonies, on
+French steamers&mdash;wherever the tri-colour flapped, in
+short&mdash;that restraining contempt was non-existent.
+There one found palliation, indulgence, even encouragement.
+That was the reason I had always become so
+abject a slave of the &quot;Green Lady&quot; during my sojourns
+in Paris, in Algiers, in Saigon, in Noumea. With no
+one to remind me of my shame, I forgot it, sinking ever
+lower and lower the while. This time, it had been my
+plan so to occupy myself with work on my picture in
+Paris that I should be able to keep my absinthe appetite
+just about where I had managed to hold it during the
+last six months in Kai and Australia. It is quite possible
+I might have kept to this program had I caught the
+P. &amp; O. from Melbourne, or had the sense to wait for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page270" id="page270"></a>[pg&nbsp;270]</span>
+another British boat. As it was, five weeks of <i>dolce far
+niente</i> were too much for me. By the time we reached
+Suez, I was seeing so green that the desert banks of the
+Canal looked like verdant lawns to me, and at Marseilles
+they took me straight from the ship to the hospital, pretty
+well all in mentally and physically. As my case presented
+some interesting complications of malaria and
+tropical anaemia, the doctors took a good deal of interest
+in it. Under the circumstances, I was dead lucky to get
+out of their hands at the end of a month.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Thoroughly disgusted with the world in general and
+myself in particular on the day I was discharged from
+the hospital, it was a toss-up for a few hours as to
+whether I should jump out for the Islands by the first
+boat, or push on to Paris. That I finally plumped for the
+latter was due more to the fact that there was no east-bound
+sailing for a couple of days, than to any faith
+that remained in my ability to get on with the picture.
+Considering all this, it seems to me that the effort I
+finally did pull myself together for was fairly creditable
+in its results.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was The Face itself&mdash;after I had unpacked and set
+up the canvas in a studio that a former friend kindly
+placed at my disposal&mdash;that was responsible for finally
+jolting me into action. Even at the end of ten weeks,
+Hartley Allen&#39;s tortured features seemed as real to me
+as on the night I had finished transferring them from
+my burning brain to the canvas. It struck me then&mdash;as
+it seemed to strike the public later&mdash;as the nearest
+thing to flesh and blood ever flicked off the tip of an
+artist&#39;s brush; and I felt that I had only to daub in some
+kind of an <i>ensemble</i> around it to have a work that would
+at least give Parisian art circles something to talk about
+for a while.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page271" id="page271"></a>[pg&nbsp;271]</span>
+It seemed to me that the most effective thing to do
+would be to make Allen, lashed to the schooner&#39;s wheel,
+the central and dominating figure on the canvas, and to
+have the other figures the creatures of his imagination&mdash;the
+phantoms conjured up by his reeling brain. These
+would include Bell, Rona, Ranga and a background of
+plague-stricken niggers. It was not to be&mdash;as we had
+planned the &quot;Black-birder&quot;&mdash;an attempt to portray some
+incident of the voyage. The &quot;phantoms&quot; were to be
+done in greys and blues, filmy and indistinct, to differentiate
+them from the solider flesh of the maniac tied
+to the wheel. It was not an uneffective conception, had
+I been up to carrying it out&mdash;which I wasn&#39;t.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">By a remarkable coincidence, as I have already mentioned,
+The Face was in exactly the right place to fit
+into the <i>ensemble</i> I had planned. This was a good omen
+and I derived no little encouragement from it. Fearful
+of the effect that terror-stricken gaze might have
+upon my models, I stuck an opaque square of paper over
+the distorted features, with the intention of leaving it
+there until the rest of the picture was finished. This
+was a wise precaution, as the sequel proved.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The model whom I chanced to secure to pose for Allen&#39;s
+figure was an especially fortunate choice. He had
+recently finished spending six or eight hours a day
+lashed to a hollow canvas cross in connection with a
+mural decoration at some cathedral&mdash;Sacré C&oelig;ur, I believe
+it was,&mdash;so he stood up rather well under the
+strain being triced to the property steering-gear I had
+contrived to borrow from the <i>Folies-Bergère</i>, where the
+&quot;marine&quot; <i>revue</i> in which it had figured was just over.
+Considering the fact that I had never done anything but
+seascapes and was notably weak in anatomy, my work
+on this figure was far from being as bad as might have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page272" id="page272"></a>[pg&nbsp;272]</span>
+been expected. It was not seriously out of drawing, and,
+even with The Face covered up, one was conscious of an
+unmistakable suggestion of agony in the tensely-strained
+limbs and back-drawn torso. From the artistic side, I
+would undoubtedly have done better to have trimmed
+down my canvas and limited the picture to this single
+figure. This, however, never occurred to me until a
+long time afterwards. At the moment, my mind was
+quite incapable of running away from the track on
+which I had started it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Although I knew that one of the things that must
+have been in Hartley Allen&#39;s mind was Bell&#39;s face, as he
+had described it to me&mdash;pain-twisted, with the lower lip
+bitten clean through, and a bar of light from the cracked
+binnacle slashing across it,&mdash;I could not bring myself
+to attempt to dramatize the sufferings of my friend.
+(Indeed, even at that time I had a guilty feeling that I
+was not doing the decent thing in using that of Allen
+in a picture to be exhibited to the public.) All that I
+did in Bell&#39;s case, therefore, was a back view of a huddled
+figure, sitting on the rail of the cockpit, with a
+half-empty whisky bottle rolling on the deck behind.
+It was not destined to draw much attention or comment
+one way or the other, for which I was duly thankful.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Ranga, as a consequence of being unable to find a
+model that would do him justice, I finally omitted. Rona
+came near to elimination for a similar reason, but in
+her case fortune, in the end, was more kind. It may be
+remembered that there was a so-called Hindu dancer
+leading the Oriental ballets at the <i>Comique</i> about this
+time. She was really an Eurasian half-caste&mdash;the daughter
+of a British &quot;Tommy&quot; and a Mahratta girl, born in
+Poona. With little of Rona&#39;s beauty of face and winsomeness
+of manner, she was still possessed of the same
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page273" id="page273"></a>[pg&nbsp;273]</span>
+flaming temperament and a figure that might have been
+poured from the same mould. It was the lithe, sinewy,
+serpentine shape of her that caught my eye when I
+chanced to drop in at the <i>Comique</i> for a matinée of
+<i>Marouf</i>, and (as she was still a few strokes short of the
+crest of the wave of popularity on which she rode for the
+next season or two), I had little difficulty in persuading
+her to give me a few sittings. She insisted she was doing
+it for art&#39;s sake, but it was really vanity that brought her
+into line. Also, as transpired shortly, she had a very
+sharp weather eye for the main chance. In any event,
+the picture proved both her immediate making and her
+ultimate undoing. The advertising she got out of the
+fact that her living, breathing likeness had been painted
+into the most talked-about picture at the spring <i>Salon</i>
+of the <i>Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts</i> doubled and
+trebled her salary several times in the course of the next
+year. But it was also a reproduction of that same picture
+in a Vienna art journal that was directly responsible
+for luring to Paris the young Serbian ex-prince who
+chopped the girl to pieces with a curved Arabian scimitar&mdash;a
+part of her dancing toggery&mdash;as she was dressing to
+go on at a gala night of <i>Aïda</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It had been my original intention to paint Rona issuing
+from the companionway, just as Allen had seen her
+rush out on the morning Bell died. This, however, was
+far from meeting with the approval of Keeora (that was
+what she called herself at the time; it was only in her
+hey-day that she was known as Kismeta), who insisted
+upon breaking in full length or not at all. I was so
+sodden with absinthe by this time, so sick of the whole
+job, so anxious to get quit of it for good, that I raised no
+objections. The flighty thing proposed a sort of near-aerial
+posture on the deck-house that was something like
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page274" id="page274"></a>[pg&nbsp;274]</span>
+a cross between the wing-footed Mercury and one of
+Puck&#39;s getaways in Midsummer Night&#39;s Dream. Rather
+than lose the girl outright, I let her have her own way.
+Steadied by two or three convenient guy-wires and
+puffing contentedly at one of my hemp-doped cigarettes,
+she held her painful pose with a fortitude truly Oriental.
+I can see yet the queer little heart-shaped pucker that
+dented the muscle-knotted calf of her leg when she swung
+up to the tips of her toes.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I fancy it must have been a certain appeal the audacious
+minx made to my physical senses that prodded
+on my flagging energies. Everything that was left in
+me I devoted to making her absurd conception effective
+on its own account. To make it so as an integral part
+of the picture was, of course, out of the question. It is
+still a matter of a good deal of wonder to me that I
+succeeded as well as I did. The pirouetting figure on
+the <i>Cora&#39;s</i> deck-house might just as well have symbolized
+<i>Peter Pan</i>, or <i>The Spirit of Spring</i>, as <i>Rona Rampant</i>;
+but the fact remained that it was exceedingly pleasing
+to the eye. In this connection I thought an American
+tourist&mdash;from somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line
+by his accent&mdash;expressed himself rather well. I overheard
+the remark on my first and only visit to the <i>Salon</i>.
+&quot;If that little filly doan leave off kickin&#39; up so neah them
+buck niggahs,&quot; he drawled, &quot;things ah suah fixin&#39; fo&#39; a
+lynchin&#39; pa&#39;ty. By cracky, if she doan look good enuf
+to eat!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was &quot;them big buck niggahs&quot; that were responsible
+for bringing my labours to a sudden end. I had managed
+to round up a half-dozen hulking Senegambians
+from the docks at Havre to pose for my plague-stricken
+Solomon Islanders, and for the first two or three days
+things went very well. I was striving for a sort of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page275" id="page275"></a>[pg&nbsp;275]</span>
+Doré-esque effect, by painting a tangled bunch of blacks
+writhing in the half-light of the shadowed waist of the
+schooner. The lazy brutes found lolling round on the
+studio floor a deal more congenial work than humping
+cotton bales, and I was getting on very encouragingly
+considering my wretched condition, when one of the
+prying rascals, taking advantage of a moment when my
+back was turned, turned down a corner of the patch that
+hid the face of the man lashed to the wheel. What
+damage was wrought was inflicted on such flimsy furniture
+as chanced to be in a direct line of flight from the
+&quot;models&#39; throne&quot; to the door. Fortunately, the canvas
+was well to one side. The Senegalese, it seems, have a
+raw, red terror of the &quot;Evil Eye.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That little episode brought to an end my work with
+models. I simply blocked in my plague-stricken blacks
+in a rough sort of way and let it go at that. The effect
+was hardly as crude as one would think. The remark of
+the Southern gentleman I have quoted proved that a man
+not unfamiliar with niggers could at least distinguish of
+what the tangle in the waist was intended to be made up.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I have definite recollection of only one further occasion
+on which I tried to work. The interval in which
+I had anything approximating command of my normal
+faculties had dwindled to a half-hour or so in the afternoon,
+and I quickly found that I was utterly unable to
+concentrate my mind sufficiently for connected effort
+even then. On the occasion I have mentioned, I knocked
+off dead after discovering that I was trying to decorate
+Keeora&#39;s brow with the wreath of maiden&#39;s hair fern that
+had crowned the aviating &quot;Green Lady&quot; in her flight of
+the night before. I chucked in my hand complete after
+that, and had the whole monkey-show packed off to
+the Selection Committee. As might have been expected,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page276" id="page276"></a>[pg&nbsp;276]</span>
+the picture nearly caused a riot in that temperamental
+bunch of &quot;pickers,&quot; but, in the end, The Face won the
+day with them, just as it did with the public.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Of the furore created by &quot;<i>Hell&#39;s Hatches</i>&quot; in the
+<i>Salon</i> it will hardly be necessary for me to write. Most
+of the excitement it stirred up was traceable to the haunting
+horror of the face of the wretch tied to the wheel; the
+rest was due to its name, which only suggested itself to
+me at the last moment. Perhaps the fact that everyone
+was baffled from the outset in trying to discover the
+<i>motif</i> of the bizarre thing also contributed to the impulse
+of the whirlpool of morbid curiosity with which it was
+engulfed. And who could blame them for failing to
+discover any connection between a tied-up maniac, a
+hunched-up drunkard, a kicking-up dancer and a bunch
+of tangled-up niggers? The avalanche of surmises would
+have been highly diverting had not my sense of humour
+already fallen a victim to the apathy that was rapidly
+settling upon my mind and body.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">My outstanding recollection of the whole affair is of a
+highly effective by-play staged by that keen little publicist,
+Keeora, who had become a bit piqued over the
+slowness of the Press to broadcast the identity of the
+lady dancing on the deck-house. Utterly indifferent, I
+had avoided the <i>Grand Palais</i> not only on the opening
+day of the <i>Salon</i>, but also during the week that followed,
+when it was reported that the <i>Avenue Alexander III</i> was
+at times blocked with the throngs striving to get within
+sight of the most intriguing picture shown in years.
+My telephone was disconnected; telegrams and letters by
+the stacks lay unopened; a pile of newspapers were
+unread. Growing more sullen and sodden day by day, I
+had eyes for nothing but the green bottle at my elbow
+and the constantly replenished glass of cracked ice by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page277" id="page277"></a>[pg&nbsp;277]</span>
+its side. All the rest of the world was one soft, verdant
+tunnel&mdash;nothing else. I had been drinking steadily for
+days, afraid to face the reaction that must inevitably
+follow the first break in the continuity of the flow of
+the life-saving trickle of green.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In a way, I suppose, it is Keeora I have to thank for
+the fact that, when I finally left my room in the <i>Continental</i>,
+it was to be headed for the <i>Grand Palais</i> instead
+of to <i>La Morgue</i>. I am quite convinced that nothing
+short of the violent eruption of hysteria that soulful
+lady brought off outside my door would have induced me
+to open it, and probably no one else in Paris could have
+been equal to just that kind of an outburst. In passionate
+French-Cockney, Keeora told how, after failing
+for days to reach me by &#39;phone and telegraph, she had at
+last come in person to bear me to the <i>Salon</i> to share with
+her our common triumph. That didn&#39;t move me greatly,
+but when she swore that she was going to stay until she
+&quot;jolly well croaked, G&#39;bly&#39;me,&quot; unless I let her in, something
+inside of my head snapped and I gave way. (I
+always was like that with hysterical women.) When I
+opened the door I discovered that she was dressed in
+some Mogul princess sort of a rigout, and accompanied by
+an Italian <i>Marchesa</i> and two or three lesser satellites.
+Between them and my valet they got me dressed and
+down to a waiting carriage.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">To get away from the mob at the main entrance, they
+took me around to the <i>Avenue d&#39;Antin</i> side of the <i>Grand
+Palais</i>, where Keeora pointed out with glee that the <i>Salon</i>
+of the <i>Société des Artistes Français</i>, which had opened a
+week or two previous to that of the <i>Beaux-Arts</i> outfit,
+was almost deserted. &quot;<i>Et tout, mon cher Monseer W&#39;itney,
+por raison de&mdash;de la grand success de &#39;Aykootillys
+don fur.&#39;</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page278" id="page278"></a>[pg&nbsp;278]</span>
+&quot;And what might they be?&quot; I asked dully, rather
+fancying some new sort of epidemic had broken out.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Madame means to say &#39;<i>Ecoutilles d&#39;Enfer</i>,&#39;&quot; began
+the <i>Marchesa</i> politely; &quot;eet&mdash;eet ees&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Eat your bloomin&#39; &#39;at!&quot; cut in the lady impatiently,
+indignant that anyone could be so stupid as to have her
+Parisian interpreted to him. &quot;Don&#39;t you twig me, old
+cock? That&#39;s wot them French Jo&#39;nnys calls &#39;Ell&#39;s
+&#39;Atches.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The picture was extremely well hung, both for position
+and light; though whether this had come about as a
+consequence of a reshuffle after it had turned out to be
+the main drawing card, I did not learn. There was a
+roped-off area in front of it, and through this a number
+of perspiring attendants were feeding the crowd, working
+hard with tongue and hand to keep the chattering
+line in motion. Keeora called my attention to a woman
+who had fainted and was being carried out on a stretcher.
+&quot;Bowls &#39;em over just like that right along,&quot; she giggled.
+&quot;Six of &#39;em squealed and keeled back just w&#39;ile I was
+&#39;angin&#39; on &#39;ere yustidy. But it ain&#39;t <i>me</i> wot gets &#39;em,&quot;
+she hastened to explain; &quot;it&#39;s that crazy bloke at the
+w&#39;eel, wiv &#39;is bloomin&#39; eyes borin&#39; right through your
+chest an&#39; raspin&#39; up an&#39; down your spine. Don&#39;t see
+wot you wanted to put <i>&#39;im</i> in for any&#39;ow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At a word from Keeora&#39;s sedulous satellites, the attendants
+opened up a line through the mob and cleared
+a space in front of the picture. Then, assuring herself
+with a critically comprehensive glance that the setting
+was all correct, she rushed in, threw her arms around
+my neck, kissed me smackingly on both cheeks, French-fashion,
+and began declaiming in her best Parisio-Whitechapel
+how I had earned her undying gratitude
+and affection (<i>mon amours eternel</i>) in making her the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page279" id="page279"></a>[pg&nbsp;279]</span>
+central figure in the greatest work of art of modern
+times. It was all extremely well done&mdash;from Keeora&#39;s
+standpoint, that is. She had a solid phalanx of reporters
+massed in the background, as a consequence of which,
+after the next morning, there was no chance for anyone
+to remain longer in ignorance of the fact that the nymph
+hot-footing around the coamings of &quot;Hell&#39;s Hatches&quot;
+was Keeora of the <i>Comique</i>. The following Saturday the
+management came round voluntarily to her hotel with
+a new contract worth several thousand francs a week to
+their rising <i>danseuse orientale</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">For myself, groggy in head and knees as I was, the
+experience was rather trying. Breaking away from her
+stranglehold at the first opportunity, I told Keeora to
+keep her &quot;eternel amours&quot; for those who wanted them,
+and bolted. There was some pretence at pursuit, but,
+with the real magnet drawing in the other direction, I
+finally managed to elbow clear. Hailing a cab in the
+<i>Champs-Elysées</i>, I returned to my hotel.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But the interruption, as I have said, was a fortunate
+one. It checked my downward slide dangerously near
+the point where a crash was due. I was far from being
+out of the woods yet, but the interval of comparative
+lucidity had given me enough courage to try to pull up.
+Unloading all the firearms I had about my suite and
+giving them to my man, I told him to go away for the
+night and not to return until noon of the following day.
+Then, as restrainedly as I could, I drank during the
+first three or four hours of the evening, before allowing
+myself to go to sleep. The crisis&mdash;the dread reaction I
+had feared to face&mdash;I knew would come on awakening
+in the morning. It arrived on schedule&mdash;two hours of
+teetering on the edge of hell and cursing myself for putting
+the guns beyond my reach. Even with the <i>absintheteur&#39;s</i>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page280" id="page280"></a>[pg&nbsp;280]</span>
+<i>notorious</i> dread of cold steel, I fingered
+Hartley Allen&#39;s Portuguese throwing-knife a long time
+before mustering up the courage to drop it out of the
+street window. That gave me a new idea, and I held
+lengthy debate with myself about following the knife to
+the pavement. If I had been on the fourth floor instead
+of the second, I might have tried it. As it was, fifteen
+feet to a glass marquee didn&#39;t look good enough. But at
+last I won through&mdash;just. It was a sorry looking figure
+that shivered back at me from the mirror after I had got
+up my nerve to ring for a pot of black coffee at seven;
+but I was off the toboggan, at any rate, with my face set
+unflinchingly toward the one place in the world where I
+felt there was at least a fighting chance for me to pull
+up again. I had arrived at the end of the day of which
+I had dreamed so long&mdash;&quot;My Day,&quot; I had called it.
+Paris had come fawning to my feet&mdash;and brought me
+Dead Sea Fruit. I was going back to work out my own
+salvation in the Islands.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had a rather trying time of it, getting packed up
+and away on such short notice; but I simply did what
+I could and let the rest go. Putting Paris behind me was
+the thing. It took all that was in me to do it, but I
+caught the Brindisi Express from the P.L.M. station that
+night.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">My last act before leaving the hotel was to sign a
+paper brought there by a well-known art dealer, with
+whom I had talked by &#39;phone earlier in the day. It
+authorized him to sell to the highest bidder a painting
+in oil known by the name of &quot;Hell&#39;s Hatches,&quot; delivery
+to be made immediately after the closing of the spring
+<i>Salon</i> of the <i>Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts</i>. It also
+provided that he should receive a liberal commission for
+his services. It must have been something like a month
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page281" id="page281"></a>[pg&nbsp;281]</span>
+later that he collected ten per cent. on three hundred
+thousand <i>francs</i> less about five hundred paid some
+second-rate artist for executing a slight alteration in
+one of the figures. It was a petty Sultan from Morocco
+(high card with Keeora at the moment) to whom the picture
+was knocked down after a spirited run of bidding
+with an Irish distiller and a Chicago soap-maker. The
+buyer&#39;s only condition was that the man lashed to the
+wheel should be changed to a <i>burnoused</i> Arab. That would
+tend to give the picture an atmosphere more in keeping
+with his desert palace, he said; also, he wanted the
+<i>efrangi&#39;s</i> face covered up. The eyes made him jumpy.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page282" id="page282"></a>[pg&nbsp;282]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX<br />
+<small>AFTER ALL</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">I had</span> not planned by what route I should go to the
+South Seas, and it was only because an Orient-Pacific
+liner chanced to be the most convenient connection
+at Brindisi that I went by Australia instead of by India
+and Singapore. I was rather glad, on the whole, that I
+was going to have an opportunity to learn something at
+first-hand of Hartley Allen&mdash;or, Sir Hartley, as he had
+become since I left Australia. That much I had been
+able to gather from an item I had read in <i>The Times</i>
+shortly after my arrival in Paris. This stated that Sir
+James Allen, Bart., Agent in London for New South
+Wales, had just died of pneumonia. Being without male
+issue, it was understood that the title would pass to his
+younger brother, formerly a well-known racing man,
+and more recently in the public eye through his heroic
+action in navigating a labour schooner full of plague-stricken
+blacks through the Great Barrier Reef to
+Queensland.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Nothing was said in the local item of the outrage
+aboard the <i>Cora Andrews</i>, but the day following a
+dispatch from Sydney stated that Sir Hartley Allen was
+recovering his health and strength at a sanitarium in the
+interior, from which, however, it was not expected that
+he would be in a condition to be discharged for several
+months. The shock to his nervous system from the mysterious
+attack upon him in Townsville three months
+previously had been so great that only time could obliterate
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page283" id="page283"></a>[pg&nbsp;283]</span>
+the traces of it. He had not yet been allowed to
+see any of his old friends, but the correspondent affirmed
+on good authority that Sir Hartley&#39;s reason, so long
+despaired of, had been fully regained.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">From the fact that the attack was still spoken of as
+&quot;mysterious,&quot; I took it that Allen, for some reason of
+his own, had refrained from revealing the identity of
+the person who had left him to die lashed to the wheel
+of the <i>Cora</i>. What that reason might be, was one of the
+things I hoped to learn when I should see him in Australia.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Hartley Allen was still in a sanitarium in the Blue
+Mountains, I learned on my arrival in Sydney, but of
+late there had been little news of him. He was believed
+to be getting stronger, slowly but surely, though no hope
+was held out that he would appear in the saddle again
+for at least another season. It was unlikely that I would
+be permitted to see him, but there would be no harm
+in trying. I should, of course, communicate with his
+physicians, not with Allen himself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">By a lucky chance, in wiring the head of the institution
+where Allen was under treatment, I stated that I
+was a former friend of his from the Islands. A reply
+arrived the same day, telling me to come on at my earliest
+convenience. The eminent nerve specialist in charge of
+the case drove down to meet me at the train. It was
+very fortunate indeed, he said, that I had mentioned
+in my telegram that I had known Sir Hartley during his
+residence in Melanesia. He had failed, very stupidly,
+to recognize my name as that of the famous artist who
+was about to paint Sir Hartley&#39;s picture when the attack
+upon him occurred. As a consequence, he was about to
+wire a refusal to my application, when he recalled that
+news from the Islands was the one thing in which his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page284" id="page284"></a>[pg&nbsp;284]</span>
+patient had shown any great interest. Accordingly,
+he had asked Sir Hartley himself if he cared to see a
+certain Roger Whitney, lately arrived in Sydney. The
+eager interest manifested by his patient was the most
+encouraging symptom the latter had shown since his
+mind had cleared. If I would carefully refrain from
+introducing any subject calculated to excite Sir Hartley
+nervously, he was confident that my visit would be productive
+of nothing but good. It was even possible,
+should it prove convenient to me, that he would want me
+to remain for several days. Sir Hartley was quite
+sound in brain and body. What he needed was increased
+vigour of both, and to this end he would have to develop
+a greater interest in living than he had yet
+shown. It was just possible there was something on his
+mind....</p>
+
+<p class="indent">After leaving my coat and bag in the reception-room,
+the doctor led me out across a bright solarium. We
+would find Sir Hartley out of doors, he said, probably
+playing polo. He seemed to hate the very thought of
+having a roof over him, even to sleep under. It was a
+strange sight that met my eyes as we came round the
+corner of the veranda. In the shade of a grove of blue-gums
+and stringy-barks a wooden horse had been erected,
+saddled with a light pigskin, and provided with snaffle
+and curb reins running back from the angling bit of
+board that served as &quot;head.&quot; Astride the saddle, in
+the famous short-stirruped &quot;Slant&quot; Allen seat, booted,
+spurred, and in immaculate whites, slashing smartly at
+grass-stained and dented bamboo-root balls that were
+alternately tossed in and chivied by a pair of bare-footed
+youngsters, was a familiar figure. Save for the
+white hair (which I had already seen) and the absence
+of the former coat of tan, he did not, from a distance,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page285" id="page285"></a>[pg&nbsp;285]</span>
+appear greatly changed. It was not until his eyes met
+mine at close range that I was conscious of the weary
+listlessness which, like a bed of ashes, smothered the
+coals of his old fire.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen had just poked away the first of two successively
+thrown balls in a sweet-running dribble, and
+sliced off the other in a sharp-angling &quot;belly cross,&quot;
+when he raised his eyes and caught sight of the doctor
+and me coming down the steps. Swinging a bit uncertainly
+out of the saddle, he came toddling in a swaying
+childlike trot across the grass. His grip was firmer than
+I had expected, and the thought flashed through my
+mind that this was the very first time I had ever shaken
+hands with him.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I&#39;ve been wondering when you were going to turn up,
+Whitney,&quot; he exclaimed eagerly. &quot;There&#39;s something
+I&#39;ve been waiting to talk to you about.&quot; He spoke in
+generalities while the doctor lingered, saying that he
+had given up his old idea of returning to the Islands,
+and that, instead, he was hoping to get away before long
+to a back-blocks station he owned and ride the boundaries
+for a year or two. But when the specialist, evidently
+assured that his experiment was getting under way
+properly, quietly excused himself, Allen led me over to
+the wooden horse and launched at once into a subject
+which had doubtless occupied his mind for many days.
+From ancient habit he leaned, as he spoke, now on the
+hollow pigskin of his &quot;pony,&quot; now on the flexible Malacca
+handle of his polo mallet.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;You&#39;re the only man in the world I can talk to about
+this now, Whitney,&quot; he said with a queer new quaver of
+weakness in his voice. &quot;I suppose that&#39;s because you&#39;re
+the only person I ever talked to about it&mdash;before. I take
+it, Whitney, that you had no great difficulty in making
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page286" id="page286"></a>[pg&nbsp;286]</span>
+up your mind as to who was responsible for&mdash;for my
+night of contemplation on the <i>Cora</i>?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Well,&quot; I began evasively, &quot;I had such grave doubts
+about Ranga&#39;s guilt that I went to some little trouble
+to get him away. Mostly old &#39;Choppy&#39; Tancred&#39;s work,
+though.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Good old &#39;Choppy&#39;!&quot; said Allen with an appreciative
+grin; &quot;on hand at the right time as usual.&quot; Then,
+with serious interest: &quot;But the girl&mdash;how did she manage
+to get clear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Just turned up and helped herself to a place in the
+launch I was sending Ranga off in,&quot; I replied, a bit
+worried at my failure to lead the conversation away from
+subjects &quot;calculated to excite Sir Hartley nervously.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;And you were also convinced of <i>her</i> innocence, I
+suppose,&quot; he said, eyeing me with a strange smile across
+the leather-bound handle of his mallet.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;On the contrary,&quot; I answered; &quot;I knew that she was
+guilty. I had taken your throwing-knife away from her
+the same night. I knew that Ranga was quite innocent,
+even though the police, through a silly ball-up,
+tracked him down with their dogs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Then why did you let the girl go?&quot; he pressed.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Because I thought I knew Rona well enough,&quot; I replied
+evenly, &quot;to feel sure that she wouldn&#39;t have done&mdash;what
+she did, unless she was convinced in her own mind
+that she had a good reason for it.&quot; It was a stiff jolt
+for a sick man, that; yet, for the life of me, I couldn&#39;t
+have made an evasive answer.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But there was a smile of untold relief on Allen&#39;s face
+as he leaned over and laid his hand on my arm. &quot;You
+were right, Whitney,&quot; he said in a voice that trembled
+with the depth of its fervour. &quot;You were right. She
+<i>did</i> have good reason. I ought to have seen it all along.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page287" id="page287"></a>[pg&nbsp;287]</span>
+&quot;I don&#39;t quite understand,&quot; I said, greatly puzzled.
+&quot;Do you mean that all you told me about your&mdash;your
+having nothing to do with Bell&#39;s death was not true?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Not at all,&quot; he replied, with unexpected vigour.
+&quot;Everything that I told you that afternoon at the <i>Australia</i>
+was true&mdash;according to my understanding of the
+moment, I mean. But later my understanding broadened
+a bit, you must know. A chap doesn&#39;t spend a night
+tied up alone with the spirits of three or four white
+men, and Gawd knows how many blacks, without coming
+to comprehend some things that have eluded him before.
+I didn&#39;t go all the way off my chump till well along
+toward morning, you see; and I was broadening my
+understanding all the time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I was never able to make out,&quot; I remarked somewhat
+irrelevantly, &quot;how the girl managed to get the best
+of you the way she did.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Oh, that,&quot; he said lightly, in a voice that indicated
+he rated it as a negligible incidental to the &quot;broader
+understanding&quot; that had come to him as a consequence.
+&quot;Well, I suppose you have a right to know if you are
+interested in that phase of the affair. I simply got
+tired of holding out against the girl, that was all. Her
+relentlessness wore me down. It was not long after our
+return to Townsville that I realized that her picture
+stunt was only a blind. She counted on it to get me
+away to the schooner, where she could finish me off on
+the scene of&mdash;of my offence. I won&#39;t need to tell you
+that hit me jolly hard. Training out Yusuf and making
+a clean-up for Doc Oakes&#39; mission with him helped
+while it lasted; but I gave up as soon as that was over
+and there was nothing to do but wait and brood. Since
+I knew she&#39;d have her way in the end, I told myself that
+the sooner it was over the better. That was the reason
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page288" id="page288"></a>[pg&nbsp;288]</span>
+I finally consented to go off to the schooner with her when
+she waylaid me on the north road, the day after I paid
+you my last visit.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;She must have planned the whole thing in advance
+for the place at which she intercepted me was at the
+point where the road ran nearest to the wreck of the
+<i>Cora</i>. As it was low tide, we were able to walk on the
+sand to within fifty yards of the heeling hulk. Careless
+of consequences as I was, I readily enough consented
+to her suggestion that I wade the remainder of the way,
+carrying her in my arms. For the rest, it was more or
+less of repetition of her little coup at Kai. She pinched
+the knife from my belt while I was wading out with her,
+keeping it carefully out of sight while we were walking
+round the deck of the schooner. I missed it presently,
+but thought it had fallen from its sheath while I was
+clambering over the side. Leaning over to look for the
+knife in the water, I felt the point of it on my neck.
+Same old place&mdash;just over the jugular. Trick she
+learned from the Malays.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I told her to hurry up and get the job over. She
+coolly replied that this wasn&#39;t the place she had had in
+mind for it, and would I mind coming aft to the cockpit?
+Confident that she knew how to do the thing with
+decency and dispatch, and heartily glad to get life&#39;s fitful
+dream over anyhow, I went. Just like a lamb to the
+slaughter, Whitney. It sounds foolish, but I assure you
+that&#39;s just the way it happened. The idea was so fixed
+in my mind that a plain every-day throat-cutting was all
+she was figuring on, that I let her get three or four
+hitches of the log-line around my shoulders before it
+occurred to me that she might have a few refinements in
+pickle. I started to put up a fight at that, trying to
+force her to use the knife straightaway. Do you think
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page289" id="page289"></a>[pg&nbsp;289]</span>
+she would do it? No fear. She wouldn&#39;t deviate from
+her set program by a hair. Rather than risk having
+the joint jolted into my jugular so that I would bleed
+to death quickly and painlessly, she dropped the knife
+and used both hands on the log-line. We had a hell of a
+tussle, Whitney, but she wore me down. Those three or
+four well-thrown hitches she had to start with were
+too much of a handicap.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;When she finally had me bound fast, she sat down
+on the rail of the cockpit to recover her breath. I tried
+to argue with her, pointing out the certainty that I
+would be seen and rescued in the morning if she left me
+as I was; whereas, if she would cut my throat then and
+there, it would finish things for good and all. I also
+reminded her that dead men tell no tales; that she would
+be much less likely to get into trouble herself if there
+was no one to bear witness against her. (Fancy a man
+having to rack his brain for arguments like that, just to
+get his throat cut, Whitney.) The girl admitted the
+soundness of my contentions, but declared she was willing
+to run all the extra risk for the sake of cleaning up
+the job &#39;good an&#39; propa.&#39; (One of Bell&#39;s expressions,
+that, wasn&#39;t it?)</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Then&mdash;I must have begun losing my nerve a bit, I
+think&mdash;I told her I had never yet been able to twig why
+she had a grudge against me at all; said I&#39;d only done
+for Bell what I&#39;d be jolly glad to have another man do
+for me under similar circumstances, and probably a lot
+more twaddle along the same line. She listened for a
+while, as though she rather enjoyed hearing me rattle on
+in that vein. Then she got up and disappeared down the
+half-open companionway. When she came back on deck
+she had an empty whisky bottle in her hand, probably
+one of a stack left in my cabin. This, with some effort
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page290" id="page290"></a>[pg&nbsp;290]</span>
+on her part and much to my further discomfort, she
+wriggled under the lashings about my chest until she
+seemed satisfied it was held securely. Then, binding a
+filthy gag of oakum in my mouth, she stood off and
+looked me over critically. &#39;I the-enk you will twe-ig
+ver-ee much pu-retty soon, Mista &quot;Slan&#39;,&quot;&#39; she finally
+chirruped with a knowing nod of her head. Without
+once looking back, she stepped to the side, jumped over,
+and waded ashore. I never saw her again&mdash;in the flesh,
+I mean. It took a deal of squirming to shake that bottle
+out. The satisfaction of hearing it break when it hit the
+deck was the only comforting thing that happened in
+the whole night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;And you say that you understand why she did it?&mdash;that
+you believe she was justified?&quot; I exclaimed incredulously,
+shuddering at the horror of a cold-blooded
+cruelty that even Allen&#39;s deliberately matter-of-fact recital
+could not obscure.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Most assuredly,&quot; he replied with an enigmatic smile.
+&quot;I&#39;m just a bit surprised that you don&#39;t see it yourself,
+Whitney. It seems to me that a chap like you ought
+not to miss a point like that. But then, you haven&#39;t had
+a night alone on the <i>Cora Andrews</i> to broaden your
+understanding like I have.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;What was it?&quot; I asked bluntly, completely mystified
+and not a little awed.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Just this,&quot; he answered, growing suddenly serious.
+&quot;That bottle I shoved along to Bell the night he died had
+been partly emptied&mdash;by me, of course. Well, the first
+thought that entered the girl&#39;s head, when she came
+across it on the deck near his body, was that he had been
+drinking from it. In spite of all my assurances to the
+contrary, it seems that she was never able to rid her
+mind of that idea. That was&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page291" id="page291"></a>[pg&nbsp;291]</span>
+&quot;But couldn&#39;t she see <i>why</i> you offered him the
+whisky?&quot; I interrupted. &quot;What if he did drink some
+of it? She must have known it was the one thing that
+would have saved his life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Ah, that is just where you miss the point, Whitney,&quot;
+he cried. &quot;And that was just where I always missed it
+until&mdash;she showed me the way to a broader understanding.
+Don&#39;t you see that Rona realized that keeping away
+from whisky, as he had sworn he would, had come to
+mean more to Bell than even a new lease on life? Well,
+she did. But, even so, one would hardly have expected
+her to fall in with the idea. And yet, don&#39;t her actions
+prove that she even did that? Whitney, I&#39;ve never come
+across anything comparable to the straight physical passion
+of those two for each other. And, if anything, hers
+was the hotter flame of the two. There must have been
+something of the impetuousness of her rages in her loving,&mdash;for....
+Well, the most maddening of all the
+thoughts I tried so long to stifle in Kai was the one that
+those frequent welts and abrasions appearing on Bell&#39;s
+neck and cheeks and arms were not from the bites of
+no-nos or mosquitoes. And yet, loving his body like that,
+she loved his soul enough more to be willing to give up
+the body that the soul might pass in peace. It was because
+she thought I had intervened to destroy that peace
+of soul, Whitney, that she&mdash;well, the effect of it was to
+pave the way to my broader understanding.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE END</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Woods &amp; Sons, Ltd., Printers, London, N. 1.</span></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<div class="tnote">
+<h2>Transcriber Notes:</h2>
+
+<p class="indent">Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of
+the speakers. Those words were retained as-is.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Errors in punctuation and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected
+unless otherwise noted.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 34, &quot;dispayed&quot; was replaced with &quot;displayed&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 67, &quot;skin-kicking&quot; was replaced with &quot;shin-kicking&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 74, an apostrophe was added in &#39;Slan&#39;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 102, &quot;Ulupua&quot; was replaced with &quot;Utupua&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 159, a period was added after &quot;he was going through&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 176, &quot;its&quot; was replaced with &quot;it&#39;s&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 188, a quotation mark was added before &quot;On the off chance&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 203, &quot;at the botton&quot; was replaced with &quot;at the bottom&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 205, &quot;twentyfive&quot; was replaced with &quot;twenty-five&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 233, &quot;back of the easel&quot; was replaced with &quot;back off the easel&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 238, &quot;in no may&quot; was replaced with &quot;in no way&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 241, &quot;ejaculted&quot; was replaced with &quot;ejaculated&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 246, &quot;Marbare&quot; was replaced with &quot;Mambare&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 282, &quot;firsthand&quot; was replaced with &quot;first-hand&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 285, &quot;listnessness&quot; was replaced with &quot;listlessness&quot;.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44632 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #44632 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44632)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hell's Hatches, by Lewis Ransome Freeman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Hell's Hatches
+
+Author: Lewis Ransome Freeman
+
+Release Date: January 9, 2014 [EBook #44632]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HELL'S HATCHES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Bergquist, Ernest Schaal, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             HELL'S HATCHES
+
+
+
+
+                              NEW FICTION
+
+
+    THE CURTAIN
+        _By Alexander Macfarlan_
+
+    THE SYRENS
+        _By Dot Allan_
+
+    OLD MAN'S YOUTH
+        _By William de Morgan_
+
+    THE PURPLE HEIGHTS
+        _By M. C. Oemler_
+
+    HAGAR'S HOARD
+        _By George Kibbe Turner_
+
+    THE VILLA OF THE PEACOCK
+        _By Richard Dehan_
+
+    IN CHANCERY
+        _By John Galsworthy_
+
+    SNOW OVER ELDEN
+        _By Thomas Moult_
+
+    EUDOCIA
+        _By Eden Phillpotts_
+
+                        LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+                        21, Bedford Street, W.C. 2
+
+
+
+
+                             HELL'S HATCHES
+
+
+                                   BY
+                            LEWIS R. FREEMAN
+             Author of "In the Tracks of the Trades," etc.
+
+
+                          [Illustration: 1921]
+
+                       LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+    CHAPTER                                                     PAGE
+
+          I A REPUTATION QUESTIONED                                1
+
+         II HARD-BIT DERELICTS                                    10
+
+        III THE GIRL HERSELF                                      25
+
+         IV "SLANT" ALLEN RETIRES AGAIN                           38
+
+          V A SHIP OF DEATH                                       50
+
+         VI COMPULSORY VOLUNTEERING                               65
+
+        VII RONA COMES ABOARD                                     80
+
+       VIII I LEAVE THE ISLAND                                    93
+
+         IX A GRIM TALE OF THE SEA                               106
+
+          X ART AND SUSPENSE                                     124
+
+         XI A HERO'S HOMECOMING                                  142
+
+        XII A BAD MAN'S PLEA                                     180
+
+       XIII THE SCENE OF THE FINAL DRAMA                         193
+
+        XIV HELL'S HATCHES OFF                                   206
+
+         XV THE FACE                                             220
+
+        XVI A SUDDEN VISITOR                                     231
+
+       XVII DOWN THE FLUME                                       255
+
+      XVIII THE MASTERPIECE                                      268
+
+        XIX AFTER ALL                                            282
+
+
+
+
+                             HELL'S HATCHES
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+
+                        A REPUTATION QUESTIONED
+
+
+"Slant" Allen and I, between us, had been monopolizing a good share of
+the feature space in the Queensland and New South Wales papers for a
+week or more--he as "the Hero-Ticket-of-Leave-Man" and I as "the gifted
+Franco-American painter whose brilliant South Sea marines have taken the
+Australian art world by storm"--and now that it was definitely reported
+that he had left Brisbane on his way to connect with the reception the
+boyhood home from which he had been shipped in disgrace five years
+before had prepared for him, I knew it was but a matter of hours before
+he would be doing me the honour of a call.
+
+He simply _had_ to see me, I figured; that was all there was to it: for
+with Bell and the girl dead (that much seemed certain, both from the
+newspaper accounts of the affair and from what I had been able to pick
+up in the few minutes I had been ashore during the stop of my southbound
+packet at Townsville) I was the only living person who knew _he_ was not
+the hero of the astonishing _Cora Andrews_ affair, the audacious daring
+and almost sublime courage characterizing which had touched the
+imagination of the whole world; that, far from having _volunteered_ to
+navigate a shipload of plague-stricken blacks through some hundreds of
+miles of the worst reef-beset--and likewise the most ill-charted--waters
+of the Seven Seas on the off chance of saving the lives of perhaps one
+in ten of them, he had been brought off and forced to mount the gangway
+of that ill-fated schooner at the point of a knife in the hands of a
+slender slip of a Kanaka girl.
+
+To be sure, two or three of the blacks who were hanging over the rail at
+the end of that accursed afternoon may have been among the survivors
+(for it could have been only the strongest of them that had been able to
+fight their way up to the air when Bell chopped open the hatches they
+had been battened under ever since the _Cora's_ officers had succumbed
+who knows how many hours before); but, even so, their rolling, bloodshot
+eyes could have fixed on nothing to have led them to believe that the
+greasy shawl of Chinese embroidery the girl appeared to have thrown
+affectionately over the shoulder of the belated passenger in the leaking
+outrigger concealed the diminutive Malay _kris_ whose point she was
+pressing into the fleshy part of his neck above the jugular.
+
+No, there could be no doubt that I was all that stood between "Slant"
+Allen, "Ticket-of-Leavester," beachcomber, black-birder, pearl-pirate
+and (more or less incidentally to all of the foregoing) murderer, and
+the Hon. Hartley Allen, second son of the late James Allen, Bart.,
+racing man, polo player and once the greatest gentleman jockey on the
+Australian turf. Pardon for the comparative peccadilloes--a "pulled"
+horse or two, a money fraud in connection with a "sweep," and the rather
+rough treatment of a chorus girl, who had foolishly asked for "time to
+consider" his proposal that she come to him _at once_ from the
+Queensland stockman who was only just finishing refurnishing her George
+Street flat--which, cumulatively, had been responsible for his being
+packed off to "The Islands," was already assured, and it looked as
+though more was to come--that his "spectacular and self-sacrificing
+heroism" was going to wipe out the unpleasant memories that had barred
+him from sporting and social circles even before the law stepped in. A
+sporting writer in that morning's _Herald_ had speculated as to whether
+or not he would be seen again riding "Number 1" for the unbeaten
+"Boomerang" Four, with whom he had qualified for his handicap of "8,"
+still standing as the highest ever given an Australian polo player; and
+the racing column of the latest _Bulletin_ had devoted a good part of
+its restricted space to a discussion of the possibility that the weight
+he had put on in his years of "easy life in 'The Islands'" might force
+him to confine his riding to steeplechases. Of the record which had made
+the name of "Slant" Allen a byword for all that was desperate and
+devilish from Port Moresby to Papeete, from Yap to Suva, little seemed
+to be known and nothing at all was said. But then, that old
+beach-combers' maxim to the effect that "What a man does in 'The
+Islands' don't figure in St. Peter's 'dope sheet,'" was one from which
+even I myself had been wont to extract no little solace.
+
+With nothing but my fever-wracked and absinthe-soaked (I may as well
+confess at the outset that I was "in the grip of the green" at this
+time) anatomy standing between, on the one hand, and Allen more
+despicable than even I, who was fairly familiar with the lurid swath he
+had cut across Polynesia, had ever dreamed he could be, and, on the
+other hand, an Allen who might easily become more the idol of sporting
+(which is, of course, the real) Australia than he had ever been at the
+zenith of his meteoric career as a turfman and athlete, it was plain
+enough that he would not--nay, could not--ignore for long my presence in
+a city that was standing on tiptoe to acclaim him as a native son whose
+deed had done it honour in the eyes of the world. It was something like
+that the _Telegraph_ had it, I believe.
+
+Where a word from me (and Allen would know that my friendship for Bell,
+to say nothing of the girl, would impel me to speak it in my own good
+time) would dash him from the heights to depths which even he had not
+yet sounded--there were degrees of treachery which "The Islands"
+themselves would not stand for--it was only to be expected that a man of
+his stamp would make some well-thought-out move calculated to impose
+both immediate and eventual silence upon me. If we were still "north of
+twenty-two" I would have had no doubt what form that "move" would take,
+and even here in the heart of the Antipodean metropolis--well, that I
+was leaving no unnecessary loop-holes of attack open was attested by the
+fact that I was awaiting his coming wearing a roomy old shooting jacket,
+in the wide pockets of which a man's fingers could work both freely and
+unobtrusively. I had shot away a good half-dozen patch pockets from that
+old jacket in practising "unostentatious self-defence," and when a man
+gets to a point where he can spatter a sea-slug at five paces from his
+hip he really hasn't a great deal to fear from the frontal attack of
+anyone--or anything--that hunts by daylight.
+
+Yes, though I hardly expected to have to shoot Allen, at least on this
+first showdown, I was quite prepared to do so if he gave me any excuse
+at all for it; indeed, I may as well admit that I was going to be
+disappointed if he did not furnish me such an excuse. There need be
+nothing on my conscience, that was sure, for, if the fellow had had his
+deserts according to civilized law, he would have been put out of the
+way something like twenty times already. I had heard him make that boast
+himself one night in Kai, just before he went under Jackson's table as a
+consequence of trying to toss off three-fingers of "Three Star" for
+every man he claimed to have killed. Moreover, I had a sort of a feeling
+that old Bell would have liked to have seen his score evened up that
+way, for he, more than almost anyone I could recall, had marvelled at
+what he called the tricks I had tucked away in my "starboard trigger
+pocket." But--I may as well own it--my principal reason for hoping for a
+decisive showdown straightaway was that I felt sure I could see my way
+through an affair of that kind, even with so cool and resourceful a hand
+as I knew Allen to be. As an absinthe drinker, what I dreaded was to
+have the crisis postponed, knowing all the while that during only about
+from four to six hours of the twenty-four would I be fit in mind or body
+to oppose a child, let alone a man who, for five years and among as
+desperate a lot of cut-throats as the South Pacific had ever known, had
+lived up to his boast that he drew the line at no act under heaven to
+gain his end.
+
+It had struck me as just a bit providential that Allen almost certainly
+would be coming to see me in the early afternoon--the very time at
+which, physically and mentally, I would be best prepared for him. It
+varies somewhat with different addicts of the drug, but with me the
+"hour of strength"--the interval of the swinging back of the pendulum,
+when all the faculties are as much above normal as they have been below
+it during the preceding interval of depression--was mid-afternoon. From
+about ten in the morning I was just about my natural self--just about at
+the turn of the tide between weakness and strength--for three or four
+hours; but from about three to five, when the renewed cravings began to
+stir and it had long been my custom to pour my first thin trickle of
+green into the cracked ice, I was preternaturally alive in hand and
+brain. The rigorous restriction of my painting to these brief hours of
+physical and spiritual exaltation must share with my colours the credit
+for the fact that I had already done work that was to win me a niche
+distinctively my own as a painter of tropical marines. How much
+absinthe--or the reaction from absinthe--had to do with my earlier
+successes was conclusively proven by the way my work at first fell off
+when those colourful years I was later to spend with the incomparable
+Huntley Rivers in the Samoas and Marquesas began to bring me back
+manhood of mind and body and to rid me--I trust for good and all--of the
+curse saddled upon me in my student days in Paris. But that is neither
+here nor there as regards the present story.
+
+I had ascertained that Allen's train was to arrive from Brisbane at ten
+in the morning, and that he was to be taken directly from the station to
+the Town Hall to receive the "Freedom of the City." Then, out of
+consideration for the fact "that the hero" (as the _Herald_ had it) was
+"still far from recovered from the terrible hardships he had endured as
+a consequence of his unparalleled self-sacrifice," the remainder of the
+day was to be left at his disposal to rest in. The further program--in
+which His Excellency the Governor-General himself was to take
+part--would be arranged only after the personal desires of the "modest
+hero" had been consulted.
+
+A 'phone to the gallery where my Exhibition was on--or an inquiry of
+almost anyone connected with the show at the Town Hall, for that
+matter--would apprise Allen that I was staying at the _Australia_, and
+there I knew he would come direct the moment he could shake himself free
+from his entertainers. Someone was to take him off to lunch, to be sure,
+but--especially as it was reported that he was already dieting to get
+back to riding weight--I felt sure this would not detain him long. "It
+will be about three," I told myself, and left word at the office that
+any man asking for me around that hour should be brought straight to my
+rooms without further question. I also 'phoned Lady X---- and begged off
+from showing her and a party of friends from Government House my
+pictures at four, as I had promised a couple of days previously. Being
+borne off to the inevitable and interminable Australian afternoon
+teas--or to anything else I could not easily shake myself free from very
+shortly after five--was one of the worst ordeals incident to the spell
+of lionizing that had set in for me from the day of my arrival in
+Sydney. What did I care for Sydney, anyhow? Paris was my goal--gay,
+cynical, heartless Paris, who took or rejected what her lovers laid at
+her feet only as it stirred, or failed to stir, her jaded pulses, asking
+not how it was made or what it had cost. Paris! To bring that languid
+beauty fawning to my own feet for a day--even for an hour, my
+hour--_that_ would be something worth living--or dying--for. For many
+years I had been telling myself that (between three and five in the
+afternoon, of course) and now--quite aside from my nocturnal flights
+there on the wings of the "Green Lady"--it seemed that the end so long
+striven for was almost in sight.
+
+I lunched lightly--a planked red snapper and a couple of alligator
+pears--in my room, and toward two o'clock (to be well on the safe side)
+slipped into the old hunting jacket I have mentioned, and was ready;
+just that--ready. My nerves were absolutely steady. The hand holding the
+palette knife with which (to kill the passing minutes) I began daubing
+pigments upon a rough rectangle of blotched canvas on an easel in the
+embrasure of the windows, might have adjusted the hair-spring of my
+wrist-watch, and the beat of my heart was slow and strong and steady
+like the throb of the engines of a liner in mid-ocean. If either hand or
+nerve inclined more one way than the other, it was toward relaxation
+rather than tenseness. Tenseness--with a man who has himself in hand--is
+for the moment of action, not for the interval of waiting which precedes
+it. My whole feeling was that of complete _adequacy;_ but then, the
+sensation was no new one to me--at that time of day.
+
+Exhausting the gobs of variegated colour on my palette, I went to a
+table in the bathroom and started chipping the delicately tinted linings
+from the contents of a packing case of assorted sea shells, confining my
+attentions for the moment to a species of bivalve whose refulgent inner
+surface had caught and held the lambent liquid gold of sunshine that had
+filtered through five fathoms of limpid sea-water to reach the coral
+caverns where it had grown. Powdering the coruscant scalings in a
+mortar, I screened them from time to time, carefully noting the
+gradations of colour--ranging from soft fawn to scintillant saffron--as
+the more indurated particles stood out the longer against the friction
+of the pestle. At this time, I might explain, I was in the tentative
+stage of my experimentation to evolve and perfect a greater variety of
+media than had hitherto been available with which to express in colour
+the interminable moods of sea and sky and sunshine. The value of my
+contribution to art--not yet complete after five years--will have to be
+judged when I pass it on to my contemporaries and posterity. Of the part
+these colours played in my later and more permanent success (to
+differentiate it from the spectacular but transient spell of fame upon
+the threshold of which I stood at the moment of which I write), I can
+only say that had I been confined to the pigments with which my
+predecessors had been forced to express themselves, I should never have
+risen above the rating of a second or third class dauber of sea-scapes.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+
+                           HARD-BIT DERELICTS
+
+
+With Allen and his coming in the back of my brain, it was only natural
+that my thoughts, as I ground and sifted and sorted the golden powders,
+should turn to Kai and the train of events leading up to the ghastly
+tragedy of the _Cora Andrews_, so distorted a version of which had gone
+abroad as a consequence of the fact that Allen was alive and Bell was
+dead, and that I, so far, had not told what I knew of the circumstances
+under which the one and the other had been induced to board the stricken
+"black-birder."
+
+It must have been, I reflected, its comparative remoteness from all of
+even the least-sailed of the South Pacific trade routes that was
+responsible for making Kai Atoll, a barely perceptible smudge on the
+chart of the Louisiades, the unofficial rendezvous for the most
+picturesque lot of cut-throats, blackguards and beachcombers that "The
+Islands" had known since the days of "Bully" Hayes and his care-free
+contemporaries. Like had attracted like after the original nucleus
+gathered, safety had come with numbers, and at the time of my arrival no
+man whose misdeeds had not made him important enough to send a gunboat
+after needed to depart from that secure haven except of his own free
+will.
+
+Among a score of hard-bit derelicts whose grinning or scowling phizzes
+flashed up in memory at the thought of that sun-baked loop of coral,
+with its rag-tag of wind-whipped coco palms and its crescent of zinc and
+thatch-roofed shacks, only three--or four including myself--occupied my
+mind for the moment. Allen--reckless daredevil that he was--had come to
+Kai from somewhere in the Solomons for the very good and sufficient
+reason that it was the only island south of the Line at the time where
+his welcome would not have been either too hot or too cold to suit his
+fastidious taste. Bell had come, in a stove-in whaleboat, because Kai
+was the nearest settlement to the point where he put the _Flying
+Scud_--the trading schooner that was his last command, if we except the
+_Cora Andrews_--aground on Tuka-tuva Reef. The girl, who arrived with
+Bell in the whaleboat, came because he brought her. The tide-rips of Kai
+passage and the Devil's own toboggan were all the same to Rona--at this
+stage of the game, at least--so long as the big, quiet, masterful Yankee
+was bumping-the-bumps with her. And even afterwards--but let that
+transpire.
+
+I, Roger Whitney, artist, formerly of New York and Paris, and, latterly,
+man-about-the French-colonies, with no fixed abode, had been landed at
+Kai by a French gunboat from the Noumea station. I packed myself off
+from that accursed hole because the suicide of a couple of officers in
+whose company I had been drinking absinthe at the _Cercle Militaire_ for
+some weeks had reminded me altogether too poignantly of what I might, in
+the ordinary course of things, expect to be doing myself before long. A
+change of scene and, if possible, a modification of habits was the only
+hope. I would never have had the initiative to tackle even the first had
+not the feeling persisted that I was on the verge of doing something
+worth while with my painting. I went to Kai because the archipelago
+thereabouts was reputed to have the most gorgeous sky and water
+colouring in Polynesia.
+
+Neither the promised beauties nor the reputed badness of Kai stirred me
+greatly in anticipation. With a bitter smile I told myself that every
+night I was seeing sights more lovely than anything my eyes were likely
+to rest on short of Paradise, while the Chamber of Horrors in which I
+awoke every morning was a veritable annex to the Inferno itself. No, it
+was out of the question that Kai could unfold in realities, whether to
+delight or shock, things to outdo those that were already mine in dreams
+that had themselves become more real than realities. Well, it turned out
+that I was only half right, or wrong, whichever way you want to put it.
+While, on the one hand, I found the bluff, open badness of Kai rather
+more refreshing than shocking; on the other hand, it was hardly more
+than a week before I was ready to swear that not the most ethereal houri
+that ever laid her cool green hand upon my fevered brow was of a class
+to run one-two-three with a flame-quivering slip of a nymph whom I had
+surprised at her bath in a beryline pool inside the windward reef. I
+began to pull myself together from that hour. Rona, the very sight of
+whom threw most men out of hand, had quite the opposite effect upon me.
+I knew she was not for me, and the thought that the world actually held
+such loveliness in the form of flesh and blood had a sort of reassurance
+about it, like the knowledge that one has an ample income from
+government bonds.
+
+Because I had landed from the _Zelee_, and also, perhaps on account of
+my rig-out (especially the brimless Algerian sun-helmet), the "beach" of
+Kai put me down at once as a "We-we," and, therefore, a creature quite
+apart. The only Frenchmen on the island were a couple of escapes from
+the convict settlement of New Caledonia, and because neither of them
+could ride or shoot or fight with their fists, they had no standing with
+the predominant Australian "push," most of whom were more or less handy
+at all three. It was, indeed, the fact that, in spite of all my years in
+Paris and the French colonies had done to make a physical wreck of me, I
+still retained something of the quickness of eye and hand and foot which
+had conspired to make my Harvard record as an all-round-athlete one that
+only two or three men have equalled even down to the present day, that
+gave me such easy sledding in making my way with the "best people" of
+Kai.
+
+It took just three minutes--the length of the first round of the
+"friendly bout" I fought with "Heifer" Halligan, ex-welter-weight
+champion of Victoria, at Jackson's pub one afternoon--to change Kai's
+openly expressed contempt for me to something very near respect. I
+thoroughly appreciated the attitude of that breezy lot of sport-loving
+rascals toward a Frenchified Yankee artist, especially one that did not
+appear to be a fugitive from justice, and so took the first opportunity
+to win a standing with them which would at least incline them to let me
+go my own way when I wanted to. Notwithstanding my wretched condition, I
+outpointed my chunky opponent a good three to one in that opening round;
+indeed, the "Heifer's" excuse for the foul which put me to sleep in the
+Second was that both his "bloomin' peepers" were so nearly swelled shut
+he couldn't see "stryght." But it was my swelling groin and battered
+hands, rather than "Heifer's" bruised optics, that came in for first
+attention from deft-fingered Doc Wyndham--once of Guy's, on his own
+admission. The next day I was waited upon by a delegation sent from
+"Jackson's Sporting Club" to urge me to put myself in training for a
+go-to-the-finish with "Shark-mouth" Kelly of Suva, the Fiji open champ.
+My speed would dazzle a cow-footed dolt like "Shark-mouth" was, they
+said, and he would be easy picking for me. They further urged that we
+could clean up all the loose money west of the "Hundred and
+Eightieth"--what odds would Fiji not give in backing a fourteen-stone
+stoker against an artist that only weighed ten stone and looked half
+dished with the "green" besides? Moreover, I could keep the whole purse
+for myself; all they wanted out of it was the sport. God bless the
+scalawags, it was more than half true, that last.
+
+The funny thing about it was that the project actually tempted me at the
+time, principally, I think, because there seemed a chance that the hard
+exercise of training--the very thing, indeed, that helped work the
+miracle a few years later--might effect me at least a temporary
+separation, if not a permanent divorce, from the "Green Lady." I was
+still temporizing with "delegations" when the _Cora Andrews_ dropped her
+hook in Kai Lagoon and gave us something else to think about.
+
+If the little cunning I had left with my fists won me the respect of the
+"beach," it remained for my proficiency with the revolver--something
+which I had never allowed myself to grow rusty in--to give me real
+prestige. My father had been only less famous as a pistol shot than as a
+builder of steel bridges, and from my birth it had been his dream that I
+should carry on the tradition in both lines. If it had broken the old
+boy's heart when I turned my back on engineering for art--insisting on
+going from Harvard to Beaux Arts instead of to Boston "Tec" as he had
+planned--he at least had nothing to complain of on the score of my
+aptitude for the revolver. He admitted that I had bred true in hand and
+eye, even on the day that he called my "art tomfoolery" a throwback from
+my French grandmother. I have always thought that the one circumstance
+which prevented the Governor from cutting me off in his will when he
+finally had definite proofs of the depths to which I had sunk in Paris,
+was the fact that, on my last visit to the old home on the Hudson, I had
+beaten him, shot for shot, with his own pistols, and at his favourite
+distance.
+
+They were rather free with their gun play during my first fortnight at
+Kai, each little affair having been followed by one or two more or less
+ceremonious burials in the coral-walled cemetery on the south lip of the
+windward passage. It was merely as a precautionary measure--on the off
+chance that they should be tempted to draw me into something of the kind
+at a time when I might not be quite on edge for it--that I took early
+opportunity to uncover a trifle of what I had crooked in my
+trigger-finger. A casually winged gull or two, and a few plugged pennies
+(not a miss at the latter, luckily, even when they tried to spin them
+edge on to my line of fire) effected all that was necessary. After that,
+though they were continually sending for me to come down to Jackson's
+and shoot the wire off champagne corks (fizz, loot of some kind, was the
+freest flowing drink on the island at the time), or perform some other
+equally useful and spectacular gun stunt, not the roughest of the gang
+but took the most meticulous care not to press his invitation the
+instant it sank home to him that my mood of the moment wasn't of a kind
+calculated to blend smoothly with the free and easy spirit of a
+beach-combers' carousal.
+
+It was hardly to be expected that they would ever quite understand why a
+man who could "blot out a cove's blinker as easy wiv his fist as wiv his
+gun" (as I was told that "Reefer" Ogiston, penal absentee and pearler,
+put it one day) and who "'peared mo' than comfitabl' heeled fo' coin,"
+should be "light an' looney enuf tu go roun' smearin' smashed barnculs
+on sail cloth"; and yet it was on that very score--or at least to their
+quick comprehension of what I was driving at in my pictures--that the
+"beach" of Kai rendered me a priceless service. Almost from the outset
+they began to "twig" my marines, to feel the living atmosphere I was
+striving to paint into them. They were all men who had lived by the sea,
+on the sea; yes, and not a few of them had worked under the sea. Well,
+when I began to see those deep-set, wrinkle-clutched eyes squint to a
+focus of concentration, and, presently, the quick heave of a hairy chest
+as the message of the canvas flashed home, I knew that I was on the
+right track. Nothing less than that would have given me the courage to
+go on working, as I had set myself to do, on a steadily decreasing
+allowance of absinthe, a certain supply of which, of course, I had
+brought with me from Noumea.
+
+So much for me and my relations to Kai at the time of which I am
+writing. Now as to Bell....
+
+"Who is that tall, square-jawed chap who looks as though he was not
+quite sober?" I had asked a day or two after I landed.
+
+"Yank--calls himself Bell," Jackson replied laconically; adding that he
+was "not quite sober" when he tried to take a cross-cut over Tuka-tuva
+Reef with the _Flying Scud_, that he was "not quite sober" when he hit
+the beach in a busted whaleboat, that he had been "not quite sober" all
+the time since, and that there was no doubt that he would still be "not
+quite sober" when the time came for him to leave the island, whether he
+went out with the tide in an outrigger canoe or shuffled off up the
+Golden Stairs. "Allus been pickled and allus goin' to be pickled,"
+Jackson continued; then, qualifyingly: "Course I don't know he was
+pickled when he kum int' the world, but I'm willin' to lay any odds that
+he'll be pickled when he shuffles out of it."
+
+Just about all of which was, or proved to be, "stryght dope."
+
+After quoting this terse summing of Jackson's, it may sound a little
+strange when I say that Bell was a gentleman--not _had been_, understand
+(that could have been said with some truth about a dozen or more of us
+at Kai), but _was_ a gentleman. Though undeniably never "quite sober,"
+the fact remained that no one on the island had ever seen him "quite
+drunk." And no matter how much liquor he had stowed "under hatches," no
+one could say that it interfered either with his trim or his navigation.
+His even rolling gait was always the same, whether it was the glow of
+his eye-opening plunge at dawn that lighted his face, or the flush of
+twelve hours of steady tippling that darkened it at twilight. Nor was he
+ever known to omit that gravely courteous, almost "old-fashioned," bow
+which, with the flicker of smile that was more of his eyes than his
+mouth, was the invariable greeting he bestowed upon friend and stranger
+alike. The mellow drawl of his "It's suah goin' to be a fine mawnin',"
+had made it easier for me to weather dawns that--in my inflamed
+imagination--menaced monstrously in jagged lines like a cubist's
+nightmare. If drink had any effect on his speech, it was to incline him
+to reserve rather than garrulity. His temper appeared to be under quite
+as perfect control as his legs. Even when he broke "Red" Logan's jaw
+with a swift short-arm jolt the time that sanguine Lochinvar tried to
+nip Rona off his arm as they passed on the beach in the twilight, they
+said that Bell hardly raised his voice as he "guessed that'd hold the
+varmit fo' a while." And when, a few days later, Doc Wyndham told him
+with a grin that "Red" wouldn't be screwing a diving helmet on his block
+for some weeks to come, it was said there was real regret in the
+Yankee's voice as he hoped that the injury wouldn't be "pumanant."
+
+Yes, before I had been a week at Kai I felt that there was a little
+addition I could safely make to Jackson's comprehensive estimate. I knew
+that Bell had been born a gentleman, and--whatever lapses there may have
+been, or might be--I knew he was going to die a gentleman. And that also
+(had I put it on record) would have proved pretty nearly "stryght dope."
+
+What stumped me at first was trying to reconcile the remarkable control
+Bell maintained over all his faculties in spite of his hard drinking
+with the fact (apparently fully authenticated) that he had run
+aground--through drunkenness--every ship he had ever commanded,
+beginning with a U. S. gunboat. He cleared up that matter for me himself
+one afternoon, however, by casually observing--at the moment he chanced
+to be watching me trying to transfer to canvas the riot of opalescence
+between the _lapis lazuli_ of the barely submerged reef and the deep
+indigo where a hundred fathoms of brine threw back the reflection of the
+sinister core of cumulo-nimbus in the heart of a menacing squall--that
+the sea had always acted as a tremendous stimulant to him, especially
+when he trod a deck.
+
+"If I could just have managed to cut out the whisky at sea, all would
+have been smooth sailin'," he said in his deep rich Southern drawl. "On
+land--heah ... anywheah--kawn jooce is lak food to me; mah body convuts
+it into ene'gy just lak an engine does coal. But with a schoonah kickin'
+undah me--we'ell, I guess theah's just one kick too many, something lak
+mixin' drinks p'raps. It suah elevates me good an' plenty ... and when I
+come down theah's natchaly some crash. My ship an' I gen'aly strike
+bottom at about the same time. But, s'elp me Gawd" (a tensing _timbre_
+in his voice) "on mah next command--"
+
+It was the one sure sign that Bell was beginning to feel the kick of his
+"kawn jooce" when he spoke of his "next command." Unless that kick was
+beginning to carry a pretty weighty jolt behind it he knew just as well
+as everyone else on the beach did that he would never get his Master's
+Certificate back again, and that even if he did there was no house from
+Honolulu to Hobart that would trust a ship to a man who had already
+beached a half-dozen.
+
+Kai was glib to the last detail--rig, tonnage, cargo, insurance, owner
+and the like--respecting the several merchant craft Bell had piled up in
+the course of his downward career; but the extent of local "dope" in the
+matter of the gunboat episode was to the effect that it happened "up
+Manila-way," and that "that was the bally smash that started him goin'."
+
+Personally, I took little stock in the naval part of the yarn--that is,
+at first. Then, one morning--it was the day after the tail of a typhoon
+had sucked up the end of Ah Yung's laundry shack and left everyone on
+the beach short of clothes--Bell came out in a suit of immaculate
+_starched_ whites. It was the cut of the jacket and the way he wore it
+that drew and held my puzzled gaze; that its shoulders were "drilled"
+for epaulettes and that its thin pearl buttons barely held in
+buttonholes that had been worked for something thicker and wider I did
+not notice till later. Steady-eyed, lean-jawed, square-shouldered,
+ready-poised--not even a flapping Payta _sombrero_ could quite disguise,
+nor five years of heavy tippling quite obliterate, the marks of type.
+Then I understood why it was that Bell, all but down and out though he
+might be, was, and would remain to the last, a gentleman. There are
+things the Navy puts into a man that not even a court-martial can take
+away.
+
+The only allusion Bell ever made to his remoter past was drawn from him
+a few days later, when--he was watching me paint again--I chanced to
+mention that I had spent a fortnight in the Philippines on my way south
+from Saigon to Australia. Glancing up at the sound of his sharp intake
+of breath, I saw his jaw set over the questions that leapt to the tip of
+his tongue, to relax gradually as a faraway look came into his wide-set
+grey eyes and a wistful smile of reminiscence parted his lips.
+
+"Did you heah the band play on the Luneta in the evenin'?" he asked
+eagerly, "while the _spiggoties_ in their _calesas_ wuh racin' round the
+circle, an' the kiddies an' theyah nusses wuh rompin' on the grass, an'
+the big red sun was goin' down behind Mariveles beyond the bay? An' did
+you know the Ahmy an' Navy Club--not the new one ... the ol' one ovah
+cross the moat inside the wall?"
+
+"Put up there all my time in Manila," I replied. "A very comfy old
+hangout, especially considering what the hotels were."
+
+"An'--did you--" (he gulped once or twice as though the question came
+hard) "did you evah heah them speak at the Club of a chap called Blake
+... Lootenant-Commandah Blake? He was a son of Captain Blake, who helped
+Sampson polish off Cervera, an' a gran'son of Adm'al Blake. Ol' naval
+fam'ly."
+
+"You mean the man who pulled off that coup when Wood was cleaning up the
+crater of Bud Dajo? Some kind of a bluff on his own with one of the
+little old gunboats Dewey captured after the Battle of Manila Bay,
+wasn't it? Scared some Jolo Dato into giving up a bunch of our men he
+already had lined up against a wall to _bolo_, didn't he? Of course, I
+remember perfectly now. General X----" (mentioning the Military Governor
+of Mindanao by name) "told me the yarn himself the night I dined with
+him in Zamboanga. He said no one but an old poker shark would ever have
+thought of the stunt, much less had the nerve to bluff it out.
+Incidentally he mentioned that the chap was the best poker player in the
+Navy, as he was also the speediest baseball pitcher ever graduated from
+Annapolis; that he had been missed almost as much for the one as the
+other since he dropped out of sight several years before. Some
+difficulty about--"
+
+"Tryin' to push Corregidor out of the entrance to Manila Bay with the
+nose of his gunboat," Bell cut in harshly, the hell in his soul glowing
+through his eyes as the glare of the coal-bed welters beyond a stoker's
+lifted furnace flap. That, and a single sob sucked through his
+contracted throat as the vacuum in his chest called for air, were the
+only outward signs of the intensest spasm of throttled emotion I ever
+saw assail a human being. Then the square jaw tightened, the cords of
+the muscular neck drew taut, and what would have been another body and
+soul racking sob was noiselessly absorbed in the buffer of a flexed
+diaphragm. The fires of agony behind the eyes paled and died down like
+an expiring coal. The corrugations of the brow smoothed out as a
+smile--half amused, half wistful--relaxed the set lips. The old
+controlled Bell (I shall continue to call him so) was in the saddle
+again.
+
+"So they still remembah mah ball-playin'," he drawled musingly, his left
+hand digits gently massaging the bulbous swelling remaining after some
+red-hot drive had telescoped the middle finger of his right. "Ye'es, of
+co'se they'd miss mah wing in the Ahmy-Navy game at Ca'nival time. But
+mah pokah--we'ell I reckon a few of 'em did find mah pokah hand about as
+bafflin' as mah baseball ahm. But it was straight deliv'ry, tho'--both
+of 'em. An' they wouldn't be callin' me a fo'-flushah, etha. No, you
+didn't heah any of 'em say that, I'm right suah."
+
+A smile more whimsical than bitter twitched his lips twice or thrice in
+the minute or two he stood alone with his thoughts. "So I've sort o'
+dropped out o' sight to 'em?" he said finally. "We'ell, I guess that was
+about the best thing to happen for all consuned. But, just the same, if
+you evah go back Manila-way I won't be mindin' it if you tell 'em that,
+tho' the ol' wing's tuhn'd to glass from long lack o' limberin', an'
+tho' I don't play pokah down heah fo' feah o' bein' knifed fo' mah luck,
+I'm still hittin' true to fohm in mah own lil' game of alterin' the sea
+map with the noses of ships. I reckon they'll know the reason why."
+
+There was another interval of silence, but, unlike the other, not
+charged, electric. Bell's blow-off through the safety-valve of frank
+speech had taken the peak off the pent-up pressure within, and when he
+spoke again it was merely to quote what the Governor of North Carolina
+had said about its having been a long time between drinks. "Great thust
+aggravateh, the Sou'east Trade." Would I mind--ahem--hiking home with
+him and lubricating my tonsils with a drop of "J. Walkah"? That was
+simply his delicate way of pretending to ignore my slavery to absinthe,
+a habit which not even the most whisky-saturated sot of an Anglo-Saxon
+can ever quite forgive one of his race for falling a victim to. I
+wouldn't? "We'ell, _hasta manyanah_."
+
+With a crunch of coral clinkers under his feet and a stave of "Carry Me
+Back to Ol' Virginny" on his lips, Bell, disdaining the smooth path by
+the beach, swung off through the pandanus scrub on what he called a
+"bee-line for home"! He had a weakness for taking "short-cuts" on land
+as well as at sea. Never again--not even in the moment of his great
+decision--did he lift for me or any other man the "furnace flap" of iron
+reserve that masked the fires of his innermost soul.
+
+Their saving "sense of sport," which was the golden vein in the rough
+iron of the "beach push" of Kai, made it inevitable that they should
+have a substantial sense of respect for a man of Bell's stamp, and this
+might easily have ripened to an active popularity had not the American's
+quiet but inflexible reserve prevented their knowing him better. They
+suspected that he was no novice in handling the big Colt's that was
+flopping on his hip when he landed, they knew that there was a weighty
+punch behind his long arm, and they were frankly outspoken in their
+admiration of the manner in which he stowed and carried his booze. But
+what had impressed them more than anything else was the way in which he
+had taken the devil out of a vicious imp of a Solomon Island pony on the
+beach one morning. "Hellish hard-handed," "Slant" Allen had said, as his
+steel-blue eyes narrowed down to slits in the intensity of his interest
+and admiration; "but a seat like he was screwed to the brute's backbone.
+Old cross-country rider--hundred to one on it. Man in a million in a
+steeplechase on a horse strong enough to carry the weight. Gawd, what a
+seat!"
+
+All in all, indeed, there was only one thing the "beach" held against
+Bell, and that was Rona, or rather his possession of her. There was
+nothing personal in this, of course. They merely regarded the big
+American in the same light they had always regarded a man with a chest
+of pearls or anything else of value that their simple, direct natures
+made them yearn for the possession of. There was this difference,
+however. Where the "push" of Kai would have combined to a man to get
+away with a box of pearls or a cargo of shell, the annexing of a woman
+was essentially a lone-hand game, and--well, Bell was hardly the kind of
+a "one-man job" any of them cared to tackle. I feel practically certain
+that, but for the disturbance of the even tenor of Kai's way incident to
+the _Cora Andrews_ affair, his "rights" in Rona would never have been
+challenged.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+
+                            THE GIRL HERSELF
+
+
+As for the girl herself, words fail me in trying to picture her, just as
+my brush and pencil (save perhaps for that one rough memory sketch, done
+at white heat while still gripped in the exaltation that first glimpse
+of her splashing inside the reef had thrown me into) have always failed.
+This is, I fancy, because, unbelievably beautiful though she was, there
+was still so much of her appeal that was of the spirit rather than the
+flesh--something intangible which had to be sensed rather than seen. She
+was compact of contradictions, physical as well as mental. So slender as
+almost to suggest fragility at a first glance, there was still not a
+straight line, nor an angle, nor a hint of boniness, from the arch of
+her instep to the tips of her ears. Again, pixie-like as she was in the
+dainty perfection of her modelling, there was yet a fairly feral
+suggestion of suppleness and strength underrunning the soft fluency of
+contour. The strength was there, too, held in reserve in the flexible
+frame like the power of a coiled spring. I saw her unleash it one
+morning when, impatient of the slowness of a clumsy Fijian who was
+launching a very sizable dugout for her, she yanked him aside by the
+hair of his fuzzy head and did the job herself. I can still see the run
+of muscles under the olive-silk skin of arm and ankle, and the bent-bow
+arch of her slender back, as she gave a last push to the cranky
+outrigger. Indeed, my mind is full of pictures like that--paddling,
+swimming, leaning hard against the buffets of a passing squall, with a
+lock of wet hair streaking across her glowing face and her drenched
+garments clinging to her lithe limbs; and yet, as I have said, the
+buoyant, flaming spirit of her always escaped my brush and pencil as it
+now eludes portrayal by my pen.
+
+But the most baffling, as it was also the most fascinating, of Rona's
+contradictions was the combination she presented of inward intensity and
+outward calm. The fire of her was, perhaps, the first thing one was
+conscious of. Even I, with my blood thinned and cooled with the ice of
+absinthe, could never watch her movements without a quickening of my
+jaded pulses; to the sanguine combers of Kai the sight of her (whether
+the rippling undulations of arms and shoulders as she drove a canoe
+through the water, or the hawk-like immobility of her as she poised on a
+pinnacle of reef waiting for a chance to cast her little Dyak purse-net)
+was palpably maddening.
+
+So much for the flaming appeal of the girl in action, or suspended
+action, which was, of course, about the only way in which she was ever
+revealed to the "beach." Now picture the same creature (as Bell--and
+occasionally myself, his only intimate friend on the island--so often
+saw her) seated cross-legged on a mat, her sloe-eyes, set slightly
+slant, fixed dreamily on nothingness, like a sort of reincarnated
+girl-Buddha. The sight of her thus never failed to awaken in my nostrils
+the smell of smouldering _yakka_ sticks, and to set my ears ringing with
+the throb of temple bells.
+
+To my hyper-sophisticated (I will not say degenerate) senses this
+Oriental side of the girl made a subtle appeal that was like an
+enchantment. The passion to paint her--always burning within me when I
+saw her in action--never assailed me when she fell into one of those
+contemplative calms. Rather the peace of her soothed me like an opiate
+and made me content to sit and dream myself. It was the one thing (until
+I got the habit by the throat years afterward) that ever held my nerves
+steady when the "absinthe hour" drew near at the end of the afternoon.
+As long as Rona would continue to "sit Buddha" I had myself completely
+in hand, even till well on after sunset. But if she moved, or spoke, or
+even showed by her eyes that she was following Bell's words (it was
+he--less sensitive to this phase of her than I--who did most of the
+talking at these times), the spell was broken. The haste of my bolt for
+home was almost indecent. I have sometimes thought that a few months
+alone with Rona at this time might have effected very near to a complete
+cure in me--by a sort of involuntary mental therapeutic treatment on her
+part, I mean. But perhaps the other side of her--the "unreposeful"
+one--might have complicated the case.
+
+Both the fire and the repose of Rona--the passion and the peace of
+her--were reflected in the olive oval of her face, the one by the full,
+sensuous lips and the sensitive nostrils, and the other by the smooth,
+low brow. The low-lidded blue-black eyes were "debatable territory," now
+in the hands of one, now the other. So, too, that infallible "gauge of
+temperament," whose dial is the pucker between the eyebrows. With Rona,
+this "passion-pressure index" was a corrugated knot of intensity or an
+olive blank according as to whether her inner fires were flaming or
+banked.
+
+Bell knew little of the girl's origin and said less. "Rona's _trousseau_
+consisted of huh peacock sca'f an' this heah baby _bolo_," he said in
+his slow drawl one afternoon when he had borrowed the exquisite little
+dagger to show me how the Jolo _juramentado_ executed his favourite
+belly-ripping stroke; "an' I reckon they'll comprise 'bout the sum total
+of huh mo'nin' at mah fun'ral." That, and "I guess Rona knows no mo'
+'bout mah past reco'd than I do 'bout huhs," was all I recollect his
+ever having said on the subject. He was content to let it rest at that.
+
+It was old Jackson who told me that he had seen the girl at
+Ponape, where she had been brought by an "owl-eyed" (referring to
+horn-spectacles rather than to the almond orbs themselves, I took it)
+"chink" when he came back to the Carolines after buying bird-of-paradise
+skins down New Guinea-way. She was dressed "Java-style" at the time, and
+was said to have been picked up at Ternate or Ambon in the Moluccas.
+Although the wily old Celestial kept the girl practically under lock and
+key from the first, customers of his shop occasionally glimpsed her, and
+she them, it would seem. Among these was the Yankee skipper of the
+trading schooner, _Flying Scud_. The coming together of those two must
+have been like the touching off of a _ku-kui_-nut torch, Jackson opined,
+adding that he supposed I "twigged that thar was no snuffin' uv
+_ku-kui_, onst aflar."
+
+Just how the sequel eventuated no one in Ponape save the old Chinaman
+knew, and he never told. With only half her copra discharged, the _Scud_
+was heard getting under way at midnight, shortly after which the
+silhouette of her, close-reefed, was observed to blot out the moon three
+or four times as she beat out of that "hell's craw" of a passage in the
+teeth of a rising sou'wester. The girl was never seen in the Carolines
+again. Neither was Bell nor the _Scud_, for that matter, as it was but a
+few days later that he attempted his disastrous short-cut across
+Tuka-tuva Reef.
+
+The next morning the Chinaman waited on his customers with his neck
+heavily, obscuringly swathed in bandages. He kept these on for a
+fortnight or more, and when they were finally dispensed with replaced
+his loose shirt with a close-buttoned jacket having an unusually
+high-cut neck. Even the latter, however, could not entirely conceal a
+number of parallel red cicatrices which, beginning on his fat jowls, ran
+down, slightly converging, onto his puffy yellow throat. Jackson felt
+sure that the point where those red furrows came to a focus must have
+been "fairish messed up."
+
+On the beach of Ponape opinion was fairly divided as to whether the big,
+close-mouthed Yank had "strong-armed" the Chinaman and carried off the
+girl bodily, perhaps against her will, or whether she had made the
+get-away unaided, going off to the _Scud_ on her own. In Jackson's mind
+there were no doubts.
+
+"I see them welts wi' my own peepers," he said, "an' they wan't the
+marks uv a man. They wuz _scratches_. That lanky Yank don't scratch ...
+'e _wallops_. But that gal--s'y, did y'u ever tyke a squint at 'er
+taloons? Them's the ans'er. She kum to 'im; an' she's stickin' lika
+oktypus."
+
+Again I must credit old "Jack" with handing me pretty near to the
+"stryght dope."
+
+Yes, I had indeed noticed Rona's wonderful fingernails; likewise the
+astonishing amount of care she lavished on them. One could not have
+helped noticing them. A quarter to half an inch long, meticulously
+manicured, and stained a maroon-brown (rather darker than the rich _sang
+du boeuf_ of _henna_), she was always polishing them--those of one hand
+on the palm of the other--even when "sitting Buddha" with dreaming
+half-closed eyes. I inferred the habit of letting them grow was acquired
+in the course of her association with the Chinese. She cut them just
+short of where they would begin to curl and be a nuisance. A fraction of
+an inch longer, and they would have been as useless as the tusks of an
+old boar that had curved back more than a half circle. As they were....
+
+One man's guess was as good as another's in the matter of Rona's racial
+origin. Kai, though agreeing that she came from "somewhere Java-side,"
+always spoke of her as a Kanaka, just as they did of all the rest of the
+"beach" women who were not palpably Jap, Chinese or white. I doubt very
+much, however, that she had a drop of real Polynesian blood in her
+veins. Flaring with temperament though she was, there was still nothing
+about her of the happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care sensuousness of the
+Caroline or Samoan, the only women of the Islands to whom she bore even
+the faintest resemblance in face or figure. If she had come from
+Marquesas-way--but no, not even an admixture of old Spanish pirate blood
+would have accounted for either the spirit or the body of Rona.
+
+The girl's practice of wearing her _sulu_ (Kai used the Fijian name for
+the inevitable South Sea waist-cloth which the Samoans call _lava-lava_
+and the Tahitians _pareo_) Malay-fashion--looped over the breasts and
+secured by a hitch under the left arm--indicated that her outdoor life
+at least had been spent somewhere in the Insulinde Archipelago. Her very
+considerable English vocabulary, however, and especially her fluency in
+"pidgin," could hardly have been acquired save through some years of
+residence in the Straits Settlements or the Federated Malay States. I
+was inclined to favour Singapore, especially as she had once let slip
+something about a fling at _fan-tan_ at Johore. But even had she been
+born in that amazing island melting pot, her unmistakably Hindu cast of
+features and mould of figure were hardly accounted for. The Madrassi
+Tamils of the Straits were coolies, and Rona radiated _caste_ from her
+slender pink-tipped toes to her crown of indigo-black hair coils.
+
+In my own mind I harboured the theory that the girl was a "by-product"
+of the harem of one of the innumerable petty Sultanates of Malaysia,
+among which I knew were to be found girls of all the tribes and races of
+the Moslem world. In no other way could I account for the flaming spirit
+and the physical perfection of her. Not even descent from that strange
+Hindu remnant of the lovely island of Lombok, just east of Java (a
+theory which I had also turned over in my mind), quite satisfied on both
+these scores. As to what sort of a centrifugal impulse might have
+operated to spin her forth to the clutches of the currents of the
+outside world, I had not speculated very deeply. But--well, I knew
+something of the strange currencies in which Malaysian potentates paid
+their debts to Singapore rug and jewel merchants!
+
+In spite of the increasing warmth of Bell's friendship for me, my way to
+Rona's confidence proved far from easy sledding. This was partly because
+I had got in bad at the outset by starting to sketch that capricious
+lady at her reef-side bath in the face of her very outspoken disapproval
+of anything so unseemly, and partly because she was slow in making up
+her mind that I did not necessarily classify with the predatory males
+against whom her whole life had unquestionably been an unrelieved
+defence. Obsessed by the desire to paint her, I had not improved my
+standing with the girl by asking Bell (after she had refused me
+pointblank) to intercede to get her to sit for me. Indeed, that _faux
+pas_ on my part seemed to have put an end for good to any chance I might
+have had of getting her to pose. Rona was openly indignant that I should
+have presumed to regard her own decision as other than final in the
+matter, while Bell, though perfectly good-natured about it, was no less
+decided in his disapproval.
+
+"No, sah, I'm not fo' it in the least, ol' man," he drawled decisively.
+"Lil' Rona's 'bout the neahest thing to a true, lovin' an' lawful wife I
+evah had, awh evah will have, fo' that mattah. So you must see that it
+doan quite jibe with mah sense o' what is right an' propah unda the
+ci'cumstances fo' me to aid an' abet a proceduah that might culminate in
+huh appeahin' on the wall o' somun's bathroom as a spo'tin nymph awh a
+wallowin' mumaid. Nothin' doin', ol' man; not with mah blessin'."
+
+That ended it, of course. From then on I had to content myself with the
+hopeless "sketches from memory," in not the best of which was I able to
+catch more than a suggestion of what I sought. I could not have failed
+more utterly had I set myself to do a "character portrait" of the "Green
+Lady" herself.
+
+But on the personal side it was not long before I began to make an
+appreciable gain of ground with Rona. First she ceased avoiding me when
+I dropped in for a mid-afternoon yarn with Bell; then she began to
+assume a sort of "benevolent tolerance" by coming and sitting on the mat
+as we talked; finally she started taking an active interest in the
+conversation, coming out of her Buddha-like trances every now and then
+to cut in with some trenchant comment in fluent _bêche-de-mer_ jargon,
+or perhaps a shrewd question phrased in carefully chosen and enunciated
+English.
+
+At last, one memorable afternoon, she came (quite on her own initiative,
+he assured me) with Bell to call at the little thatch-roofed,
+woven-walled hut I was calling home at the time, wearing in honour of
+the occasion her most treasured possession, the "peacock" shawl. It was
+this astonishingly fine piece of Cantonese embroidery which Bell had
+mentioned as having made up, with the little Malay _kris_, the sum total
+of the dower Rona had brought him. It was the first time I had had a
+chance to examine it at close quarters and I saw at a glance that,
+however it had come into her possession, it had once been a priceless
+thing, a real work of art, a treasure fit for the _trousseau_ of a
+princess.
+
+The body of the shawl was amber-coloured silk of so close a weave that
+it would have shed water as it stopped light. A rubber blanket would not
+have thrown a blacker shadow when held against the sun. Yet so sheer and
+fine was the fabric that a twist of it streamed from one hand to the
+other as brandy pours out of a flask. The peacock itself, done in a
+thousand tints and shades of delicate floss, was all of life-size in
+body and something more than that in tail. Stitching and matching,
+stitching and matching--you could almost _see_ the artist growing old
+before your eyes as you thought of the years he must have bent above his
+glacially-growing masterpiece.
+
+With this rainbow-bright rectangle of shimmering silks worn folded over
+the shoulders in the ordinary way the peacock must have been
+considerably telescoped and distorted. It was doubtless for this reason
+that Rona always wore it Malay-fashion, as the Javanese women wear their
+_sarongs_. This displayed the jewel-gay bird in all his pride, the
+bright breast swelling over Rona's own and the coruscant cascade of tail
+(you could almost hear the rustle of it) falling about her limbs like
+the feather mantle of an early Hawaiian queen.
+
+I have said that this shawl _had been_ a priceless thing. As a matter of
+fact it still was such. So lovingly had it been cared for, not only by
+Rona but by the many owners it may well have had before her (for Canton
+had done no such work as this for half a century at least), that not a
+corner was frayed, not a one of its countless thousands of stitches
+started. In texture it was scarcely less perfect than the day it was
+finished. The only thing wrong with it was that the colours were a good
+deal dulled, not by age (for the old Cantonese dyes are as deathless of
+hue as ancient Phoenician glass), but by grease. This had happened, I
+suspected, largely during Rona's stewardship, for the _tiare_-scented
+coco oil she used so freely as a hair-perfume often found its way to her
+arms and shoulders--and so to the shawl. All the latter needed to
+restore it to its pristine freshness and refulgency was a good
+"dry-cleaning."
+
+"Even Rona does not dream of the brilliance of colour under that
+grease," I said to myself. "Oh, for a can of naphtha!" Then the fact
+that my benzine would do the same trick flashed into my mind. I was all
+but out of it, I reflected, with replenishment uncertain; but I could at
+least contrive to spare enough to make a start with. Pouring a teacupful
+of the pungent solvent out of the scant pint I found still on hand, I
+saturated a clean rag with it and, without a word of explanation to the
+girl, walked up to her and started washing the bird's face and hackle.
+For an instant she stiffened angrily, evidently under the impression
+that my solicitude for the embroidery was only a thinly veiled excuse
+for chucking her under the chin. (Indeed, she confessed to me later
+that "gentlemen" could always be counted on to employ such indirect
+methods of approach, and that she found them rather more difficult to
+combat than the straight cave-man stuff of the less sophisticated
+beach-comber). But as the first glad flash of brightening colour caught
+the corner of a suspiciously-lowered eye, the innocence--even the
+laudability--of my purpose shot home to her quick mind. With a twirl of
+thumbs and a twist of shoulders, she came out of the shawl as a golden
+moth spurns its cocoon, and, leaving it in my hand, darted over to a peg
+and purloined an old smoking-jacket to take its place.
+
+"Bath heem good, Whitnee," she chirruped, giving her slipping _sulu_ a
+hitch with one hand as she thrust the other into an arm of the jacket.
+"Makee heem first-chop clean. He too much dirtee long time."
+
+That she lapsed thus into "pidgin" was a sure sign of the girl's
+ecstatic excitement. Usually her English--especially when she had time
+to ponder and polish it in advance, as when she put questions--was much
+better than that.
+
+Sopping gently to avoid pulling the delicate stitches, I managed to
+"bath heem good" from his saucy crest, down over the royal purple
+hackle, and well out upon his comparatively sober-coloured breast before
+my benzine came to an end. A slightly more vigorous dabbing beyond the
+embroidery line "alchemized" a patch of clouded amber to a halo of
+lucent gold, against which the bird's haughtily-held head stood out like
+the profile of a martyred saint on an old stained-glass window. Thus far
+would the precious contents of that teacup go, and no farther.
+
+Rona was in raptures. What though there was a blotchy high- (or rather
+low-) water mark where the dabbing had ceased near the base of the
+erupting splash of tail-feathers, what though the magic liquid had come
+off second best in its bout with an indurated gob of egg-yolk drooling
+across one wing, what though the worst of our Augean labours--the
+cleansing of the mighty green tail--had yet to be tackled--just look at
+the glory already wrought!
+
+Crooning with pleasure, the girl stroked and petted the renovated
+iridescence of the lordly neck--until I called her attention to the fact
+that the still unevaporated benzine was dissolving her finger-nail
+stain. It was an ill-advised remark on my part, for it turned her
+attention to the still unreclaimed tail and set her begging for "just
+nuff fo' one-piecee featha, Whitnee; he need it vehry ba-ad."
+
+She had her way, of course, and would have finished my benzine then and
+there had not Bell come to my rescue. Laughing and muttering something
+about "thustiness" (not drinking whisky myself, I had none in stock), he
+took Rona by the arm and started off on the homeward path. Strutting and
+preening she went, the very reincarnation of the royal bird upon her
+bosom, the very living, breathing spirit of "peacock-iness."
+
+She might just as well have finished the job--or rather the benzine--at
+once, though, for she got it all in the end. Every day or two--sometimes
+with Bell, sometimes alone--she began paying calls. Always she was in
+gala dress and always, after more or less "finessive" preliminaries, she
+made the same plea.
+
+"Just one mo' featha, Whitnee," she would coo ingratiatingly, putting a
+long-nailed finger-tip on the "eye" of the particular quill next in line
+for renovation. "Ple-ese, Whitnee.... 'Peakie' has been one veh-ry good
+fella bird too-dayee. Pu-retty ple'ese, Whitnee."
+
+Of course that always got me, and incidentally the benzine--as long as
+it lasted. I had remarked to Bell once or twice how his soft Southern
+drawl was beginning to creep into Rona's English, and how fetching a
+combination it made with her "pidgin-_bêche-de-mer_" blend. Getting wind
+of this, the sly minx played the card to the limit. That "one mo' fetha,
+Whitnee," had me fated, and she knew it. I was completely out of benzine
+for three weeks, and at a time when I was in especial need of it in
+connection with my experiments in colour-mixing; but Rona's friendship
+was cheap at the price. When I finally got hold of a five-gallon can of
+naphtha from Suva (sent up to Bougainville by Burns, Phillip packet,
+where one of Jackson's cutters picked it up), the dry-cleaning the two
+of us gave old "Peakie" was the best fun I'd had since I used to scrub
+my Newfoundland pup as a kid.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+
+                      "SLANT" ALLEN RETIRES AGAIN
+
+
+Although "Slant" Allen had "retired" to Kai on three or four occasions
+previous to my arrival, his latest sojourn--the one which ended with his
+enforced departure on the _Cora Andrews_--began about a month after I
+took up my residence there. Two questions which Jackson asked of the man
+who told him "Slant" had landed on the beach the night before have
+always struck me as especially illuminative. One was: "Did 'e fetch a
+'awse?" and the other--even more laconic--was: "Gin, Kanak, Jap or
+Chinee this croose?"
+
+And equally illuminative was his comment when told that Allen had come
+across in a catamaran, bringing neither girl nor horse. "Then 'e musta
+sloped in a 'ell uv a rush," said the old trader with finality.
+
+Kai was frankly disappointed that "Slant" had come without his "stable,"
+for the "beach race meets" which had made his name a byword throughout
+the Islands were always productive (it was universally agreed) of no end
+of sport and excitement. Allen, it was claimed, had transported ponies
+about the South Seas by every known craft that plied their waters, from
+a steam packet to a Papuan head-hunting canoe. Once, in Fiji, he had
+even swum a horse across the flooded Rewa in order to get it to Suva in
+time to run for the "Roku's Cup." Of course he won out. "Slant" always
+did that--by hook or by crook--whether with a horse or a woman. Thus
+Kai, in discussing Allen's advent.
+
+It was characteristic of that hard-hit bunch of "gentlemen and
+sportsmen" (a phrase often on the lips of the post-prandial speakers at
+their "race-banquets") that they should hasten to tell me that Allen had
+once owned a Melbourne Cup winner--"came jolly near riding the gelding
+himself, too"--while the fact that he had killed more of his
+fellow-creatures than any man of twice his age in the South Seas was
+only a matter of casual mention. You had to credit the frank minded and
+mouthed rascals for running true to form in that touch of naïveté,
+though. To them the Melbourne Cup was the greatest thing in the world
+beyond any possible comparison: a human life was just about the least.
+But they were quite as careless about their own lives as of those of
+others, and that alone always raised them in my eyes far above the
+pettiness of lesser if more conventionally moral men.
+
+Although there was not a horse on the island at the time of Allen's
+arrival, within a week he had wangled it somehow to have a bunch of
+Solomon ponies brought over from Malaite, and at the end of a fortnight
+had pulled off the first Kai "Grand National." "Slant" called it that,
+he said, because, like the great Liverpool classic from which he
+borrowed the name, it was to be a steeplechase. The half-wild little
+beasts were brought over on the deck of a trading schooner, travelling
+in such restricted quarters in the waist that they had to be thrown and
+held down to let the foreboom go over every time she was put about.
+
+A bit stiff in the knees but uncurbed of spirit, the vicious quartette
+clambered out on the beach, shook off the water soaked up during their
+swim from the schooner, laid back their ears and stood ready to fight
+all-comers with tooth and hoof. As a consequence, naturally, the
+preliminaries of the "Grand National" were more in the character of
+broncho-busting contests than speed trials, and it was in one of these
+that the mighty Bell had won the plaudits and the respect of the "beach"
+by breaking the spirit of a wild-eyed lump of a cayuse which had just
+managed to give the momentarily overconfident "Slant" a nasty spill.
+
+The "Grand National" was run round the curve of the beach, with two
+"water-jumps," the "stonewall" of the quay, and three hurdles in the
+form of old dugout canoes to be negotiated. Bell declined to accept a
+mount, and, in any event, his weight would have told prohibitively
+against him in competition with any one of at least a dozen lighter men,
+all of whom had had more or less actual racing experience.
+
+Allen was the only one to go the full route at the first running of the
+"National," all three of his rivals falling out at the water-jumps. When
+one of the defeated riders limped in and started to attribute "Slant's"
+win to the fact that he had picked the best-broken if not the speediest
+mount, that imperturbable sportsman cheerfully agreed to ride the race
+over mounted on any one of the ponies the judges cared to designate.
+Again he had a walkaway. It was all a matter of sheer horse-mastership;
+the speed of the beast had little to do with it.
+
+Finally, just to prove that the running was all on the square, "Slant"
+rode the race on each of the two remaining ponies, one of which had
+strained a tendon and rasped most of the hide off one side of him in
+trying to jump _through_ the coral blocks of the quay instead of over
+them. We gave the laughing centaur a great ovation when he brought even
+the cripple--dripping blood and sweat it was, but still responsive to
+the magic of the hand that imposed its will at the pressure of a bridle
+rein--under the wire a half-breach-length winner.
+
+And still more wildly we cheered him when "Quill" Partington--a
+broken-down and broken-out (from jail, I mean) newspaper writer, late of
+Melbourne and formerly of Calcutta and London--chivvied up an ancient
+tortoise that Jackson used to keep around his shop as a pet, and,
+mounting "Slant" on the ridge of its shell, offered to back the pair at
+catch-weights against anything on the island. "Quill," a most engaging
+character, was the poet and minstrel of Kai. He did not, however, figure
+in the _Cora Andrews_ affair, save that he later wrote some rather
+spirited verses in celebration of it, or rather of what little he knew
+of it.
+
+If the feeling in Kai had been one of disappointment when it was first
+reported Allen had landed without a horse, that awakened by the still
+more astonishing intelligence that he did not have a girl with him was
+somewhat different--rather more akin to apprehension, it seemed to me.
+"Slant" was no more of a laggard on the love-path than the race-track,
+and the gay gossip of his amazing _amours_ was sipped with the tea of
+effete Apia and Papeete with scarcely less gusto than when it sauced the
+salt-horse of the pearling fleets of Port Darwin and Thursday Island.
+The lightning of his love was likely to strike anywhere, you were told,
+sometimes in the most unexpected places. There was that vixen of a
+_gin_--a straight Australian aboriginal black--whom he had risked his
+life for in cutting across a corner of the "Never-Never" when he ran
+away with her, only to have her turn and knife him later in Deli out of
+jealousy of a half-caste Portugee Timorese who had caught his fickle
+fancy. And--to take the other extreme--there was that little
+golden-haired doll of a niece of the Governor of Fiji, who fell heels
+over head in love with "Slant" after seeing him play polo in Suva, and
+who, when they packed her off for home to break up the disgraceful
+affair, made what was described as a really sincere attempt to go over
+the rail of the Auckland-bound Union packet. Then there was "Slant's"
+affair with that notorious pearl-pirate "Squid" Saunders' girl--the one
+the missionaries adopted and tried to reclaim, and who promised for a
+while to be such a credit to their teaching--with its ghastly sequel.
+And so it went.
+
+It was said that "Slant" boasted of having a son (he never kept track of
+girls, he said) and a saddle in every group west of the "hundred and
+eightieth." I daresay this was true, though those who put it _island_
+instead of group doubtless exaggerated. I had landed at several islands
+myself where I had been unable to borrow a saddle.
+
+Most of the little unpleasantnesses that disturbed the _dolce far
+niente_ atmosphere of Kai had their roots in the fact that the male
+population of the island was always a good jump ahead of the female,
+that there were not, in short, enough girls to go round. Under these
+conditions the advent of so notorious a "feminist" as Allen could not
+but be provocative of a certain anxiety, especially on the part of those
+who were (to use Jackson's terse if inelegant expression) "'arborin'
+'igh-class 'ens."
+
+"Don't you coves make no mistake," Jackson was quoted as saying;
+"'Slant' 'll be tykin' a myte stryght aw'y. Only question is 'oo's myte
+'e's goin' to tyke. If it was any bloke but that squar'-jawed Yank w'at
+'ad 'is grapplin' 'ooks slung into the plumage uv that perky peacock
+pullet, I'd 'ave no doubt w'at bird 'Slant' ud be baggin' an' draggin'
+'ome to broil. But--layin' low as 'e is fer a bit--I'm thinkin' it ain't
+_that_ presarve 'e'll be gunnin' in just yet aw'ile."
+
+"Stryght dope" again from old "Jack." Allen had his own reasons for not
+wishing his presence in Kai to be called too forcibly to the attention
+of the authorities in the British Solomons, where his latest escapade
+(something to do with the forcible recruiting of blacks) came pretty
+near the line where they were likely to ask for a gunboat from the
+Sydney station to aid in bringing him to book. Allen was by no means
+inadept of his fellow men, and he must have known that a showdown with a
+man of Bell's stamp--even though he had the best of it and copped the
+most desirable thing he ever set eyes on for his very own--could hardly
+fail to prove a clash that men would like to talk about, the inspiration
+of a tale that would shudder itself from Yap to Tasmania in delirious
+beach-comber jargon, setting tongues wagging about him at a time when
+publicity was quite the last thing that he wanted.
+
+Pipped as he was by the pullet's pulchritude (his own expression--he
+admitted as much to Jackson offhand) the cool-headed if hot-blooded
+Allen evidently decided to ride a waiting race for at least the first
+half or three-quarters, and so have something to draw on for the
+straightaway. "Easy starter but a hell of a finisher," was the popular
+appraisal of "Slant's" way of winning with a horse, and it was but
+natural that he should pin his faith to similar tactics where a woman
+was in the running. There's a lot in common between the two, and it is
+rarely indeed that a man who has a way with the one comes a cropper with
+the other.
+
+It has occurred to me, too, that a very wholesome respect for Bell as a
+man may have had a good deal to do with Allen's failure to force the
+running at the start in the matter of Rona. The steel of his own hard
+purposefulness could not have but struck sparks on the flint beneath the
+American's mask of suave reserve at their first meeting, and the
+Australian was far too intelligent not to sense that in Bell's Jovian
+spirit there was a force more compelling than anything in his own.
+Moreover, at riding, fighting and shooting--all that carried much weight
+when they judged a man in the Islands--Allen must have known that if the
+balance inclined either way, it was in the American's favour.
+
+It may well have been the sheer rugged, manly forcefulness of Bell that
+gave Allen pause, at least in those early weeks before the Australian's
+infatuation for the girl became an obsession in which his reason had no
+part. For years he had been taking life and property out of downright
+contempt for his victims. "I'm the better man, and therefore the more
+deserving," was sufficient excuse in his own mind for his most
+high-handed outrages. But in Bell--for almost the first time perhaps--he
+had met a man who had an "edge" on him--even his soaring ego could not
+prevent his recognizing that. This must have been plain to him even when
+he measured the Yankee with the yardstick of his own primitive code.
+Yes, I really think that Allen, in his innermost mind, rated Bell as a
+man who, like himself, had a "right" to the best of everything. I am
+even convinced that, for a while at least, he even tried to respect
+Bell's right to Rona.
+
+But do not let me leave the impression that there was one iota of
+physical fear of Bell in this attitude of Allen's. From what I had seen,
+and was to see, of the cool-eyed Antipodean that was unthinkable, even
+though he knew that the powerful ex-athlete could come pretty near to
+staving in his ribs with a single punch, and though he may have
+suspected that the Yankee was the deadlier man on the draw. I honestly
+believe that "Slant" Allen had no fear in his heart of anyone or
+anything under heaven. At that time, I mean; what came to him later is
+another matter.
+
+"Slant" ran true to Jackson's "dope sheet" in the matter of "tykin' a
+myte," though, but it was done quite decently and in order--that is, as
+such things go in the Islands. He put up with "Quill" Partington (an old
+pal) for a fortnight, and then, when "Quill's" lyric spirit led him to
+run over to Malaite in search of a queer native banjo that someone had
+told him the bush niggers of the interior of that island made, strings
+and all, from the wild boar, "Slant" simply stayed on to "look after the
+pigs and chickens" (as he told them at Jackson's) and, incidentally,
+Mary Regan. Mary came from Norfolk Island, and claimed lineal descent
+from the mutineers of the "Bounty." Certainly she looked the part--of a
+descendant of mutineers, I mean. She had specialized in unhappy love
+affairs, and showed it. She had a thin, bony, angular frame, a voice
+like the wail of a cracked fog-horn, and a temper "calid enough for
+cooking purposes," as "Quill" described it. "Quill," who had developed a
+taste for curries and hot seasonings while living in India, claimed that
+the reason he had put up with Mary for so long was because of the saving
+she enabled him to effect in _paprika_.
+
+How "Slant"--straight meat-eating and unpampered of palate as he
+was--hit it off with the mercurial Mary no one seemed to know. At any
+rate, I feel sure that he found her "condimental" disposition useful as
+a counter-irritant against the rising fever of his passion for Rona,
+something which, though he kept it under astonishingly good outward
+control, had been burning with increasing heat from the very first time
+he saw her. He confessed that to me later. Curbed passion, like wounded
+pride, if it cannot find outward expression, bites inward. With all his
+despicable record well in mind, I still cannot help thinking with a
+certain admiration of the game bluff the rascal put up during those six
+or eight weeks that the enchantment of Rona worked within him, of the
+gay, devil-may-care smile that so successfully masked the writhings of
+his racked spirit. First and last, there was something about the
+fellow--I think it must have been his flaming courage--that attracted me
+strongly in spite of all that I knew, and all that I came to hold,
+against him.
+
+Since Kai held no regular intercourse with any of the surrounding
+islands, the news that the plague--a pernicious form of bubonic--had
+broken out and was making terrible ravages among both the bush and
+saltwater niggers of the Solomons was received with no especial interest
+on the beach, save perhaps by those who were wont now and then to take a
+flyer in "black ivory." The labour-recruiting trade--itself almost the
+only medium through which the pest had been spread--was hard hit of
+course; indeed, had there been anything like adequate control of the
+pernicious traffic at this time, it would have been suspended entirely
+until all of the islands from which blacks were being taken, or to which
+they were being returned, were able to present something approximating
+clean bills of health.
+
+Since this was not done, however, the only check on the movement of
+blacks--infected or otherwise--was the possible reluctance of the
+masters of ships engaged in the trade to take the risk of carrying them.
+And since the average black-birding skipper lived as a matter of course
+with a gun in one hand, his life in the other, and the devil's tow-line
+between his teeth, it was hardly to be expected that a little thing like
+the spectre of the "Black Death" looming up on the windward horizon was
+going to make him reef much canvas. The "Black Death" in another form
+would ambush him sooner or later anyhow. With niggers waiting to settle
+accounts with him in every bay it was only a matter of time at the best.
+Why worry about a few cases of a disease that might not kill him even if
+he did get it? Heave in and get under way! That was about the way the
+black-birder looked at it, and he went right on scattering infected
+niggers around the South Seas like a cook stirring raisins into a
+pudding.
+
+But in the secluded and peaceful haven of Kai lagoon they reckoned that
+they had little to fear from the epidemic whatever happened elsewhere.
+Let the plague and the heathen rage for all they cared. They were their
+own quarantine officers, and, until the "Black Death" ceased to stalk in
+the neighbouring islands, "No Visitors" was the order of the day. All
+very simple and efficient--in theory. Covered every possible
+contingency--just about.
+
+I had spent several colourful days once--getting about from island to
+island in the New Hebrides--with red-haired old Mike Grogan on the _Cora
+Andrews_, and had heard from that hard-fisted giant's own lips something
+of the grim balances checked against his life in practically every
+black-birding island of Melanesia. A black's home bay holds a
+labour-recruiting skipper responsible for the man's safe return at the
+end of his contract time, and if he does not come back they figure that
+the only fair way to even up the score is by killing the captain of the
+ship which took him away. Grogan calculated that he would have to be
+killed something like one hundred and forty times to make a clean sheet
+of all the accounts thus reckoned against him. He took a sort of grim
+pleasure in running over the items of the various tallies, but always
+ended with: "B'gorra, the devils'll be gittin' me yit!" He was convinced
+that it would be a "cutting-out" party that would do for him in the end,
+and I have no doubt that he fought over in his mind that final bloody
+showdown every night he stood the "graveyard" watch alone. A sudden
+volley from the bush, his whaleboat caught in a swarming rush of blacks,
+his crew disabled or deserting, and himself alone battling it out
+single-handed with the niggers at the last.... It was something like
+that he expected for a grand finale, and all the "fighting Irish" in him
+yearned for it as a sunflower turns to the setting sun.
+
+"An' it ain't as if I won't be givin' the spalpeens a run for their
+money, me bhoy," he had cried one afternoon, clapping me on the shoulder
+where I swayed with him to the plungings of the _Cora_ in a nasty
+cross-swell. "An', b'gorra, it's a way to die after a man's own
+heart--shootin' an' clubbin' into a mob o' niggers out under God's own
+sky!"
+
+Full as my mind was of other things on that accursed day of which I am
+about to write, I could not help but think of these words when they told
+me at Jackson's that old Mike's fighting spirit had passed on a windless
+midnight, and while Mike himself was jack-knifed over the _Cora's_
+wheel, spitting blood and curses, and imploring the devil to quit tying
+knots in his tortured guts with a red-hot pitchfork.
+
+What little we heard of how things came to go wrong with the _Cora_ in
+the first place fell from the blackening lips of her "Agent" (as the
+recruiter is called), who managed to reach the beach of Kai in a
+whaleboat, and who did not go into a delirium until a half-hour before
+he died that evening. She was packed to the hatches with "return" boys
+from Samoa. Although the plague had been claiming a very heavy toll
+among the Melanesian blacks of the coco plantations of Upolou, Grogan
+decided to take a chance at making the Solomons with a load which, on
+account of the risk, was offered him at double rates. They would have
+made it all right, the Agent thought, had not the southerly gale which
+blew them a long way out of their course been followed by many days of
+calms and alternating winds. Grogan's softness in trying to doctor the
+first case of plague--instead of following the customary practice, cruel
+but effective, of shooting the infected black (doomed anyhow) and
+throwing the body to the sharks--was probably responsible for the
+ghastly sequel. The blacks fell sick by dozens, until at last the
+Skipper--doubtless already in the first throes of the disease
+himself--ordered every living man except the surviving members of the
+crew driven below and battened under hatch. Grogan died that night and
+the mate the following morning.
+
+The only white man remaining was the Agent, and he, obsessed with a
+life-long horror of being buried at sea, steered the best course he
+could for the nearest island. The _Cora_, luckily heading into the
+treacherous reef-beset passage at the turn of the tide, dropped her hook
+in Kai lagoon in the first flush of the dawning of the next day.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V
+
+                            A SHIP OF DEATH
+
+
+With a good many days of my life to which I cannot look back without
+a blush of shame, I write deliberately when I say that the one
+ushered in by the raucous grind of the _Cora Andrews'_ chain running
+through its hawse-pipe as she let go anchor a couple of cables'
+lengths off Kai beach, stands alone in the horror and the painfulness
+of its memories. It is characteristic of all but the most degraded of
+beach-combers--doubtless their general contempt of life has much to do
+with it--that "once in a while" they "can finish in style"; that, on a
+showdown, they are usually there with the goods. I had always felt sure
+that, in a pinch, I could force myself to come through in the same
+way--the thought had gilded many a slough of despond for me. Well, this
+day, I had my chance and funked it--funked it clean, as a yellow dog
+slinks from a fight with its tail between its legs, as an underbred
+hunter refuses a jump. Oh yes, I had an excuse. "Seeing green" is next
+thing to "seeing yellow." Almost anyone knows that. But I had thought
+that there was enough red blood left in me to make it possible for me to
+take the bit in my teeth and finish like a thoroughbred at the last. But
+there was not. That was the thought which had made the ghastly tragedy
+even more tragical to me, which made a mockery of the triumph which I
+might otherwise have felt when, first Australia and then Europe,
+acclaimed me as the greatest marine painter of the decade.
+
+For several days previous to the coming of the _Cora Andrews_ I had
+been slipping up pretty badly on my "absinthe reform" program. It was
+largely the fault, I think, of a positively infernal spell of weather.
+The ozone-laden trade winds, falling light after a spell of low
+barometer, had finally failed altogether. Kai was lapped in sluggish
+moisture-saturated airs that clung like a wet blanket. The Gargantuan
+popcorn-like piles of the trade clouds were replaced by strata of
+miasmic mists which awakened all the latent fevers in a man's body and
+mind. The sea, slatily slick of surface, heaved in oily, indolent
+smoothness, sliding over the reef without sound or foam. The brooding,
+ominous sullenness was all-pervading, oppressive with sinister
+suggestion.
+
+Everyone on the island was drinking heavily, and mostly alone. No tipsy
+choruses boomed out from under the sounding-board of Jackson's
+sheet-iron roof. Even "Slant" Allen failed to appear for his wild
+end-of-the-afternoon dashes up and down the beach. Rona dropped in
+languidly one afternoon to say that Bell was tilting the bottle more
+frequently than she had ever known him to do before, and that for three
+days he had missed his early morning plunge from the reef.
+
+"Too much walkee with Jo'nnee Walkah, Whitnee," she punned in a feeble
+flicker of pleasantry. "I veh-ry much worree along Bel-la."
+
+She needn't have worried, though. _He_, at least, had the stuff in him
+for a proper finish.
+
+It was only to be expected that I should seek solace in a time like this
+by snuggling closer than ever into the enfolding arms of the "Green
+Lady." That fickle jade was at her best--and her worst. Never had she
+winged me to loftier pinnacles of sensuous delight; never had she
+dropped me to profounder depths of horror and despond. The night before
+the _Cora_ came marked a new "high"; also a new "low." I dropped like a
+plummet straight from a pea-green grotto full of lilies of the valley,
+maiden's hair ferns and ambrosia-breathed houri to the fire-scorched
+cliffs ringing the mouth of the Bottomless Pit. I knew that Pit of old.
+Most of the early hours of my mornings for the last five years had been
+spent in trying to keep from being pushed into it.
+
+But this time, though, it looked as if they were going to get away with
+it. Failing to break my grip (I always managed to hang on somehow), they
+had tried new tactics. They were pushing in the side of the Pit itself
+so as to carry me with it. I felt the relentless creeping of the ledge
+on which I struggled to maintain precarious footing. If I could only
+push back into the rock ... through it ... out to the air! Nothing could
+stand against the mighty heave I gave with my shoulders. The cliff
+parted with a great rip-roar of rending, and I reeled back, back,
+straight through--the pandanus siding of my hut. An instant before a
+nigger had knocked off the shackle of the _Cora's_ anchor chain. The
+unchecked run of forty-odd fathoms of rusty iron links through a
+hawse-pipe is very like in sound to the rending of a rocky cliff--that
+is, to a man in an absinthe nightmare.
+
+That violent awakening did not bring me straight back to normal by any
+means. You never come out of the "green horrors" that way, unless, of
+course, you fall into water, or set fire to the house, or do something
+else that calls for instant action. You usually come out by gradual
+stages, each successive one marked by a shade more of the earth-earthy
+than the last.
+
+In this instance my fall only changed the spirit of my nightmare. I was
+by no means out of the woods, either. I had backed away from the Mouth
+of the Pit all right, but what brought that Ship of Death--black and
+sinister she was against the bloody redness of the infernal
+sunrise--unless it was to take me there again? I _knew_ that it was a
+real ship. I _knew_ those black things festooned along its rails were
+real dead men. I _knew_ that the horrible reek which presently came
+pouring in over the oily water to penetrate my contracted nostrils was
+the real smell of rotting flesh. I _knew_ that I was looking out at Kai
+lagoon, and from the door of my own hut. I _knew_ these things, just as
+I _knew_ it was real blood I saw and tasted when I bit my finger to
+prove that I knew them.
+
+But it was still as in a dream that I became aware of an erratically
+rowed whaleboat pulling away from the Death Ship and making for the
+beach. It was with an agreeable sense of relief that I noted that it was
+apparently heading for the quay rather than in my direction. Drawing
+near, it sheered away from the weed-slippery landing and went full-tilt
+for the beach. A man--a big man, bare of legs and of chest, wearing only
+a red _sulu_--ran down to meet it. It seemed no more than a perfectly
+natural development of the ghastly pantomime that the big man should
+raise a revolver and shoot one of the black rowers when the latter
+jumped over the gunwale of the whaleboat and started to bolt up the
+beach. I saw the flash from the revolver, saw the fugitive crumple and
+fall, and the sharp report, impacting on the side of my sheet-iron
+rain-water tank, slammed against my ear-drums with a shattering "whang."
+
+That close-at-hand shot had the effect of shocking me back a notch or
+two more nearer normal; but, nerve-shattered as I always was at the end
+of a night, it was something very akin to the abject terror that gripped
+me as I backed away from the Brink of the Pit which now impelled me to
+"back away" from the new menace. Seizing my painting things from sheer
+force of habit, I slunk off through the long early morning shadows of
+the coco palm boles, not to stop until I came out upon the broken coral
+of the steep-shelving leeward beach of the island. It was as far as I
+could go without swimming.
+
+Here Laku, my Tonga boy, found me toward noon. The coffee from the flask
+he brought was the first thing to pass my lips since I had poured my
+last drink the night before. It steadied me somewhat, but my nerves
+still refused to react. The shock of the morning had been too much for
+them. I realized that Kai had a mighty knotty problem on its hands with
+that shipload of dead and dying niggers in the lagoon (Laku had told me
+it was the _Cora_, and something of what the trouble was), and it took a
+lot of screwing before I got my courage up to a point where I could
+force my reluctant feet to carry me back to shoulder my share of the
+responsibilities.
+
+I was still streaking and dabbing at my canvas at three o'clock, and it
+must have been nearly an hour later before I packed up and started back
+toward the village. I burned that bizarre rectangle of colour-slashed
+canvas on the very first occasion (which was not until a day or two
+later) that I had a chance to stand off and look at it objectively.
+There was revealed in it too much of the utter unmanliness which marked
+my conduct on this most shameful day of my life to make it a pleasant
+thing to have around. For me to have kept it would have been like a
+man's framing and hanging the excoriation of the judge who had sentenced
+him for some despicable crime.
+
+What had transpired in the village up to the moment of my return at the
+end of the afternoon I must set down as I learned of it later.
+Everything considered, it seems to me that Kai--with one or two notable
+exceptions--behaved very creditably in an extremely trying emergency.
+Awakened when the _Cora's_ anchor was let go, a number of men had run
+out to the beach, from where their glasses quickly gave them a pretty
+good idea of the state of affairs aboard the luckless black-birder. Then
+they got together at Jackson's--the lot of them in their pajamas or
+_sulus_, just as they had tumbled out of their sleeping mats--to decide
+what was to be done. The majority at first seemed inclined to stand by
+their predetermined plan of shooting the first, and every man from a
+plague-infested ship that tried to land on the beach. But at this
+juncture Doc Wyndham, calling their attention to the fact that a
+whaleboat had already put away from the _Cora_, suggested that they wait
+and learn just how things stood before starting off gunning.
+
+"I'm with you as far as shooting any nigger that tries to break
+quarantine goes," he said, "but I'm dam'd if I'll stand by and see
+anyone take a pot shot at Mike Grogan, or any other sick white man, for
+that matter. Old Mike nursed me through a spell of 'black-water' once at
+Port Darwin, and if he is in that boat I dope it it's up to me to tote
+him home to my shack and do what I can for him. If he can't clamber out
+I'm going to wade in and carry him back to the beach, so you'll have to
+shoot the two of us if you shoot at all. But I don't think you will. I'm
+not asking any of you chaps to have anything to do with the stunt. You
+needn't touch him. I'll take him home and swear not to budge from there
+till the thing's over one way or the other. After that I'll put myself
+in a ten-day quarantine. Moreover, I won't be expecting attention from
+any white man or nigger on the island in case the luck goes against me
+and I catch the pest myself. It's my own little game and I won't stand
+for any interfering in it."
+
+That was the gist of Doc Wyndham's remarks as Jackson outlined them to
+me the next day. They met with hearty assent from all of the dozen or
+more present, except on the score of letting the Doc have the job all to
+himself. He turned down every one of the volunteer nurses, however,
+saying it was his own kettle of fish and that he'd have to stew it in
+his own way. He even insisted on meeting the boat alone, urging that
+there was no use in multiplying the points of possible "plague contact."
+
+So it must have been the distinguished surgeon from Guy's that I saw
+shoot the bolting black that morning. Had I continued to watch, instead
+of bolting myself at that juncture, I would have seen him wade out, lift
+a man tenderly from the stern-sheets of the whaleboat, and start
+carrying the limp body up the beach to where a spreading bread-fruit
+tree shaded the door of the sheet-iron shack which he was wont
+humorously to refer to as his "professional, social and domestic
+headquarters for Melanesia." Following that, I would have seen a bunch
+of motley-clad figures prance down and start menacing the irresolute
+boat-pullers with flourished revolvers, forcing the frightened blacks to
+back off and begin splashing their wobbly way out to the _Cora_.
+
+Wyndham's conduct all through struck me as rather fine, especially for a
+man who was a convict of three continents and two hemispheres.
+Disappointed in finding his friend Grogan in the whaleboat, on learning
+that the latter and his mate were already dead, Doc just as cheerfully
+set about paying to the Agent the debt he felt he owed to old Mike.
+Before entering his house, he called to his girl--a saucy little Samoan
+named Melita, who had gone right on sleeping through all the
+racket--ordering her to make a hurried departure by the back door and
+not to return until he sent for her. The Doc was never a man to let
+sentiment interfere with business, Jackson opined.
+
+Making the doomed man as comfortable as possible in his own canvas
+folding bed, Wyndham deferred giving an opiate until he had gained such
+information as he could of how things were on the _Cora_. Then, after
+communicating (from a safe distance) what he had learned to a delegation
+from executive headquarters at Jackson's, he nailed a red _sulu_ to his
+front door as a danger signal and disappeared behind the bars of his
+self-imposed quarantine.
+
+I may as well state here that Wyndham--thanks, doubtless, to the
+precautions which he, as a medical man, would have known how to
+take--side-stepped the plague completely, quite as completely, indeed,
+as he sidestepped the Thursday Island customs authorities a year or so
+later, when a half season's shipment of pearls from Makua Reef, Limited,
+disappeared as into thin air.
+
+Of the information Wyndham gleaned from the Agent before giving the
+latter a shot of morphine to relieve his agony and mercifully hasten the
+inevitable end, the most important as affecting Kai's action was that
+something over a hundred blacks had been battened down in the schooner's
+forecastle and 'midships hold for seventy-two hours, with nothing but a
+couple of stubby wind-sails feeding them air. The dead had all been
+cleared out before this was done, but there were a lot of bad cases
+among the living who were driven or thrown down the hatches. By the
+stench, the Agent knew that some of these had already died; but that
+many still had life in their bodies he judged by the unabated vigour of
+the howling.
+
+The most reassuring news passed on by the dying man was that Ranga-Ro,
+Grogan's gigantic Malay Bo'sun, had remained in charge of the _Cora_,
+and that he appeared to have the black crew (only three or four of them,
+luckily, had succumbed to the plague so far) well in hand. That
+brightened the outlook a good deal, for what Kai had feared above all
+else was a general breakout and stampede, which might inundate the
+island with plague-infected niggers, crazy beyond all possibility of
+control.
+
+Ranga, who claimed to have had at one time or another every tropical
+disease on record, was--or believed himself to be--a plague immune. He
+was not in the least worried over the responsibilities that had fallen
+on him, and could be counted upon, the Agent thought, to see the game
+through. The only trouble was that he couldn't navigate, so that if the
+_Cora_ was going to be taken to a port where any real relief could be
+obtained, she would have to have at least one competent white officer.
+Would Kai furnish that officer? was the question up before the meeting
+called at Jackson's to decide what should be done with the ill-fated
+black-birder.
+
+This was rather a larger assemblage than the one which had gathered at
+dawn, called up by the rattle of the _Cora's_ anchor-chain. The latter
+was mostly made up of the "inside push," "Jackson's Own," as they were
+sometimes alluded to, and that they were a dead game bunch of sports was
+attested by the way in which they had volunteered in a body to nurse for
+Doc Wyndham. The later and more representative meeting was hardly up to
+the earlier one on the score of quality. There were a few out-and-out
+rotters on the island, and about the worst of these was a typical
+Wooloofooloo larrikin from Sydney, whose name I have forgotten. As foul
+of tongue as of face, he was as sneaking and cowardly as a wild Malaite
+pup reared in a black-birder's galley. He it was who, with a smirk on
+his tattoo-defiled face, got up and suggested that the simplest way out
+of the difficulty was to "blow up an' burn the bloomin' 'ooker w'ere she
+lies. Cook the bloody niggers to a frizzle, pleg an' all." Give him a
+few sticks of dynamite and he'd pull off the bally job himself.
+
+The leering wretch, in his eagerness, pushed right out in front of
+gaunt-framed old Jackson, who was "presiding." "Wi'out battin' a
+blinker," as he told me later, that old Kalgoorlie outlaw took the
+proper and necessary action. His straight-from-the-hip kick doubled the
+miscreant up, breathless, speechless, upon the floor--the only floor of
+sawed boards in all Kai. He rather favoured that method when he had to
+throw a man out, Jackson explained, on account of the convenient parcel
+it made of him when lifted by the back of his belt.
+
+When Jackson called the meeting to order again and explained what word
+Wyndham had sent as to the lay of things on the _Cora_, "Froggy"
+Frontein, one of the escapes from Noumea, his Gallic soul aflame, popped
+up and volunteered to sail her to any non-French port in the Pacific.
+That brought a cheer for "Froggy," but the enthusiasm died down a bit
+when it transpired that the only ships the gallant ex-counterfeiter had
+ever boarded in his life were the steamer which deported him from
+Marseilles and the cutter in which he--buried under copra in its
+hold--had escaped from New Caledonia.
+
+More competent volunteers were not lacking, however, and several of
+these were trying to urge their respective claims at once when "Slant"
+Allen's magnetic glance drew the eye of the chairman and he was given
+the floor.
+
+Calling several of the more insistent of the volunteers by name, "Slant"
+asked if it had occurred to them that the nearest port which had
+quarantine facilities equal to handling more than a dozen cases of
+infectious disease was in Australia--probably Townsville, but possibly
+Brisbane. They admitted that they hadn't thought that far ahead.
+
+"In that case," Allen cut in with, "it may be in order for me to point
+out that there's not a one of the whole mob of you young hopefuls that
+wouldn't be pinched and clapped in the brig just as soon as they saw
+your face and recollected what it was you sloped for in the first
+place."
+
+That shot made some impression, though "Crimp" Hanley seemed to think he
+had countered not uneffectively when he asked: "Who in hell thinks he's
+going to last long enough to get her there?"
+
+What "Slant" had got up to say, he went on without deigning to engage
+the logical "Crimp" in argument, was that there was one first-class
+sailor in Kai against whom nothing was booked in Australia, a man,
+moreover, who had been known to be looking for a command for a number of
+months. He referred to Captain Bell, who, he regretted to say, had not
+been summoned to their meeting. If it was agreeable to those present, he
+would be glad to wait upon Captain Bell and acquaint him with the facts
+in connection with the emergency which confronted them all. In the event
+that Captain Bell should see fit to assert his claim to this place of
+honour, as he had no doubt would be the case, he--"Slant"--was in favour
+of giving that claim precedence over all others, both because of Captain
+Bell's well-known ability as a navigator (his late slip, they would all
+admit, was due to circumstances quite beyond his control), and because
+he was the only competent man available who would not have to step out
+of the frying pan into the fire on making port in Australia. What was
+more, in case Captain Bell felt that he needed a mate for a voyage which
+could not but be beset with much danger and many difficulties,
+he--"Slant"--wished to take the occasion to put in his claim for that
+berth. He had been in bad in Sydney, he had to admit, but it was nothing
+very serious, and he felt assured that, in a pinch, there were certain
+influences which could be counted upon to get him clear. No fear that he
+would not be seen in the Islands again in due course.
+
+Considering what "Slant" was really driving at, you'll have to admit
+that this was put with consummate adroitness. The meeting voted by
+acclamation to allow him to carry out his suggestion, adjourning in the
+meantime to await developments. It was significant, in the light of what
+transpired later, that Allen flatly refused the offer of Jackson and two
+or three others to go along to Bell's with him and "make a delegation of
+it."
+
+No suspicion was aroused by the fact that Allen, on the way to Bell's
+shack, stopped in at his own for five or ten minutes. Indeed, nothing
+that he did at any time awakened anybody's suspicions--among the beach
+push, I mean.
+
+When "Slant" came out of Bell's at the end of half an hour, he was
+accompanied by the American, the latter apparently leaning heavily on
+the Australian's shoulder. This occasioned little surprise, as Bell, who
+had hardly been seen for the last three days, was believed to have been
+drinking heavily. Instead of returning round the curve of the beach to
+report at Jackson's, as it had been assumed he would, "Slant" led the
+way to a little dugout canoe lying in the shade of the coco palms in
+front of Bell's and started pulling it down to the water's edge. When it
+was seen that the slender Australian was doing most of the tugging,
+while the big American seemed to be blundering about to small purpose,
+it was remarked at Jackson's that Bell, for the first time since he hit
+the beach of Kai, appeared to have stowed enough booze to submerge his
+"Plimsol" and affect his trim. At the same time it was admitted that the
+Yankee was a wonderful "weight-carrier"--nothing like him ever seen in
+the Islands. It was thus that they mixed nautical and racing idiom at
+Jackson's Sporting Club.
+
+When the little canoe was finally launched, Bell, helped by Allen,
+stumbled forward and slithered down in the bow. The Australian plied his
+paddle from the stern. It was remarked that the dugout's progress was
+very slow, but "Slant's" leisurely paddling was attributed to the care
+he had to take on account of the trim Bell's lopsided sprawl gave the
+cranky craft.
+
+By the time the canoe slid in alongside the _Cora_, Bell appeared to
+have collapsed completely. Lifting carefully by the shoulders, Allen was
+seen to raise the inert body in the bow enough for a hulking yellow
+giant--easily recognizable as the lusty Ranga-Ro--to throw a mighty arm
+around its waist. Then, with his other arm looped round a stanchion, he
+swung his burden high above the rail and into the arms of two of the
+black crew. Thereafter nothing was seen of the _Cora's_ new skipper for
+an hour or more.
+
+"Doosed smart loadin'," was Jackson's laconic comment on the teamwork
+Allen and Ranga had displayed in hoisting Bell's husky frame out of a
+wobbling canoe and up over the _Cora's_ four feet of freeboard topped by
+five strands of "nigger wire."
+
+Allen did not go aboard, but continued to lie alongside for ten or
+fifteen minutes, evidently giving extended orders to the Malay bos'n.
+Immediately the canoe pushed off, great activity was observable among
+the crew, who were evidently rushing preparations for getting under way
+before the ebb began to race through the passage.
+
+The rate at which Allen paddled back to the beach was in marked contrast
+to his leisurely progress on the way out. Grounding the canoe on the
+beach near where it had been launched, he made directly for the door of
+Bell's house and bolted inside. Reappearing almost immediately, he came
+on along the beach at a more deliberate gait.
+
+At Jackson's he told them that Bell had jumped at the chance of taking
+the _Cora_ to Townsville.... Said it might be the means of getting his
+master's certificate back in case he pulled it off all right. But
+he--"Slant"--couldn't allow a white man to tackle a job like that alone.
+He had only landed to pick up his kit and a few things Bell wanted. He
+was going to get back aboard the _Cora_ before they began to shorten in.
+It was going to be a ticklish job, fetching the passage from where she
+lay in those fluky airs.
+
+Leaving Jackson's, Allen went to his own (or rather "Quill"
+Partington's) house, where, according to what I heard from Mary Regan a
+couple of days later, he took several drinks but did not do anything
+toward throwing his things together. A half-hour later he was seen
+hurrying along the beach to Bell's again, and when he came out from
+there it was in the company of a girl--plainly the "Peacock." Paddled by
+a third party, who came upon the scene at this juncture, these two went
+off to the schooner, boarding her just as she filled away on the first
+tack of the almost dead beat to the entrance of the narrow seaward
+passage. For all they knew on the beach, Allen was carrying out his
+program (with the little incidental of Rona--doubtless taken along at
+the last moment by way of a surprise for Bell--thrown in), just as he
+had outlined it to them. They were not hurt by his failure to say
+good-bye. They were not strong for the gentler amenities in the Islands,
+anyhow.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VI
+
+                        COMPULSORY VOLUNTEERING
+
+
+As a matter of fact, however, there had been a very considerable slip-up
+in "Slant's" carefully doped slate. That was plain from a number of
+little things which sunk into even my absinthe-addled brain in the few
+minutes I spent in his and Rona's company while paddling them off to the
+_Cora_. How staggering a slip-up it must have been for him I was not
+able to figure until I got my nerves under control the following day.
+
+I was still far from pulled together when I came back to the village
+after my day of hiding (for that's what it amounted to) on the other
+side of the island. With my head twanging like an overstrung banjo, I
+was feverishly anxious to get home and seek relief in the only thing I
+knew would relax the tension of my breaking nerves. I had told Laku to
+"putem littl' fella pickaninny in rock-a-bye belonga him" just as soon
+as he got back to the shack. This was a long-standing joke between us,
+and I knew that he would interpret aright this _bêche-de-mer_ order to
+"put the baby in its cradle" as a strict injunction to lay a certain
+long green bottle in a little basket of porous coco husk, which,
+dampened and hung in a draught, answered the purpose of a crude
+refrigerator. The vision of the slender green trickle I should shortly
+pour from the dewy fresh lip of that bottle was drawing me on as the
+thought of the oasis with its fountain draws the thirsting desert
+traveller.
+
+Between horrors fancied and real--from my struggle at the mouth of the
+Bottomless Pit to the coming of the Ship of Death--my nerves had
+suffered a number of trying shocks since the dawning of that accursed
+day; but the one that came nearest to bowling me over I had still to
+receive. I had _known_ there was a Bottomless Pit; I had _known_ there
+was a Death Ship; I had _known_ they were shooting niggers on the beach.
+As each of these horrors was projected upon my vision in turn I had
+accepted their reality as a matter of course. Didn't I see them with my
+own eyes? Didn't I continue to see them after I had bitten my finger?
+But _Rona, with her arm and her peacock shawl thrown over "Slant"
+Allen's shoulder, coming out of Bell's house_.... No, that wouldn't
+do.... That was one thing they couldn't put over on me. My eyes must be
+playing tricks on my brain. I must be in even worse shape than I
+thought. Never before had my fancy conjured up a thing so utterly,
+impossibly absurd. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, I pulled up and started
+kicking the shin of one foot with the toe of the other. That was another
+little trick I had of proving whether or not I saw what I "saw."
+
+At the clink of the broken coral under my shuffling feet the girl turned
+her head in my direction, but, far from releasing "Slant's" neck from
+her embrace, she only drew the lanky Australian closer with her right
+arm, while with her left she beckoned me imperiously.
+
+"Whitnee, come alonga this side, washy-washy!" Her thin clear voice cut
+the air like the swish of a rapier.
+
+It was, strangely enough, the fact that she lapsed into the vulgarest of
+_bêche-de-mer_, rather than the eagerness of her gesture, that drove
+home to my wandering wits the fact that Rona was confronted with
+difficulties, that she needed help. Verging on nervous and physical
+collapse as I was (and as I knew I would continue to be until I had
+gulped my first steadying draught from the cool green bottle), the
+realization that something concrete was demanded brought me instantly
+out of the half-trance in which I had walked since dawn. Still a sorry
+enough specimen, I was at least sufficiently in hand not to need any
+more finger-bitings or shin-kickings to know the difference between what
+seemed real and what was really real. Letting my easel go one way and my
+paint box the other, I hastened forward in answer to Rona's summons.
+
+"Katchem washy-washy one piecee boat," Rona began as I came up, her
+heaving breast, flushed face and flashing eyes revealing the emotion
+that held her in its grip.
+
+"Man-man; my word, what name this fella thing you do?" I interrupted
+between breaths, blurting mixed _pidgin_ and _bêche-de-mer_ English of a
+brand to match the vile blend the girl had discharged at me.
+
+"I too much cross this fella 'Slan','" she started to explain. "Him too
+much--"
+
+"You'd think she was cross with me, Whitney, if you could see the way
+she's sticking me in the neck with her hat pin," Allen cut in, the
+half-sheepish, half-amused grin he had worn from the first broadening as
+he spoke.
+
+That was the first "straight" English to be spoken, and the words had
+the effect of reminding Rona that she had been speaking nothing but low
+jargon from the outset. For weeks she had been taking the greatest pains
+to avoid both of the weird volapuks in all her chats with me. Pulling
+herself together with an effort, she strove again to be a purist.
+
+"'Scuse me, Whit-nee," she chirruped, paying "Slant" for his sally with
+a prod that made him duck like a prize-fighter avoiding a straight-arm
+punch; "'scuse me, but I'm veh-ry mad. This bloody boundah he put
+_kor-klee_ in Bel-la's drink. He take Bel-la to schoonah. Now we all go
+off to schoonah. If Bel-la he dead, then I keel this boundah, 'Slan'.'
+You will do us the paddl'?--ple-ese, Whit-nee."
+
+There was a deal more that I would fain have been enlightened about, but
+my brain was clear enough now to understand the urgent necessity of
+getting off to the _Cora_ without delay. A drugged man (or a poisoned
+one--it was not until later that I learned how that strange essence of
+the wild Papuan fig might be expected to act) on a plague-infested
+black-birder looked like just about the last word in hopelessness; but
+(I told myself) if there was anything I could do for my friend, it was
+up to me to try to do it. Rona seemed to have some sort of plan in her
+head, though just what she was taking Allen along for I didn't quite
+twig at the moment.
+
+The funny part of it was that the Australian didn't seem particularly
+averse from going off to the schooner. Indeed, it was he who cut in to
+call Rona's attention to the fact that they were rushing preparations on
+the _Cora_ for getting under way, adding: "If you don't want to be left
+at the post I might suggest you whip up a bit." Even as he spoke the
+throbbing wail of a chantey came to our ears across the water, and I
+could just make out the blur of motion on the forecastle where a knot of
+niggers was circling round the capstan.
+
+"Washy-washy! Quick! quick! Whit-nee," implored Rona, leading the way,
+with Allen's head still in the crook of her arm, to the canoe; "we must
+make the great hur-ee."
+
+Luckily, the dugout, although Allen had left it pulled well up on the
+beach when he landed, was half awash through the rising of the tide, now
+just about to ebb. I launched it without difficulty. Still with her
+knife at "Slant's" neck, Rona made him enter ahead of her and crouch in
+the bottom of the canoe, well forward, while she seated herself on the
+sinnet-wrapped thwart immediately behind his hunched shoulders. When the
+unabashed rascal coolly leaned back and started to make himself
+comfortable with an arm thrown over her knee, the girl stiffened with a
+start of repulsion. It was more than a prick she gave him this time, for
+I saw the sudden swell of his jaw muscles wipe out the lines of his grin
+as his teeth set over a repressed oath.
+
+Pushing off, I slid gingerly along the port weatherboard until the canoe
+heeled just enough to bring a gaping hole in the starboard bow clear of
+the water that started to pour through it, and began to paddle
+cautiously inside the outrigger, the only place I could get at from
+where I sat. Our progress was, of course, slow as to speed and wobbly as
+to direction. Even at that, a good deal of water kept slopping in, and I
+couldn't blame Allen, who was sitting in it, for asking Rona if she
+minded if he baled a bit with his sun-helmet.
+
+Her only reply was another prod with the needlepointed _kris_. (I knew
+it was the little Jolo dagger, for I had seen it as she adjusted her
+shawl on sitting down). "Hur-ee, Whit-nee," she urged, quiveringly
+tense, and continued to keep her flaming gaze riveted on the schooner,
+where the latter, foot by foot, was moving up on her shortening chain.
+
+About halfway out Rona gave a start and a glad little cry. "I see
+Bel-la," she laughed. "He stand up by wheel. By jingo, he look--he look
+like he lick his weight in wile cats!"
+
+That had been the big Southerner's favourite expression when, glowing
+with the reaction from his deep, eye-opening dive from the reef, he
+would come prancing back to his door of a morning. The sight of his bare
+muscular torso, white as marble against the dingy folds of the
+half-hoisted mainsail, must have called up in the girl's mind the
+picture of Bell breezing in from his bath, and brought the tersely
+quaint phrase to her lips. As a matter of fact, there was no saying at
+that distance _how_ Bell looked; but it was good to see him on his feet,
+at any rate. Probably Rona had been mistaken about the poisoning.
+
+"I told you he was all right," Allen remarked drily, shifting a few
+inches to get clear of the water that was beginning to swish about his
+knees. "He was drunk--dead drunk; that's all. He began to buck up an
+hour ago. Looked through my glass and saw them dousing him with water.
+First thing he did was to take a drink (plenty of it aboard)--saw him
+tilt the bottle. Then he must have made them open up the hatches.
+There's more than the crew lining the rail there for'ard; besides--you
+don't think the slop-chute from the galley spills out the bait that's
+drawing those black fins, do you? I won't need to tell you they don't
+belong to chambered nautili out for an afternoon sail. There's a
+man-eating shark under every one of them. Can I lend you my binoculars?"
+
+He started to slip the strap of the powerful racing glasses over his
+neck, but desisted when Rona refused to clear the way by lifting the
+point of her dagger. Save for maintaining that one important little
+point of contact, she ignored him completely, and "Slant" seemed rather
+to resent the latter more than the former.
+
+"Well, if you don't want to use it, I suppose you won't mind if I have a
+bit of a look-see," he went on in half-assumed petulance. Rona replied
+with the usual prod, but interposed no further objection when he raised
+and began focussing the glasses.
+
+"Clubbing niggers on the fo'c'sl'," he commented presently, as signs of
+commotion were visible forward. "Skipper don't want 'em too thick on
+deck while he's getting under way, most likely."
+
+Then, a minute later: "Looks like you'll need an ice-breaker to clear a
+passage through those sharks, Whitney; or perhaps we can walk across
+their backs from the edge of the jam. Seem to be thick enough to give
+good solid footing."
+
+And again, shortly: "Chain almost straight-up-and-down, Whitney. Mudhook
+going to break out in a couple of minutes. Can't accelerate that 'long,
+long pull' of yours, can you? Looks as if they weren't planning to wait
+for us."
+
+It was a gruesome passage, that last hundred yards. The sharks were
+hardly as thick as Allen's picturesque hyperbole might have led one to
+believe, but there were undoubtedly more than a score of triangular
+dorsals slashing about in swift circles. But the sharks, for the most
+part, gave us a good berth. It was the things that _didn't_ get out of
+the way that came near to flooring me at the last--black, bloated
+bodies, floating face down, like logs awash, till the canoe struck them,
+then to roll shudderingly over and sweep you with the sightless gaze of
+their wide, staring eyes as you fended with the paddle. Rona, her
+flashing glances running back and forth over the schooner (following
+Bell, who appeared to be lending a hand now and then on sheet or
+halyard), seemed not to see the floating horrors around us. Allen's
+steely eyes met the corpses stare for stare, and looked them down. But
+upon me the horrors which passed the others by descended with full
+force. How I kept going is more than I can guess. But I did it. At last
+the loom of the _Cora's_ blistered starboard quarter cut off the seaward
+view, and I steadied the dugout in close to the upper line of her
+weed-foul copper sheathing.
+
+Apparently no notice whatever had been taken of us up to this time.
+Short-handed as he was, Bell was doubtless too busy to keep a lookout,
+while to the few niggers watching us through the wire the sight of a
+dugout carrying "two fella white marsters and one fella Mary" was of
+indifferent interest. All they cared about was getting away from the
+Death Ship, and they didn't need to be told that this "pickaninny boat"
+hadn't come to help forward their desires in that direction. Besides,
+the guard walking up and down behind them with a Lee-Enfield over his
+black shoulder had undoubtedly given them to understand that the first
+one to start over the side would be shot.
+
+It must have been the guard who reported us finally. Burning with
+impatience, Rona was just prodding up Allen and ordering him to clamber
+aboard and tell "Mistah Bell" she wanted to speak to him, when I heard
+the shout of "'Vast heavin'!" ring out, and presently a familiar tousled
+head was poked over the top of the barbed wire. (I should explain,
+perhaps, that three or four strands of "nigger wire" are run all the way
+round the rail of every labour-recruiting ship. This is done with a
+double purpose--to make it difficult for the blacks aboard to bolt,
+should the spirit move them, and to serve as a partial protection while
+at anchor against the always imminent attacks of the treacherous shore
+natives.)
+
+There was a look in Bell's face I had never seen there before. The old
+familiar furrows of dissipation showed deep around the mouth, but if he
+had been drinking heavily, there was nothing to indicate it. What struck
+me at once was his air of determination--I might almost say exaltation.
+His head was held high, his shoulders were thrown back, and he might
+have been treading the deck of a battle-ship as he swung up to the rail.
+Everything about him betokened the man who has taken a great resolve,
+and means to see it through if it kills him.
+
+Although I had heard no word of it up to that moment, I understood at
+once that Bell had taken command of the schooner, that he was going to
+try to sail her to some port where the plague-stricken blacks could be
+given medical attention and kept under control. It was like Bell to take
+on a job like that, I said to myself; but he would do it as a matter of
+course. It would never occur to him that there was any alternative, just
+as with an order in the Navy. There must be something more to account
+for that air of high resolve.... I couldn't help thinking that, and I
+was right. He let out what it was shortly.
+
+"It's right nice of you to come off to say good-bye, honey--and of you,
+too, Whitney," Bell called down genially; "but, as we'ah not quite what
+you'd call fixed fo' cawlahs, you'd bettah do it from wheah you a'. You,
+Mistah Allen, if you have fin'ly made up youah mind in the mattah of
+signin' up for the voyage, I reckon we can find accommodation fo' you.
+But fust, let me say that if you've got any mo' of that dope you put in
+my whisky stowed about youah puson, you'd best scuppah it befo' you
+climb abo'd. I doan quite twig what you did it fo', unless it was to
+dodge out of goin' yo'self, afta you had promised to help me see the job
+through. But now, seein' you've come off of youah own free will, I
+reckon I can fo'get that lil' slip, providin' it ain't repeated."
+
+Although Rona could hardly have known the exact meaning of "free will,"
+she caught the drift of Bell's remarks readily enough. "This rotten
+boundah" (bounder was the worst name she knew to call a man in "pure"
+English) "not come himself," the girl cut in shrilly, speaking for the
+first time. "I fetch him. See!" and she threw back the folds of the
+peacock shawl to reveal the bright wavy blade of her little _kris_
+boring into the hollow between Allen's right shoulder-blade and the
+corded column of his sinewy neck.
+
+"From the reef I see you an' this fella 'Slan''" (Allen's shoulder
+quivered under her designative prod) "go off to schoonah in boat," Rona
+went on, avoiding as well as she could in her excitement the jargons she
+knew Bell disliked so much. "Bime-by I see 'Slan'' come back--you stop
+schoonah. When I go home I smell'em _kor-klee_. You no sabe _kor-klee_,
+Bel-la. I sabe him too much long time. I smell _kor-klee_ in one
+glass--not in othah. Pu-retty soon this boundah 'Slan'' come house. He
+say: 'Bel-la go off in schoonah. Now I stop with you all time!' Then I
+sabe what for _kor-klee_ veh-ry queeck. So I katch'em this fella by neck
+an' fetch'm off schoonah. I say myself: 'If Bel-la dead, I keel this
+boundah; if Bel-la not dead, _he_ keel him.' Heah he is, Bel-la--you fix
+him pu-lenty. Then we go home-side."
+
+"So that's what upset the appl'-ca't?" There was nothing of the wrath of
+the jealous male in Bell's deep, chesty laugh. "Well, I'm not blamin'
+Mistah Allen fo' fallin' in love with you, honey. No propah man could
+quite help doin' that, as I see it. Just the same, I can't quite approve
+of his way of goin' about it, no' the occasion he took fo' it, eethah.
+So you brought him off fo' me to execute, honey. That's right rich.
+Youah a brick, you shuah a'. But I won't be killin' him, honey--no,
+hahdly that. I'm just goin' to sign him on as Fust Mate of the _Cora
+Andrews_, just as he 'lowed he do at the beginnin'. Of co'se I won't be
+goin' home with you, honey. Doan you see I'm in command of this heah
+ship?"
+
+A sudden shiver shook Rona's tense frame at those last words. Half
+rising, she started to speak, but Bell cut her short with lifted hand
+and went on himself.
+
+"Mistah Allen," he said, addressing himself now to the huddled figure in
+the bottom of the canoe; "I said I was goin' to sign you on an' take you
+with me. Let me qualify those wuds just a trifle. I'll pumit you to go
+if you'll agree in advance to my tums. I might explain that theah's two
+dif'rent views in the mattah of the best way of avoidin' catchin' the
+pleg. One is, that you must keep strictly soba--straight teetotal; the
+otha--diametrically opposed to the fust--is that you must keep dead
+drunk--pif'ucated. Now I reckon that it's goin' to take at least one
+white man to sail this hookah all the way to Australyuh; that is to say,
+at least one white man must steah cleah of the pleg fo' the entahprise
+to be crowned with success. But as theah ain't no suah data as to which
+is the safe an' sutin way to 'complish this, I figa theah's nothin' else
+to do but sta't with two white men, and let one of 'em try the fust
+purscripshun an' the otha the second.
+
+"Now (tho' I must admit it's a bit high-handed on my pa't) I've already
+picked the one I'm goin' to take; so, if you elect to sign on, Mistah
+Allen, you'll have to take the otha. Theah's a dozen cases of whisky
+abo'd--not Jawny Wakah, to be suah, but still fayah to middlin' cawn
+jooce--an' I had to toss off a tumblah o' two of it as an antidote fo'
+that dream-provokin' dope you wished onto me. But"--Bell's head was up
+and his shoulders back again--"_that's the last_." His square jaw
+snapped shut on the words like a sprung wolf-trap. Now I understood.
+_That_ was his Great Resolve.
+
+Bell paused, and in the waiting silence I became aware for the first
+time of the low rumble of groaning from the bowels of the ship.
+
+"So you'll see, Mistah Allen"--the corners of his mouth relaxed into a
+smile as Bell resumed--"that since the Skippah's plumped to try the
+'soba man' preventative, theah's nothin' left for the Mate to do but to
+fight off the pleg by the 'drunk man' method. Theah'll only be two of
+us, you see, an' it's theahfo' up to us to hedge ouah bets an' play
+safe. But you won't be havin' to go if you ain't hankerin' after it. I'm
+not (in spite of what the way you've been 'shanghaied' by--by Miss Rona
+might lead you to think) runnin' a press-gang. It's entiahly up to you
+as to whethah o' not you want to sail as the drunken Mate of the soba
+Skippah of a black-birdah full of pleg-rotten niggahs. You see, Mistah
+Allen"--the whimsical grin broadened--"you see I'm not tryin' to luah
+you on by paintin' the picture any brightah than it is. 'Drunk Mate of a
+soba Skippah'--do you get that?"
+
+Allen made no reply, that is, not directly. Raising his hand to fend the
+expected prod from Rona, he wriggled halfway round and started to speak
+to me, where, in the stern, I still paddled the canoe gently against the
+turning tide and held it close alongside the schooner. For an instant I
+was puzzled with the look on the side-face he presented, but almost at
+once saw the reason for it. For the first time in my recollection the
+thin upper lip was uncurled by its mocking smile. By that, I thought I
+could gauge something of the extent of his slip-up. Yet--if I could have
+read the man's mind--I would have known that it was something even
+deeper than the wreck of personal hopes that had sobered "Slant" Allen.
+What it was I learned later.
+
+"Whitney," he began, the words coming huskily from the dryness of his
+throat; "I don't dope a man's chances for finishing inside the distance
+flag in this little Handicap of Captain Bell's as better than a hundred
+to one. That's long odds to be on the short end of when a man's life is
+his stake. I don't give a damn about my life. Anyone will tell you that.
+I've thrown it into the pool on worse than a hundred-to-one shot a good
+many times before this. But--well, I'd rather appreciate it if--if you
+could see fit to make a point of not telling my friends on the beach
+that--that I had any help in--in volunteering--volunteering to lend
+Captain Bell a hand in getting this hooker on her way."
+
+Rona, sensing that her responsibilities, so far as Allen was concerned,
+were at an end, raised the _kris_ from his neck and thrust it into the
+knot of her _sulu_. The Australian lifted himself lightly to his feet
+and looked Bell straight between the eyes. "Lead me to your whisky," he
+said in a steadied voice.... "By Gawd, I need it!"
+
+Poising an instant on the middle of a forward thwart of the canoe, he
+sprang to the rail, clambered smartly to the top strand of the barbed
+wire, and swung lightly down to the deck on the main backstay.
+
+It was at this juncture that I went through the feeble motions of trying
+to act the part of a man myself. I pointed out to Bell that I had
+knocked about on yachts a good deal, and, while I couldn't claim to be
+much of a hand with niggers, was probably as good a navigator as Allen
+was. I also said something about three men standing a better chance than
+two of pulling off the job, and even added, half jocularly, that I was
+about ready to go to Australia anyway, as I had had word that an
+exhibition of my pictures was due to open in Sydney in a fortnight. I
+only hope my words didn't sound as hollow to Bell as they did to me--for
+they were the last ones I was ever to speak to him.
+
+Bell's gentlemanliness--nay, rather, his gentleness--came home to me
+more in what he refrained from saying in his reply than in what he said.
+He did _not_ say that he had no absinthe aboard, and that, as a
+consequence, I would be only more useless and undependable than if he
+had. He did _not_ say that his hands would be full enough looking after
+crazy niggers without having a crazy white man to keep an eye on. He
+even refrained from recalling to my mind a story I had told him of a
+French official in New Caledonia whose absinthe supply had run out while
+he was at an isolated post, and who, unable to stand the deprivation to
+the end of the three-days' run in to Noumea in a trading cutter, had
+taken a header over the side almost in sight of port--and relief.
+
+All he _did_ say was: "Nonsense, ol' man.... Quite out of the
+question.... Nothin' doin'." Then, as though to soften the curtness of
+his refusal: "'Twouldn't be propa, Whitney, to set a man that can slap
+colour on canvas like you can to herdin' sick niggas. Besides, I'm
+countin' on you to stick 'roun' Kai an' be a sort o' fatha an' motha' to
+Rona while I'm gone. Youah the only man on the island I'd ca'ah to trust
+with that job."
+
+There was nothing more to be said after that, I told myself; nothing
+more to be done. I gave up limply and relapsed into wondering how long
+it would take me to paddle Rona ashore and traverse the quarter of a
+mile of coral clinkers between the place where she would land and the
+long green bottle cooling in its breeze-swept swing beneath my coco leaf
+jalousies.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII
+
+                           RONA COMES ABOARD
+
+
+Well, I still think I was right on the score of the futility of further
+words. Nothing more that I could have _said_ would have changed the
+situation; but was there nothing more that I could have _done_? Rona
+answered that question, so far as she herself was concerned, then and
+there, though hardly in a way that I had the wit or the will to profit
+by.
+
+Bell's answer to the girl's anxious appeal that she be allowed to join
+him had been no less brusque and decided than that he had made to mine.
+"Sorry, honey. No 'commodations fo' ladies this voyage. You wun't
+intended to nu'se niggas, anyhow. Can't be done, honey." Then, to me:
+"Time to be shovin' off now, Whitney. Tide's already on the tu'n. Right
+sorry to have to hurry you-all this way." Not a word of farewell....
+Navy training would not down.
+
+"Bel-la, leesten to me!" There was more threat than entreaty in Rona's
+voice now. Beyond doubt, he had never crossed her before. That she was
+hurt and angry showed in every line of her tense figure, as she balanced
+precariously with her left foot on the outrigger and her right on the
+port weatherboard. "Bel-la, by crackee, I say I go with you! If you let
+me come on schoona, all good. If you say no, by crackee, I--I sweem! I
+sweem afta you. You know I good sweema, Bel-la."
+
+Swim! I knew the girl well enough to know it was not a bluff, and Bell
+must have known even better. I had heard him speak many a time of her
+absolute lack of fear. Also, although at that moment his imagination was
+not quickened (as mine was) by the drunken roll a black cadaver under
+the counter gave as a questing nose pushed into it from below, he must
+have known what shrift a swimmer would have in those shark-infested
+waters.
+
+Bell's mouth twitched at her words (I could just see his head and
+shoulders where he conned ship with a foot on the starboard rail and a
+hand in the shrouds of the mainmast), but he made no reply. Doubtless he
+counted on my doing what I could to fish her out before anything
+happened. Sweeping his eye fore and aft, he noted how the turning tide
+had swung the schooner so that she headed directly away from the
+passage, with the fluky puffs of the freshening trade wind coming over
+her port quarter. Then, cautioning the men standing by at the fore and
+main sheets to "take in sma't" as she gathered way, he bellowed the
+order to "Heave away!"
+
+The ululant surge of the _bêche-de-mer_ anchor chantey floated aft as
+the blacks resumed their rhythmic tramp around the capstan.
+
+    "_What name you b'longa?
+    What name you b'longa?
+        You Mary come catch'm ride.
+    What name you b'longa?
+    Come hear my songa--
+        I take you to Sydney-side._"
+
+I have often wondered if the frank invitation in the swinging lines
+might not have been the inspiration of Rona's astonishing action.
+
+The obligato of the incoming chain grinding through the hawse-pipe had
+accompanied the chantey for only a stave or two, when Allen's clear,
+ringing voice (he had not needed to be told where a mate belonged when a
+ship was getting under way) announced from the forecastle: "Anchor
+broken out, sir!"
+
+"Walk lively! Get catted 'fore she hits the passage!" Bell roared back,
+anxious lest the great length of chain still out would make trouble
+where the lagoon shoaled at its seaward entrance. A moment later he came
+aft and relieved the man at the wheel, ordering the latter to stand by
+to keep the mainsheet from fouling the nigger wire. It was the gigantic
+Malay, Ranga-Ro, bulking mightily against the purpling eastern twilight
+sky, who responded with a deep-rumbling "Ay, ay, su!" and sprang to the
+starboard rail to clear the sagging lines running back from the
+unstable-minded main boom. Then the amazing thing befell.
+
+As the schooner gathered way and began gliding ahead under the impulse
+of the half-filled mainsail, Rona had crouched as though for a spring at
+the towing whaleboat. The painter of the latter, however, made fast on
+the port side of the taffrail, brought the yawning double-ender too far
+away for anything but a creature with wings to bridge the gap. Seeing it
+was impossible to jump to the whaleboat, she straightened up again,
+swaying undulantly as the dugout bobbed about in the gently heaving wake
+of the schooner.
+
+"Bel-la, I come!" There was more of anger than despair in that
+steel-clear cry; more indignation than resignation in the hair-trigger
+poise of the reed-slender figure. The instant that she hesitated on the
+chance that this final threat might soften Bell's resolve was all that
+prevented what at best could not have been other than a nasty mess for
+the both of us. There was no possible chance for me to intercept her
+before she jumped, and, once in the water, I knew she was quite equal to
+upsetting the canoe rather than be dragged back into it. As for help
+from the schooner--Bell had determined upon his course, and his eyes,
+like his mind, were directed ahead, not astern.
+
+It was Ranga-Ro (deftly fending the slack of the mainsheet from the
+nigger wire), not Bell, who turned at the sound of Rona's cry. Whether
+or not he had glimpsed her during the previous ten minutes, I am not
+sure; but for the girl (whose eyes had been on Bell from first to last),
+I was certain that the big Malay had not impinged upon her vision
+before. Recognition of his racial characteristics must have been
+instantaneous. They were written for even an ethnic novice to read in
+the giant's straight black hair, high cheek bones, wide mouth, with its
+betel nut-stained teeth, and the light golden yellow skin clothing the
+monstrously muscled limbs. The peculiar twist of the loosely-looped
+_sarong_ and a wisp of rolled leaf behind an ear would have located him
+even more definitely; but to Rona the fact that there was an indubitable
+Malay staring into her eyes from the nearest rail of the receding
+schooner, made the incidental of his being a Moluccan--a Spice Island
+man--of little moment. She was used to handling big golden-yellow
+men.... They had proved a deal more manageable than a certain white man
+she could mention.
+
+I heard, without understanding, the swift run of her tripplingly-tongued
+Malay, and only the sibilant hiss of "_Lekas! Lekas!_" at the end told
+me that what she had ordered done was to be done "quickly! quickly!" Her
+next order--to me--was no less insistent. "Paddl' catch'n schoona,
+Whit-nee! Paddl' lak hell!"
+
+The girl's imperious mood brooked no delay. My work was cut out clear
+for me, and, everything considered, I am not at all sure that the yellow
+man--on the score of zeal, at least--outdid the white man in carrying
+out the orders he had received. Slipping back to the stern to even up
+the down-by-the-head trim Rona's presence in the bow gave the cranky
+dugout, I plied the stubby paddle with all the strength and skill at my
+command. The crazy craft rode higher now with Allen out of it, but even
+so the speed with which I drove it threw a wave inches above the hole in
+the crumbling bow. The up-curling water poured through in a steady
+stream. My race, I saw, was against that rising flood in the bottom of
+the canoe quite as much as against the schooner.
+
+There were only eight or ten yards to make up on the still slowly moving
+_Cora_, and, barring swamping or a collision with a shark or a floating
+nigger, I felt that I could do it easily. But what to do when we had
+caught her up? Ah, there was where the yellow man was to come in. Ranga
+was just as busily carrying out his orders as was I. "Clear away the
+nigger wire and stand by to pick me up," had plainly been the drift of
+that swift stream of Malay Rona had directed at him. Superbly disdainful
+of the sharp barbs that were slashing his bare palms to ribbons, he
+forced the whole savage entanglement down to the deck with no more
+apparent effort than a child would have used in collapsing a
+string-strung "cat's-cradle." Rove through steel stanchions set at close
+intervals along the rail, the wire could not be torn entirely clear. So
+the direct and simple-minded Ranga did the next best thing--gave a
+mighty heave and brought three or four of the nearest stanchions down to
+the deck in the tangle of wire they had supported.
+
+An order from Bell at this juncture would probably have stopped this
+wholesale destruction of his protective entanglement; or perhaps I
+should say _possibly_ rather than probably. One cannot be sure just how
+strong a force Rona had lashed into action. It has since occurred to me
+that the man must have been gripped with something very closely akin to
+the madness of _amok_ to handle that wire with his naked hands as he
+did. It may be that the only one from whom he would have brooked
+interference was the one who had fired that savage train of
+energy--Rona. These points were not to be put to the test, however. From
+first to last Bell--although, from the wrecking of the wire almost under
+his very eyes, he must have known what was going on--never looked back.
+
+What with the settling of the half-swamped canoe and the accelerating
+speed of the schooner, it was touch-and-go at the end. I had gained by
+feet at first; then by inches; and finally, with but a couple of yards
+more needed to bring the bow up even with the schooner's counter, I
+realized that I was no better than holding my own. It was the last ounce
+of reserve in my aching frame that I called upon for that final spurt.
+Rona must have sensed that I was going my limit, for she said no word
+... only crouched, tense as a waiting wild-cat, for the moment of her
+spring.
+
+For the first few seconds the gap closed quickly as the canoe gathered
+increased headway from the impulse of my wildly driven paddle; then more
+slowly and more slowly, until, again, I was no better than holding even.
+Another foot, and the jump would be safe. Bending low to make the most
+of my expiring strength, my eyes wandered from the goal for an instant.
+It was a shuddering gasp of consternation from the bow that brought them
+back again. The swooning mainsail, filled by the freshening puffs, was
+beginning to make its pull felt in earnest. The gap had widened. Instead
+of gaining a foot I had lost two. That dished me completely. "No good,
+Rona--I'm--all in," I groaned, and slid limply down into the bottom of
+the canoe, where the water now lapped level with the thwarts.
+
+Half fainting though I was, the picture of that super-simian spring of
+Rona's is indelibly etched upon my memory. Save for that one quick gasp,
+she made no sound. The jump was an impossible one ... sheerly
+impossible. And yet-- Only a swift gathering of muscles--very like the
+final quivering hunch of an ape that leaps from tree to tree--heralded
+action. Then, with a back-kick that forced the already half-submerged
+bow right under, she flashed up to her full height and launched her body
+into the air.
+
+It was a good jump,--a wonderful one, indeed, considering the unstable
+take-off--but of course she missed the rail--and by feet. That didn't
+surprise me.... I had seen it was inevitable. But what I had _not_
+reckoned upon was the astonishing length of Ranga's mighty left arm.
+Standing by with a bight of the mainsheet gripped in his right hand to
+keep from overbalancing, he had sprung to the top of the rail as Rona
+jumped, leaning out at all of an angle of forty-five degrees, probably
+more. It was into the solidly pliant muscles of his great corded left
+wrist, extended to the full reach of the arm, that Rona clawed with the
+last half inch of her out-stretched fingers--clawed and _held_. I say
+_clawed into_, not clutched or seized. The girl's hold on Ranga's wrist
+was not that of an acrobat grabbing over the bar for which he has jumped
+(her leap was short by an inch at least of giving her a chance to do
+that), but rather that of a flung cat clawing into the limb or the trunk
+of a tree. With less strength of fingers or length of nails her hands
+would merely have brushed the outstretched arm and missed a hold.
+
+Under the impact of that flying hundred and twenty pounds (in spite of
+her slenderness, Rona must have weighed quite that) of bone and muscle,
+striking, as it did, just where the greatest leverage would be exerted,
+Ranga was all but swung round and thrown from his footing. The
+hastily-seized mainsheet was hardly a scientifically-run guy for the
+leaning tower of his stressed frame, nor did the wreck of the barbed
+wire entanglement writhing over the rail offer the solidest of
+foundations. Back and forth he swayed, like the half unstepped mast of a
+grounded sloop; then steadied, quiveringly, up to his original tense
+slant.
+
+The acrobatic miracle wrought by Ranga in swinging Rona's precariously
+hanging form inboard was the most perfect feat of strength and balance I
+ever saw, or ever expect to see. It looked as sheerly impossible as the
+jump had looked--and was accomplished scarcely less quickly. The drawing
+up of the extended left arm (what a marvellous rippling and bunching of
+golden muscles that was!) brought the girl's pendant form close in
+against the corrugated bulge of the giant's chest, reducing the terrific
+leverage by a good half. A similar doubling up of the right, with a
+sudden tug on the mainsheet at the end of it, did the rest. For an
+instant the great rangy rack of corded muscles balanced erect in the
+midst of the wire-tangle festooned over the rail; then jumped lightly
+down beyond and deposited its burden on the deck.
+
+Hardly ten seconds could have elapsed from the instant of Rona's jump to
+the one in which Ranga plumped her down beside Bell at the wheel. The
+gap between the canoe and the schooner had widened to hardly twenty
+yards. I could see both the Malay and the girl quite distinctly as, with
+the latter still looped in the crook of his fingernail-torn left arm, he
+poised for a moment on the rail. Neither appeared to have turned a hair.
+Neither seemed in the least flustered ... might have been in the habit
+of doing that sort of thing every day for all the excitement they showed
+about it.
+
+The first thing Ranga did, as the dropped mainsheet gave him a free
+hand, was to reach to the knot of his _sarong_ and satisfy himself that
+the little bamboo flute tucked in there had ridden out the storm. And
+Rona--her first move was to gather up and stow an amber-streaming corner
+of the peacock shawl, which was threatening to catch in an uprearing
+strand of the nigger wire. Those two funny little incidentals complete
+my recollections of that breathless quarter-minute. Whether Rona, or
+Bell, or anyone else on the schooner waved good-bye in my direction I do
+not recall. Ranga was taking in the slack of the mainsheet when I looked
+again, and Bell, peering up at the flapping headsails, was grinding away
+at the wheel. Two or three shots rang out following a commotion
+forward--probably fired to check a fresh up-surge of the blacks from
+below.
+
+As Bell brought her round in a wide circle, the _Cora's_ sails were
+flattened in and she began to beat up toward the entrance of the passage
+in a series of short tacks. As she headed in past the quay, I heard a
+burst of cheers roll up from a knot of humanity blurring the beach in
+front of Jackson's. It was just a big, full-throated general whoop, that
+first one, but it was quickly followed by a number of other volleys of
+"huroars" that seemed to carry suggestions of control and leadership.
+The last of these was a hearty "three-times-three," topped off with a
+"tiger." "Cheering the parting heroes by name," I muttered to myself,
+and wondered who that last rousing "tiger" was meant to speed. I was
+still speculating when the sharp whish of a heeling dorsal, as a
+sheering shark avoided the submerged outrigger by a hair, awakened me to
+a rude realization of the fact that the swift tropic night had all but
+fallen and that I was drifting out with the tide in a holed and barely
+floating dugout.
+
+Of all the ebbings of the tide of courage that my sorrily spent life had
+known, and had still to know, those next few minutes--with the _Cora_
+dissolving into the swimming dusk as she beat out through the passage,
+the weirdly green wakes of the sharks lacing the oily-black water with
+welts of phosphorescence as they assembled for their ghastly banquet,
+and my swamped canoe teetering in balance between positive and negative
+buoyancy--registered low-water mark. I have never heard of a despairing
+absinthe slave trying to break his bonds at the end of the day. It is
+invariably at the end of the night that he makes his break for
+liberty--at the beginning of the day he has not the courage to face. But
+it was the shame of the yellow in me, rather than the green, that held
+empire now. Rona had brooked no refusal of her demand to be taken on the
+_Cora_. Why had I? She had been ready to swim for it. Why should not I?
+Surely the sea, better than anything else, would wash that yellow stain
+from my honour and leave it white at the last. I didn't even have to
+screw my nerve up to the point of jumping over. Listing heavily to
+starboard as the half-capsized dugout was, one little inch edged to the
+right, and not even the leverage of the outrigger could keep it from
+overturning. Just the inclination of my shoulders would do the trick....
+I would not even have to take the initiative to the extent of edging
+along. Surely--
+
+With a quick gasp, I slid sharply to one side--but it was to the
+left--the outrigger side. The great starshaped welter of green
+luminescence, where a half-dozen wallowing man-eaters nuzzled into a
+bobbing witch-fire-streaked shape of unreflecting opacity, proved too
+much for my last unbroken filament of nerve--all that I needed to make
+my honour white. I had always dreaded sharks, and it was my horror of
+them now that checked the worthiest impulse that had stirred me that
+day. The momentarily eclipsed image of the cooling green bottle took
+shape again before my eyes, and, after that, there was nothing to do but
+make the best fight I could to reach it.
+
+Proceeding with infinite caution to avoid the upset which I now feared
+above everything in the world, I crawled forward along the outrigger
+side and stopped the hole in the bow with my folded drill jacket, as a
+necessary preliminary to beginning to bail out with my waterproof
+sun-helmet. But before I turned to on what could have hardly proved
+other than a hopeless task, the sound of oars and voices reached my
+ears, and presently the bow of a hard-pulled whaleboat came pushing up
+out of the darkness. It was old Jackson whose strong arm reached out and
+dragged me in over the gunwale. When they got back their breaths lost in
+cheering the departing schooner, he explained, after depositing my limp
+form in the stern sheets, Doc Wyndham bawled over to them from
+"Quarantine" that some cove had been left behind in a foundered canoe.
+Jackson himself reckoned that the Doc was beginning to go off his nut
+and see things; but as several of the others seemed to have hazy
+recollections of something of the same kind, it was thought best to put
+off and investigate.
+
+"'Ow'd you 'appen to miss c'nections?" Jackson asked sympathetically. "I
+spotted you paddlin' the canoe off, an' we was so sure the Skipper 'ad
+signed you on that we give a speshul w'oop in your 'onour. 'W'at's the
+matter wiv W'itney?' I bellered ('member the night you learned us that
+one?--time the looted fizz from the _Levuka_ was on tap); an' the boys
+cum back wiv: ''E's all right!--you bet!--Ev'ry time!'"
+
+"That wasn't the big 'three-times-three' at the end, was it, Jack?" I
+asked, my face burning with shame at the thought.
+
+"Well, no; 'ardly that un," was the half-apologetic reply. "That
+ripsnorter was in 'onour uv 'Slant' Allen. Long time pal uv all uv us,
+'e is. Slash-bangin' finisher, li'l ol' 'Slant.'... Trust 'im allus to
+be on 'and w'en they're liftin' 'ell's 'atches."
+
+I knew then that I wasn't going to be tumbling over myself to tell
+"Slant's" friends on the beach that his volunteering to go with the
+_Cora_ had been just a shade less voluntary than they reckoned. _He_ had
+not pulled up dead at his first hurdle as I had, anyhow. No, until I
+knew more of what had transpired earlier in the day, I was not going to
+give the man away; and not to his old friends in any case. I would do at
+least that much homage to his nerve.
+
+Seeing how dead beat I was, Jackson waved back the crowd at the quay and
+headed me straight for home. He knew what I needed, and I was as
+grateful for the bluff old outlaw's unspoken sympathy as I was for the
+help of his sustaining arm. With rare delicacy, he avoided being a
+witness to my assault on the green bottle by leaving me at the door.
+Like all the rest of those rough, red-blooded roysterers of Kai, Jackson
+felt that habitual absinthe drinking was degenerate, almost immoral....
+All right for a "Froggy," of course, but not for a proper white man....
+A thing that a real self-respecting beach-comber would never allow
+himself to be guilty of. The fact (which could not be concealed for
+long) that I was known to be addicted to the habit had taken even more
+living down than my painting, especially when they learned I was
+straight Yankee and not a "_We-we_."
+
+I drank hungrily at first--gulping glass after glass of the cool green
+liquid,--but stopped just as soon as I found my nerves were steadied and
+before the first stage of "elevation" was entered upon. (A seasoned
+drinker takes some time to reach the latter.) Unspeakably tired
+physically, I dropped off to sleep almost as soon as the absinthe
+relaxed the tension on my nerves. My rest was dreamless and
+untroubled--or comparatively so.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VIII
+
+                           I LEAVE THE ISLAND
+
+
+Rolling out of bed at the end of twelve straight hours of sleep, I found
+the Trades blowing fresh and strong again, and the air--after the
+soddenness of the past week--almost bracing. A plunge from the reef and
+a piping hot breakfast of fried clams and duck eggs--my first solid food
+in over thirty-six hours--bucked me up astonishingly. For almost the
+first time since I came to the island, I was out before ten o'clock--and
+well in hand, too. I had to be.... There was much that it was up to me
+to learn--and perhaps to act upon.
+
+That which I most desired to get some line upon was what Allen had been
+driving at in drugging Bell, or even, possibly, trying to poison him.
+What was _kor-klee_? (of which Rona appeared to be so terrified), and
+how did it act? were questions which I wanted especially to find the
+answers to. Was it a drug with a delayed action, following a preliminary
+stupefaction of comparative mildness? If so--no, there was nothing that
+could be done for Bell in that case; but, as a friend of his, I might do
+what I could to square the account later on. There was no lack of
+confidence _that_ morning. The reaction (which had eluded me completely
+the day before) was strong upon me, and I felt quite equal to any
+situation that might arise. I still blushed with shame at the thought of
+the contemptible figure I had cut from dawn to darkness of the day
+previous, but I was ready to make such atonement as was humanly
+possible. It was merely one of my "high" moods coming three or four
+hours ahead of time. I could have slung my colours with telling effect
+that morning, if there had been a chance for me to get at canvas.
+
+From one and another at Jackson's I gathered a fairly connected account
+of what had happened during the hours I was away on the leeward side of
+the island. The salient incidents of this I have already set down. None
+of them knew much of anything about _kor-klee_, but all agreed that Doc
+Wyndham would be sure to be an authority upon it. I dropped the subject
+for the moment, as I did not care to be pressed for an explanation of
+why I sought the information. The next day I slipped quietly over and
+had a long-distance interview with the learned Wyndham.
+
+The Doc had buried the _Cora's_ recruiting agent the night the schooner
+sailed, doing everything except the digging of the grave with his own
+hands. He had then returned home and shut himself in for his ten days of
+solitary quarantine. Solitary is hardly the word, though. Wyndham was
+far from being alone. Unlike Bell, he was a "spree drinker" rather than
+a speedy tippler. It was his habit (as he put it himself) to accumulate
+aridity during five or six months of the most rigorous teetotalism, and
+then blow up the dam and make the desert blossom like the rose under the
+stimulus of a generous flood. The breaking up of the Monsoon and the
+culmination of Doc Wyndham's biennial sprees were bracketed together in
+the Islands' list of seasonal disturbances.
+
+The desert was hardly due for its wetting at this time, but Wyndham,
+shaken by his unsuccessful fight to save the Agent's life, was loath to
+face the ordeal of the confinement ahead of him without company. So (as
+he explained after he had halted me a dozen paces from his door with a
+revolver flourished from the window) he called in the only dead sure
+plague-immune he knew--his old friend John Barleycorn--and raised the
+floodgates. The last thing he had impressed upon his brain before
+putting Barleycorn in charge was that he must rigidly confine his desert
+reclamation project to his own wastes. On no account was he to leave his
+own house, and, on no account, was anyone to be allowed to enter it.
+"Strict quarantine's the word," he had repeated to himself many times
+before he started drinking, and "Strict quarantine's the word" was the
+greeting--and the warning--I heard when I stepped into the shadow of the
+big breadfruit tree in front of his door.
+
+Solemn as an owl, Wyndham had been catching purple shrimps (or something
+of the kind) with a butterfly net and putting them under his microscope
+for examination. The big brass instrument was set upon a table pulled up
+to the window, while the shrimps were being harvested from the bosky
+depths of a patch of elephant-eared taro just outside. It was his
+favourite hunting and fishing preserve, that taro patch, the Doc had
+confided to me once, and the rarity and variety of the specimens
+captured there were rather remarkable. I don't remember many of them,
+but a sea-cow and a sabre-tooth tiger were among the commonest he had
+made slides of. Everything went under the microscope, of course. His
+captures were small in size during the first few days, starting with
+mere animalculae, but bulked steadily bigger as the desert blossomed to
+a jungle. It required a microscope with a great latitude of adjustment
+to handle such a wide range of subjects--but his was a most excellent
+instrument ... most excellent. Thus the Doc.
+
+Pretending to ignore my approach completely, Wyndham continued squinting
+through the eye-piece of his microscope until I crunched over the
+dead-line he had established. Then he flourished the revolver, barked
+out his quarantine formula, and asked what I wanted. "When I replied
+that I had come to inquire respecting the effects of a drug called
+_kor-klee_, his manner changed instantly. By some queer psychological
+process quite beyond me to fathom, he started at once speaking French,
+or rather what he thought was French. It was a weird jargon he had
+picked up in the Marquesas, where he had spent a year in research work
+when he first came to the Islands, and where (it was said) only his
+passion for collecting pearls--other people's--had prevented his winning
+to international fame for his all-but-successful efforts to isolate the
+bacteria responsible for the dread _fe-fe_ or _elephantiasis_.
+
+"_Kor-klee--mais oui, mon ami. Je comprend him fella kor-klee too much.
+Parfaitement. C'est la liqueur essential de la ficus--ficus--nom d'un
+chien--ficus what-dyucalum. C'est la aphrodisique le plus exquite, le
+plus fort, en tout le monde. Prenez vous comme ca--whouf!_"--and he made
+a great pretence of inhaling the contents of his shrimp net to show how
+the drug was administered for that particular purpose.
+
+"_Encore--quand--quand eat'm like kai-kai!_" he floundered on learnedly;
+"_quand eat'm kor-klee il fait--mak'm mort--dead--tres vite_."
+
+Here he interrupted himself to ask for which purpose it was I intended
+to use the stuff.
+
+"Neither," I denied stoutly. "I was merely asking out of curiosity."
+
+"_Parle that talkee a la marines_," he scoffed. "_Le meme chose talkee
+parle_ 'Slant' Allen. _Je voudrais connoce ou--ou in hell you fella
+catch'm kor-klee._ I'd like to get my fist on some of the blooming
+elixir myself," he trailed off into English.
+
+Save for that one lapse, Wyndham, in spite of my reiterated appeals
+that he speak straight English, rattled on in his impossible
+Franco-_bêche-de-mer_ from first to last. That which I have tried to
+render does it scant justice. Most of it was quite unintelligible. At
+the end of a rather trying half-hour (though it would have been amusing
+enough had I been less anxious for information that might throw light on
+the mystery I had set myself to unravel), about all that I had been able
+to gather was that _kor-klee_ was the name given in the Dutch Indies to
+several preparations made from the latex of the wild fig of New Guinea.
+A crude infusion of it was employed by the Papuans in stupefying fish in
+their rivers. More elaborated extracts were distilled for their narcotic
+and other properties. One of these, vapourized and inhaled, was much
+prized by the Rajahs of Malaysia as a quickener of the languid pulse, a
+restorer of youth. Another--the most powerful extract of all--was a
+deadly poison--very neat and incisive in its action.
+
+I also understood Wyndham to say that the use of the drug in any form
+acted as a great exciter of the cravings for alcohol and narcotics on
+the part of those addicted to these habits. "If that's the case," I said
+to myself as I turned home, "God pity poor old Bell's teetotal
+resolutions! It would have been hard enough without anything further in
+the way of a 'thust aggravata.' I'm afraid he'll be having to exchange
+rôles with 'Slant' after all--to let the latter be the 'soba Mate of a
+drunken Skippa.'" Now that I had a chance to think about it, I didn't
+have any great faith in Bell's ability to refrain from drink for any
+length of time--certainly for not more than a day or two at the outside.
+He'd probably see the thing through, I admitted, but not as a "soba
+Skippa."
+
+Turning over all I had picked up at the end of a couple of days, I felt
+that I could come pretty near to reconstructing in my mind those scenes
+of the drama of which there had been no witnesses save the actors
+themselves. Allen's infatuation for the girl had undoubtedly got the
+better of him the instant the turn of events suggested a plan which
+promised to give him undisputed possession of her. To this end he had
+plotted to get Bell off on a voyage from which there was no more than a
+negligible chance of his ever returning, while he himself remained
+behind to enjoy the spoils.
+
+Considering that Allen's plan was evolved upon little more than a
+moment's notice, there could be no question that it was laid with
+consummate cleverness and carried out without a hitch--save, of course,
+for that final fatal slip-up which undid all the rest. To make sure of
+Bell and disarm his suspicions, Allen had assured the American that he
+himself would also go on the _Cora_. That he had tried to poison Bell, I
+had my doubts. I had not learned enough of how the drug acted to make my
+speculations on that point of much use. At any rate, with Bell
+unconscious on the schooner, it had clearly been the Australian's plan
+to return to the beach and remain there until she sailed, at the turn of
+the tide. That the _Cora_ should get under way at that time had already
+been arranged between the unsuspecting Ranga and himself. The pretence
+that he had missed the schooner while engaged in getting his own and
+Bell's kits together would save his face with his friends on the beach.
+This latter consideration, it appears, was something the rascal never
+lost sight of. In the improbable event that Bell ever returned--but that
+bridge need not be crossed until it was in sight.
+
+Allen's cropper at the last jump was directly due to his cool assumption
+(natural enough, considering his success with South Sea ladies
+generally) that the girl, once Bell was out of the way, would fall into
+his lap like a ripe mango. That, and his long-curbed passion for her,
+led him to rush in search of Rona the moment he landed from his first
+visit to the schooner, and, missing her then, to return before the
+_Cora_ had got her anchor up. The consequences of his finding her in on
+this latter occasion I had seen something of myself. How that slip of a
+girl got the drop on the most notorious bad man in the Islands I could
+only conjecture. Probably, with Allen, it was the old story--prudence
+going out of one door as passion entered at the other. I didn't reckon
+that Rona had ever read the story of Delilah; yet I felt pretty
+confident that the point of that little Joloano _kris_ had found its way
+to the pulse of "Slant's" jugular some time after the girl's arm had
+gone round his neck in what he thought--for a second or two at
+least--was a warm embrace. Rona's uncanny faculty for getting away with
+everything she went after--from having her peacock shawl dry-cleaned to
+boarding a schooner which was all of "two jumps" beyond her reach--had
+greatly impressed me. And well it might have....
+
+Even allowing that Allen had not tried to poison Bell outright, the fact
+remained that he had played the worst kind of a low-down trick on the
+American in treacherously attempting to railroad the latter out of the
+way and deprive the girl of his protection. That much was plain, and it
+was dead against the shifty Australian. In "Slant's" favour was the game
+manner in which he had stood the gaff at the last, when Bell left the
+way wide open for him to return ashore without even going over the side
+of the plague-infested schooner. He had not hesitated an instant in
+staking his life in what he had very fairly characterized as the short
+end of a hundred-to-one shot. There must be redeeming qualities in a man
+who could do that, no matter how shot through with infamy his past
+record had been. It occurred to me as just possible that Bell's
+magnanimity had struck a responsive chord in Allen's sense of
+sportsmanship--that the latter was going to play whatever remained of
+that grim game on the square. If the _Cora_ was lost, or if Allen and
+Bell and the girl all died of the plague (one or both of which
+contingencies seemed practically inevitable), the whole slate would be
+wiped clean anyhow. If not--if the _Cora_ won through with any of those
+three surviving--some hint of what had transpired on the voyage would
+certainly be obtainable at Townsville, or whatever port the schooner
+succeeded in making. In any event, I told myself, it was up to me to get
+on to Australia at the earliest possible moment.
+
+The fact that my Exhibition would be sure to have opened in Sydney by
+the time I reached Australia, really had nothing to do with my decision.
+In spite of the bluff I had tried to put over on Bell, I had had no
+intention of leaving Kai for a number of months to come. Nor, even after
+I began getting ready to go, did I attempt to ignore the fact that there
+might be duties for me to carry out in Townsville, the performance of
+which would be more likely than not to interfere seriously with my
+freedom of action for a good deal longer than the art world of Sydney
+would be inclined to pay homage to my marines.
+
+No, my coming show had nothing to do with my resolve to hurry south,
+although, naturally, I fully intended to take it in if things shaped so
+as to make it possible. Since my daubs had been making good with the
+connoisseurs of Kai--men who knew at first hand the things I was trying
+to paint,--I had little fear that the more sophisticated critics of
+civilization would not fall for them. I hadn't any worry on that score.
+I knew I had been doing good work. But--well, an artist who isn't
+interested in the way his work will react on his fellow-beings is
+lacking in a very important stimulus to success.
+
+Kai manifested its usual sympathetic interest in my preparations for
+departure, but, with characteristic delicacy, asked no questions. Well
+off the steamer routes, and with only the most infrequent comings and
+goings of pearling and trading craft, the problem of reaching Australia
+with any dispatch seemed, at first, a hopeless one. For a while it
+looked like the best I could do would be to accept "Slim" Patton's
+kindly offer to run me over in his pearling sloop to Thursday Island,
+where I could count on getting a south-bound China-Australia liner
+inside of a fortnight. As Patton was known to be in bad for several
+little things at Thursday Island, his offer did more credit to his heart
+than to his head, and I was a good deal relieved when Jackson figured
+out a plan that promised to make it possible for me to reach my goal by
+another route. After thumbing a greasy sheet of Burns, Phillip sailings
+for the best part of an afternoon, the old outlaw suddenly announced he
+had found reason to believe that, with luck, a cutter getting away from
+Kai that night could intercept the Solomon-Australia packet at Samarai,
+off the easternmost tip of New Guinea. To be sure that the thing was
+done properly, he would take one of his own cutters and sail her
+himself. As my impedimenta consisted of little beyond a few changes of
+drills and ducks, my painting kit, and a case of absinthe, and as
+Jackson used neither paint nor absinthe and wore a flowered _sulu_ in
+place of ducks and drills, we had little difficulty in getting away on
+schedule.
+
+Jackson's carefully tabulated calculations--you can do that kind of
+thing in those latitudes when the southeast Trades are blowing steady
+and you know your boat--were only wrong by an hour. That is to say, we
+would have missed the _Utupua_ by something like that had we pushed
+right in to Samarai. Old "Jack," however, sighting a bituminous smear
+trailing off above the tufted tops of the coco palms that line the inner
+passage, promptly shook out all his reefs, hauled up four or five
+points, and headed away on a course calculated to converge with that of
+the outgoing steamer a couple of miles to seaward. It was only after an
+abrupt greening of the tourmaline depths of the passage we had been
+threading suggested a sudden shoaling that it occurred to him to unroll
+and study his chart.
+
+"Five 'undred fathom--three 'undred fifty fathom," he read laboriously
+as his tarry forefinger cruised along the tiny rows of dots and figures
+indicating soundings. "Three 'undred fathom--two 'undred fifty
+fathom--_one_ bloody fathom! By Gawd, W'itney, we're 'igh an' dry
+already! This bally chart says they's only one fathom uv water on this
+kerblasted coral patch, an' the cutter draws two feet mor'n that."
+
+But he never luffed her, never altered her course a fraction of a point.
+"More she 'eels the less she draws," he muttered philosophically,
+sitting down on the weather rail of the cockpit and starting to whittle
+at the end of a stick of tobacco with his clasp-knife. "Save a lot of
+wig-waggin' if we do pile up," he continued presently, rolling the
+shaved-off blackjack between his palms. "Ol' 'Choppy' Tancred never giv'
+the go-by to even a nigger dugout he could len' a han' to." Then he
+lighted his pipe, whoofed two or three whirling jets of blue smoke to
+leeward as he brought it to a proper draw, and settled comfortably back
+in puffing contentment. Ten minutes later he unrolled the chart again,
+produced a greasy stub of pencil from the band of his _koui_-leaf hat,
+and wrote with great care the letters "P.D." across the dotted expanse
+where curving lines of figure "1s," like the graphic representation of
+telegraph lines on a bird's-eye map, indicated six feet of water where
+the eight-feet-draught cutter had just crossed without a bump.
+
+"As I figger it," Jackson observed drily, rolling up the chart and
+tossing it down the companionway as a thing whose usefulness was
+ended,--"as I figger it, a bloke's only manifestin' proper conserv'tism
+w'en 'e marks as 'Position Doubtful' a reef that ain't tangibl' enuf to
+stop 'im w'en 'e 'its it." Then, presently, between puffs, as he
+stretched himself and sidled along to take the wheel as the cutter began
+to close the slowing steamer: "Wonder 'oo the bally cove'll be 'oo bumps
+a mis-charted reef w'en 'e thinks 'e's got four 'undred fathom uv brine
+'tween his keel an' the bottom uv the Pacific." The notorious inaccuracy
+of the South Sea charts is a continual source of amusement or
+wrath--according to whether a misplaced shoal or passage has spelt
+comedy or tragedy to him--for the man who sails their reef-beset waters.
+
+It was Captain Tancred himself who came tumbling down from the
+_Utupua's_ bridge to greet me as I clambered up the Jacob's ladder
+thrown over from the forecastle head. Hearing of him often before, this
+was the first time I ever set eyes on one of the best-loved characters
+in the South Pacific. He was a red-faced, blue-eyed, sandy-haired Scot,
+with a heart as big as his fist, and as soft as his voice was rough.
+Square himself as his own broad shoulders, and strictly law-abiding
+personally, he was credited with an amiable weakness for befriending
+every man who had run afoul of the statutes. I had heard them yarn by
+the hour at Kai of the way he had smuggled this one out of Australia,
+and that one into New Guinea; of how he had all but bumped South Head
+while standing-off-and-on in a "Southerly Buster" one night, on the off
+chance of picking up a jail-breaker, whose only claim upon Tancred had
+been that the latter had once before performed a similar service for the
+reprobate when he had forced his way out of the jug in Suva. Several of
+the push at Jackson's claimed actually to owe their lives to the bluff
+old Scot; many of them their liberty. "Choppy" Tancred--so called from
+his sun-washed red-brown mutton-chop side whiskers--was the nearest
+thing to a patron saint Kai ever had--that is, until the Rev. Horatio
+Loveworth hove up on their skyline some years later and converted the
+lot of them (just about) with the knuckles of his brawny fists.
+
+The last thing Jackson had said, as he steadied the ladder for me to
+swarm up the _Utupua's_ side, was to the effect that I ought to consider
+myself dead lucky to be stacking up with "Choppy" Tancred; "or,
+leastways," he qualified, "you would be if you was in any kind uv a mess
+'e could fish you out uv."
+
+"Don't give up hope, Jack," I chaffed back, clawing round a projecting
+ventilator; "I may land in a mess yet."
+
+"Then don't be forgettin' ther'll allus be a refooge for the errin' on
+the banks an' brays uv Kai Lagoon," he sang back, taking in the
+mainsheet as the cutter came up to the wind; "an' that 'Choppy'
+Tancred'll be the cove to give you a first leg-up on the way back
+there."
+
+Except for his very evident disappointment over the fact that I
+disclaimed any need of his help in getting ashore in Australia, Captain
+Tancred seemed not in the least put out over being stopped and boarded
+so high-handedly. He had carried many queer birds in his time, so that a
+man eccentric enough to take a case of drinkables with him on the
+_return_ trip from the Islands didn't worry him as much as it might have
+some others. He was also kindly charitable about my "exclusiveness" of
+evenings (when all normal beings expand and grow sociable at sea), and
+even good-naturedly tolerant of my weakness for having breakfast in my
+cabin. I made it up to him to the best of my ability in my "quickened"
+hours of the afternoon, and we became good friends.... Really good
+friends. I felt that I could count upon him in a pinch.
+
+The grounding of the company's Port Moresby steamer somewhere along the
+Barrier Reef was responsible for the fact that the _Utupua_, this
+voyage, had been ordered to pick up freight at both Cooktown and Cairns,
+instead of proceeding direct to Townsville on her regular schedule. This
+set her back two days, and brought us into the offing at Townsville
+twenty-four hours after--instead of twenty-four hours before--a
+sun-blistered, foul-smelling labour-recruiting schooner, with a dead
+Captain and a score or more of dying niggers, was brought to anchor off
+the Quarantine Station by the Mate, who, immediately the hook was let
+go, collapsed on the deck and went to sleep. The empty hulk of the _Cora
+Andrews_, swinging lazily to the turning tide, was one of the first
+things to catch my eye as the _Utupua_ steamed in and tied up to her
+buoy.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IX
+
+                         A GRIM TALE OF THE SEA
+
+
+I have often tried to figure just what effect on the succeeding train of
+events my earlier arrival in Townsville might have had. I have never
+come to any very definite conclusions in that connection. There were two
+or three things that were pretty well bound to happen, and if they
+hadn't come about one way, there is little doubt that they would have
+done so in another. Had I been there when the _Cora_ arrived, it is
+probable that I would have learned definitely at once (instead of
+somewhat tardily) that Bell had _not_ died of the plague. Certainly, on
+learning that fact, my impulse would have been to try to force Allen to
+an immediate showdown--to insist on his proving that the dope he had put
+in the American's whisky at Kai had not been the direct cause of the
+latter's death. Such a showdown would have been impossible to bring
+about at the time, however: for one reason, because Allen had been put
+into quarantine immediately, and, for another, because, completely
+played out by thirty-six hours at the wheel without relief, he had sunk
+into a sleep from which he had not rallied for over two days. Similar
+considerations would have prevented my seeing Rona. Besides being in
+quarantine she was in a state of raving delirium, which would have made
+it impossible for her to convey coherent information. Even Ranga,
+unaffected in mind and body though he was, I would hardly have been
+permitted to talk with when he landed, any more than I was two days
+later. No, everything considered, I fail to see where my earlier arrival
+would have made much difference in what happened. It must have been
+slated anyhow, I think--just bound to come off however the incidentals
+shaped.
+
+Still askance at what he rated as my temerity in making an open landing
+in Townsville, Captain Tancred had somewhat reluctantly granted my
+request for a boat to take me ashore as soon as the quarantine officials
+were through with the ship. I couldn't, of course, go off in the
+quarantine launch, but one of the doctors lingered a few minutes to tell
+me what he knew of the _Cora_. Although her captain had died twenty-four
+hours before the schooner anchored, his remains had not been buried at
+sea. This, it appeared, had been largely due to the protests of some
+sort of a Kanaka girl the Skipper had had with him. According to the
+Bo'sun's statement (fine upstanding fellow that looked like some kind of
+a Java man), she had gone plumb off her chump. Tried to knife the Mate
+first, and then plumped down by the Skipper's remains and threatened to
+stick the first man to touch it. The Mate, endeavouring to humour her,
+had not insisted on the burial--a reprehensible weakness on his part....
+Common prudence demanded that the dead on a plague ship should be
+scuppered as soon as the breath was out of their bodies. That is, with a
+white man; with a nigger it did no harm to anticipate that event by an
+hour or so--as long as you were sure the fellow was going to whiff out
+anyway.
+
+The funny part of it was, though (the Doctor went on), that the Skipper
+had not died of the plague at all. They had not, it was true, made any
+post-mortem in the rush of things; but it was certain, nevertheless,
+that his body had not displayed even the preliminary evidences of
+infection--no swelling of the glands of the groin or under the arms.
+Magnificent physical specimen the chap was, but plainly a man who had
+punished an ocean of booze in his day. And yet--confound it all!--there
+was no evidence that the fellow had drunk himself to death, either. Now
+if it had been the Mate--_he_ was exuding alcohol from every
+pore--absolutely reeking with it. Almost made a man drunk to breathe the
+air down to leeward of him. Seemed to have been on one glorious spree
+all the way from--somewhere up Solomon-way, he thought it was. Harried
+the niggers like a fiend, according to the Bo'sun. Clubbed three or four
+of them to death for not stepping lively enough to his orders. Lucky
+thing the Skipper had scuppered all but one of the guns the first day
+out. But not all the booze he had soaked up had effected the nerve of
+the Mate. Kept his head and his legs to the last, finishing up with a
+straight twenty-four-hour trick at the wheel. Said none of the crew knew
+the Barrier Reef as well as he did. Had one nigger holding a parasol
+over him, another playing a concertina, another waiting handy with a
+bottle of whisky, and a fourth standing by to block any rushes from the
+Kanaka girl with her knife. Funny thing it never occurred to him to have
+her disarmed and tied up, or shut up. Grabbed the bottle of whisky and
+started to brain the Bo'sun with it every time the latter tried to push
+in and relieve him at the wheel.
+
+A chap of terrible determination and iron nerves, that Mate was,
+observed the Doctor. But no wonder.... Think who he was! Allen! The
+Honourable Hartley Allen! The great Allen! Son of old Sir Jim Allen!
+Melbourne Cup winner! Best horseman in all Australia! Crooked as they
+make 'em--but how he could ride! Sent off to the Islands four or five
+years back for raising some sort of hell. His old Ticket-of-Leave had
+given him away when they came to strip him for a bath. No possible
+mistake about it. One of the doctors at the Quarantine Station had set a
+broken collar-bone for him once after he had fallen in a steeplechase at
+Coolgardie. Found the marks of the old compound fracture still humping
+up on the clavicle--the left one....
+
+It was not without difficulty that I brought the excited young medico
+round to speaking of Bell again. The astounding fact that he himself,
+with his own hands, had actually helped to put the great and only
+Hartley Allen to bed, was proving almost too much for him. It was
+certainly not less than three separate times that he assured me that it
+was his own silk pajamas that were encasing the limbs of the resurrected
+hero. He switched subjects reluctantly, rising to go to his waiting
+launch.
+
+"Nothing in the world the matter with the big fellow--not even too much
+drink," he said as he began shuffling his health sheets together. "He
+must have passed away from the sheer mental strain of the stunt he had
+tackled. Intense nervous strain--that was the one thing written all over
+the man. Face was starting to bloat a bit from the heat by the time I
+saw it first; but, even so, it still showed the lines of the most
+terrible mental suffering. Seemed to have gone out fighting hard to pull
+himself together--shoulders hunched up, finger-nails clenched deep into
+palms, lower lip bitten clean through."
+
+"May not those--those things you mention have been caused by physical
+rather than mental agony?" I asked, speaking very slowly to hide the
+agitation aroused by this significant intelligence. "Isn't that about
+the way a man would repress his feelings if he was racked with--with
+stomach cramps--if he had eaten something that disagreed with him?"
+
+"Possibly so," admitted the Doctor, with the air of a man weighing
+an idea that had not occurred to him before; "but somehow that
+wasn't the suggestion they carried to me--nor to any of us. Fact is,
+though, we didn't give the matter very much attention. That chap was
+dead--finished,--while the other white man and the girl--to say nothing
+of forty or fifty niggers--were alive. Then, with the excitement of
+finding we had the great Hartley Allen on our hands--and, on top of
+that, having the girl run _amuck_ and give us the slip complete,--there
+was enough else to think about. The only--"
+
+"The girl gave you the slip?" I interrupted. "How was that? You didn't
+mention it before."
+
+"Bolted and drowned herself in the creek," he replied; "or at least
+there's every reason to believe she drowned herself, though they haven't
+found her body yet. She wasn't going to leave the Skipper, even when we
+started to take his body away for burial.... And of course we couldn't
+allow her to leave the Station until her period of quarantine was over.
+Had to take her away from the body by main force. She fought the whole
+lot of us with tooth and nail and a wicked little curly-bladed dagger.
+Stood us all off, too, and looked like getting ready to use the knife on
+herself when the big Malay (who chanced to be there, but had taken no
+part in the shindy up to that moment) stepped in, caught her wrist and
+took the nasty little toy away from her.
+
+"The big yellow man seemed to have rather a quieting effect on the girl.
+Blind mad as she was, she didn't try to stick him. It seemed to steady
+her a good deal when he talked to her in her own lingo. She was panting
+like a cat coming out of a fit when we left her, but was quite over her
+raving--wasn't even sobbing aloud. She was coming out of her
+hysteria--getting rational again. Her eyes, though still wild and almost
+throwing off sparks of anger, were quite free of the crazy look. It
+looked like our trouble with her was about over, but, to be on the safe
+side, we locked her up in one of the 'mad' rooms. That was the last
+anyone has seen of her alive--or any other way, for that matter.
+
+"You wouldn't have believed the thing possible!" he ejaculated
+feelingly, turning back from the door and slapping the table
+resoundingly with his portfolio. "That room was made to confine
+dangerous lunatics in, and it had fulfilled its purpose, too--up to
+night before last. To make it perfectly secure, it had been constructed
+without windows--nothing but a two-by-two hole up against the
+twelve-foot-high ceiling admitted light and air. There were no beds or
+chairs to be broken up when the occupant had tantrums.... Just sleeping
+mats, a sheet, a blanket and a mosquito net. No more. Even the wash
+basin was brought in and taken out by the attendant.
+
+"In locking the girl in, no precautions were omitted except that of
+strapping her in a strait-jacket, and we had never resorted to that save
+in violent cases. The window--or rather air-hole--was so high and so
+small that it had never been considered worth while to put bars on it.
+But as it was the only conceivable way she could have got out (the
+attendant is absolutely trustworthy, and the key was not in his hands
+more than a minute or two anyway), we would have been forced to conclude
+that the girl had reached it with wings--had not we found the lower four
+or five feet of wall marked with the prints of the toes and balls of the
+bare feet which had apparently been violently projected against it. That
+led us to get a ladder and light and examine about the window more
+closely. For a foot or more below it the wall was splashed with blood
+and slightly scratched, where lacerated fingers had clawed at the narrow
+ledge.
+
+"It did not take us long to figure that, taking the whole length of the
+room to get going in, the girl had flung herself up the wall something
+in the way that a terrier will run six or eight feet up the side of a
+house for a ball or handkerchief fastened there. That's the only way we
+could account for the toe-prints on the wall, though it is quite
+possible that, after failing to pull off the trick in that fashion--it's
+a stunt that looks dead hopeless for anything but a monkey,--she managed
+it with a straight spring, high enough to get her fingers over the
+ledge. Even from there, not one woman in a million could pull herself
+up. But we had already remarked on the extreme wiriness of the girl (a
+regular human ape she was for agility), and so found it a bit easier to
+accept the evidence of our eyes. In some way or another she had managed
+it.
+
+"The air-hole opened out under the eaves of the sheet-iron roof," the
+Doctor went on, forgetting his waiting launch in the interest of the
+story, and seating himself again at the table. "It must have taken some
+jolly snaky wriggling to crawl through the hole, out over the eaves and
+on top of the roof; but she did it, else she could never have jumped
+across the big banyan, where we found some twigs broken at the point she
+hit, and some wisps of silk floss. The other side of that banyan--a
+hundred feet from the wall of the hospital--spreads until it comes to
+about fifteen feet from the station wall. The wall is ten feet high, has
+broken glass on the top of it, with three or four strands of barbed wire
+above that.
+
+"Swinging to the ground by a pendent air-root on the side she had landed
+in, the girl crossed under the tree--the marks of her bare feet showing
+plainly in the soft earth--and used a similar ladder with which to mount
+on the other side. To be sure of clearing the barbed wire, she had
+climbed to a firm perch fully twenty-five feet from the ground, and made
+her final jump from there. Luckily for her, the cane field on the other
+side of the wall had been flooded but a day or two before--though I
+don't doubt she would have jumped just the same if it had been to a
+cobblestone pavement.
+
+"We found the deep prints of her feet, knees and hands where she had
+sprawled on striking. Her tracks down to the edge of a sprouting row of
+seed-cane, and the marks where she had crawled up out of a deep
+irrigating ditch to the road, were all we had to indicate the direction
+she had taken. As she had seemed plumb daft about the dead Skipper, we
+figured that she had probably broken out with the idea of going to his
+grave, and perhaps making an end of herself there. If that was it, she
+failed. There were no signs whatever of her having been near the fresh
+mound we had tucked the big fellow away under. It was some distance away
+from the Station, and, in the night, it isn't likely she would have met
+anyone to ask the way of. The only grave she found was her own, and not
+a very restful one at that, I'm afraid.
+
+"We had noticed that she seemed to set great store by a big yellow shawl
+she wore--rather a fine old piece of Oriental work it looked, with a
+dragon or some other kind of wild animal embroidered on it. Well, when
+we found that lying on the bank of Ross Creek, just a bit inland of the
+town, we felt so sure that it marked the jumping-off place for her in
+more ways than one. For that reason, what search has been pressed since
+has been in the form of shooting alligators, and seeing if one of them
+appears to have enjoyed anything extra-special in the way of tucker
+lately."
+
+An impatient toot from his launch carried the Doctor to the door again,
+where he paused long enough to assure me for the third or fourth time
+that it would be most unlikely that permission would be granted me to
+see the Mate or the Boatswain of the _Cora_ until their spell of
+quarantine was over. If I was really anxious about it, he would gladly
+put in a word for me with the Chief. I would have to show good reason
+for my request, of course. Perhaps, if it chanced that I was able to
+shed any light on how the schooner came to get into such a mess--I cut
+him short by saying that I might call at the Quarantine Station when I
+came ashore a little later. What I knew about the sailing of the _Cora_
+from Kai happened to be the one thing I didn't care to confide to
+anyone--just yet. Asking the Mate to order my boat to stand by for me a
+few minutes longer, I went to my cabin to be alone while I turned the
+fresh developments over in my mind.
+
+I had been prepared to await the coming of the _Cora_ indefinitely. In
+fact, what I expected above anything else was that the final news would
+be a report that she had been found piled up on any one of a thousand
+reefs that spread their coral claws all the way from the Louisiades to
+the Great Barrier. And in case she did get through, I was quite prepared
+to learn that both of the white men and the girl had succumbed to the
+plague. But to be told that, after the schooner had avoided disaster,
+and all three of them the plague, that the two upon whom my interest and
+affection had centred were gone--dead,--was just a bit staggering. It
+was now up to me to determine upon a definite course of action, and,
+since it was now out of the question attempting to follow my first
+impulse of going to Allen at once and forcing a showdown, I wanted time
+to think.
+
+What the Doctor had told me of the way Bell appeared to have died had
+instantly reawakened my suspicions of Allen. Had the _kor-klee_, working
+with a recurrent effect, finally proved fatal? Or had Allen, perhaps,
+administered a second and stronger dose? He would have had a hundred
+opportunities to do that had he desired to. Rona's attacks on the Mate,
+indicating the deadliest hatred, seemed to prove that her first
+suspicions of him had not weakened during the voyage--more likely,
+indeed, had hardened to a certainty. The belief I had been entertaining
+that Allen had made up his mind to play the game out on the square was
+not very deeply grounded.
+
+My sense of personal loss in the passing of Bell and Rona was not a
+thing I cared to let myself dwell upon for the moment. There was no
+question that the news of Rona's death had shocked me even more than
+that of Bell's. Not that there was anything more between us than I have
+already told. I had never let myself think of her in terms of physical
+possession, though the sheer animal attraction of the girl was beyond
+anything I had ever experienced in a woman. But her appeal to the
+artistic side of me had been stronger even than that. Just as the thrill
+I felt at the first sight of her bathing in the pink-lipped bowl of the
+reef had made the very world itself seem more wonderful and beautiful,
+so now the depression that filled me on realizing that I was never again
+to have sight of her made the world seem emptier and drearier.
+
+Another thing: there was no denying that Bell, splendid fellow that he
+was, had shot his bolt. A real come-back with him was too much to
+expect. The most that could have been hoped for was that he would
+"finish in style," and that I was assured he had done, no matter in what
+agony of soul and body his brave spirit had taken flight. But Rona's
+bolt was still unsped. The girl had hardly begun to finger Life's
+bowstring. It was almost as hard to think of the flaming, soaring spirit
+of her as quenched, as it was to believe that the matchless perfection,
+the supple gracefulness of her body--_shooting alligators to see if any
+of them had been enjoying anything extra-special in tucker lately_! I
+could not pursue that line of thought any further. I agreed with the
+Doctor that the fact that the girl had parted with her beloved shawl
+indicated that she had reached a jumping-off place--a point where she
+had no further use for it. I could not picture her--living--without its
+amber-bright flame streaming about her limbs. The wonder was that she
+had not kept it for a shroud. As I came out upon the deck to go to my
+boat, the intermittent crack of rifle shots along the shore told me that
+the "search" had not been abandoned.
+
+Beyond deciding to go ashore and see if anything further could be
+learned, I had made no plans. It seemed that about the best I could do
+would be to wait in Townsville until Allen and Ranga were out of
+quarantine, and then let things shape as they would; but always assuming
+that, in case the former could not satisfy me he was innocent of Bell's
+death, I should do what I could to settle the reckoning with him. That
+would be my atonement--to Bell and to myself--for my sorry failure to
+"measure up" the day the _Cora Andrews_ came to Kai Lagoon.
+
+Captain Tancred, who had never quite settled it in his own mind how a
+man who openly admitted he had been living in the Kai colony for months
+would not have to be smuggled ashore on the quiet if he expected to
+avoid arrest in Australia, met me at the gangway.
+
+"Best to leave the luggage aboard, lad," he began genially; "then
+that'll be ain less thing ye'll hae to bother wi' if ye're haen' to cut
+an' run for it. If ye're not back ag'in by the time I'm gettin' awa',
+than I'll be sendin' it in for ye on the Company's launch. But ye'd best
+be hangin' on wi' me a bittie, an' tak' me to see them pictur's ye've
+been tellin' me aboot in Sydney toon."
+
+My pictures! The Exhibition had slipped my mind completely, driven out
+by the news of the _Cora_ and the anxieties that had followed in its
+train. I had told Captain Tancred something of my coming show, but had
+hardly convinced him. He was far too considerate to say outright that he
+didn't believe me, but my Kai origin could not be ignored. If I was to
+have an exhibition of paintings in Sydney, then why was I stopping off
+in Townsville? On that point--since I didn't want to go into the _Cora_
+affair with anyone until I knew how things were going to shape--I had
+hardly been able to reassure the old sceptic. I might be an artist all
+right enough--I don't think he had any serious doubts on that
+score,--but I must also be some kind of a crook. He was plainly
+convinced in his own mind that I was trying to slip into Australia on
+the quiet, and was rather hurt because I would not take him into my
+confidence and let him help me.
+
+But why not take in the Exhibition? In nine days, with any luck in
+connections, I could go to Sydney and back, with a day or two to spare.
+Even if the trip ran over that time, it was not likely that the man I
+wanted to see would be getting away immediately.... And, in any event, I
+would know how to find him, whether in Australia or the Islands.
+Further, it could not but have a salutary effect on my nerves to get
+quite beyond the attraction I felt that Quarantine Station would have
+for me if I lingered within physical reach of it. Nothing but absinthe,
+and more absinthe, and then more absinthe, could be depended upon to
+relieve my nerves once they were fully wrought up, as I knew they must
+be if I remained in Townsville in enforced inaction, fretting my heart
+out with impatience. And too much absinthe would mean only one
+thing--that I would begin the day on which I was to meet "Slant" Allen
+for a final showdown in a condition of mind and body precisely similar
+to that in which I had entered upon another day of accursed memory--and,
+doubtless, with equally shameful consequences to myself.
+
+These thoughts flashed through my mind in a fraction of the time I have
+taken to set them down. My reply to Captain Tancred followed close upon
+his suggestion that I leave my luggage aboard.
+
+"I think I'll be going through to Sydney with you, Captain--or at least
+as far as Brisbane," I said, motioning to the steward to bring up the
+bags he had already stowed in the waiting boat. "I know no one whose
+opinion on my daubs I'd rather have than yours. But I'll pay my little
+visit ashore here just the same, counting on you to get my kit landed in
+the unlikely event of my not being aboard again when you get under way
+this afternoon."
+
+I was not long in coming to the conclusion that there was nothing new to
+be learned ashore, that is, with respect to what had happened on the
+_Cora_ in the course of her voyage from Kai. This was not because the
+story was not on everyone's lips.... Quite to the contrary, indeed, the
+town was agog with the dramatic suddenness of the arrival of the plague
+ship and its astonishing sequel. But as no one had been allowed to see
+any of the survivors, such accounts as were current were only those
+which had been passed out by the quarantine people, and about all the
+latter knew I felt that I had already gathered that morning from the
+Doctor on the _Utupua_. Bell's name was not mentioned, and not a man I
+talked with knew that the dead white man had been the Skipper.
+
+For Townsville--for all of Australia--the overwhelming appeal of the
+event was in the fact that a black-birding schooner had been brought
+into port by an ex-Ticket-of-Leavester, who had _volunteered_ to risk
+his life in an attempt to save those of half a hundred plague-stricken
+niggers. That one circumstance in itself was wonderful enough, but when,
+on top of it, the announcement was made that the hero was none other
+than the former idol of sporting Australia, the Hon. Hartley Allen,
+popular imagination was stirred as rarely ever before. What man in all
+the Antipodes had not envied Allen, the supremely successful owner,
+rider and sportsman? What woman had not been intrigued by the romantic
+dash of him? What boy had not dreamed of growing up in his image?
+
+Townsville, delirious with the dramatic appeal of this splendid act on
+the part of a man who had tasted the wine of adulation as he had drunk
+the dregs of infamy, was but a microcosm of Sydney and Melbourne,
+Brisbane and Adelaide, to all of which the news had been flashed by
+wire. Every town and hamlet, from Cairns to Hobart, from Perth to
+Woolongong, were dispatching telegrams of congratulation to a man who
+was still muttering in his drunken sleep behind the walls of the
+Townsville Quarantine Station. Sydney was competing with Brisbane for
+the honour of being the first to bestow the "Freedom of the City" upon
+the man both of them had had some share in transporting. A special from
+Sydney to the local sheet, hinted darkly of what might happen to the
+misguided official who attempted to revive any of the old charges
+against the man "whose sublime courage had emblazoned his name upon the
+tablets of undying fame.... A hand that is raised today against the Hon.
+Hartley Allen is a hand that is raised against the noblest traditions of
+Australia."
+
+I had to elbow through half of a densely packed block to read that last
+on the bulletin in front of the _Trumpet's_ office. The mob cheered
+wildly as the message was chalked up on the blackboard--cheered the
+stirring sentiment and growled ominously at the suggestion that any hand
+would dare to be raised against the Hon. Hartley Allen and the noblest
+traditions of Australia. As I elbowed my way out again, I wondered just
+what the Charters Towers miner, who had manifested his exuberant
+approval by slapping me on the back, would have thought--nay, what he
+would have done--had he known that the hand fingering the guard of the
+revolver in the right side-pocket of my shooting jacket (I had brought
+the useful little weapon on the off chance that it might be needed) was
+rather more likely than not to be raised against at least one of those
+cherished institutions he was so anxious to uphold.
+
+I began to perceive that the line between dealing out retributive
+justice to a blackguard of a murderer and assassinating a national hero
+in cold blood might easily become too hairlike in its tenuousness for a
+red-eyed Australian jury to admit the existence of it. For it was
+nothing less than a national hero that "Slant" Allen was becoming, even
+before he roused from the heavy sleep which had held him ever since he
+collapsed over the wheel as the _Cora_ came to anchor. That
+circumstance, I told myself, complicated my task beyond measure, though
+I couldn't, of course, allow it to make any difference in my program in
+the event Allen wasn't able to satisfy me that he was guiltless of the
+murder of my friend. But if things should transpire which might make
+Allen anxious to put _me_ out of the way--if he, not I were the
+attacking party--that would simplify things greatly. I began to ponder
+that felicitous possibility.
+
+Would not the fact that I was the only living man (Ranga, whatever he
+had seen or heard, would hardly need to be reckoned with as a witness)
+who knew the actual facts about the way he had "volunteered" to join the
+_Cora_ at Kai awaken a desire in Allen's lawless breast to seal my mouth
+for good and all, now that he had so much to lose by the truth's coming
+out? The feeling that such would be the case--that the dizzily mounting
+fortunes of the ex-beach-comber would ultimately impel him to seek me
+out for an understanding--grew on me more and more as I turned the
+situation over in my mind, until at last it became a certainty, against
+which I felt justified in preparing as a boxer trains for a definitely
+scheduled prize fight.
+
+I did not reckon it worth while to call at the Quarantine Station, which
+was some distance from the town and not easy to reach. I did, however,
+just before I put off to the ship, meet the young doctor with whom I had
+talked in the morning. The only thing which he was able to add to what
+he had already told me was in connection with the question I had raised
+respecting the cause of Bell's death. To be certain that he had been
+correct in stating that the latter had not died of plague, he had made a
+special inquiry. In response to this he had been shown a slide made from
+a smear they had taken of the late Skipper's blood. The bacteriologist
+had seen to that immediately the body was landed. It showed no traces
+whatever of plague bacilli. I could be quite assured on that point. The
+Chief was unwilling to hazard an opinion as to what the real cause of
+the man's death might have been. He seemed rather to regret that he had
+failed to order a post-mortem. Allen was still sleeping heavily, but
+would be right as a trivet beyond a doubt as soon as he woke up and gave
+them a chance to sweat some of the alcohol out of his hide. Pulse steady
+as a church.... Temperature a shade sub-normal. Marvellous
+constitution.... Wonderful fellow altogether. Any word of the girl? No,
+nothing. Ten pounds reward had been offered for the recovery of her
+body, or any recognizable part of it. Search was still going on, and he
+pointed across to the opposite foreshore, where a couple of spindling
+Hindu coolies--evidently sugar plantation contract hands--were earnestly
+engaged in performing "_hari-kiri_" upon a plethoric 'gator they had
+just bagged and towed to the beach.
+
+The Doctor was already beginning to look ahead. Did I fancy Allen would
+be able to wangle it so as to get an entry in for the Melbourne Cup in
+the short time that remained before that classic was run? Entries closed
+some time ago, of course. He'd have to square it with the stewards some
+way. They might make a special exception, seeing who Allen was, and what
+he had just done. Any horse with his colours would carry a barrel of
+money, just out of sentiment if nothing else. Did I think he would
+wangle an entry?
+
+"No," I replied, stepping down into my boat. "No, I'm afraid the chances
+are all against it." My mind had been torn with doubt over a number of
+things that day.... It was a relief to be asked to express an opinion on
+a matter respecting which I had no doubt.... Not a shred of it.
+
+Captain Tancred welcomed me back to the _Utupua_ with a significant
+grin. "So ye didna find the outlook ashore to yer likin' lad?" he boomed
+boisterously, thumping me on the back. "Weel, dinna ye mind, since ye
+wasna nabbed. I'll be findin' a wa' to slip ye aff in Sydney sae they
+wan't be puttin' nose to yer trail till ye're clean awa'." The look on
+the old boy's face was a study when, a few days later, after the tugs
+had nosed his ship into her berth at the Circular Quay, I stalked
+brazenly off down the gangway, with no more regard for the two Bobbies
+guarding the dock gate than they had for me. He had exacted two promises
+from me before he let me go: one, that I was to take him to see my
+pictures, and the other, that I would not fail to let him know if there
+ever came a time when he could be of Service to me.... "Real sarvice,
+lad; you'll be twiggin' wha' I mean." I gave both promises freely, just
+as I kept them later--yes, both of them.
+
+As I had trunks, with all the common accessories of civilization, stored
+at the _Australia_, my transformation from a beach-comber to a fairly
+correct imitation of a comfortably heeled artist was the matter of but a
+few hours. My appearance at the Exhibition could not have been better
+timed. The affair had been extremely well handled from the first. I had
+been sending pictures to Sydney from all parts of the South Seas for the
+last eighteen months, packing them up as completed and getting them off
+whenever opportunity offered. Two or three had been lost, but, on the
+whole, I reckoned the plan safer than trying to take them round with me
+in one lot, at the risk of losing the bunch.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X
+
+                            ART AND SUSPENSE
+
+
+Nothing had been further from my mind than an Australian exhibition. I
+cared little for the provincial approbation of the Antipodes, and I was
+hardly ready for Paris--not quite yet. It was only at the reiterated
+requests of friends (two of them were young Australian artists I had
+known in my student days in Paris), to whom I was under real obligations
+for their kindness in receiving and storing my pictures as they dribbled
+into Sydney, that I finally gave consent to a public showing. In doing
+this, I had stipulated particularly that they were to take all the
+troubles and responsibilities of the affair, and that under no
+circumstances was I to be expected to appear in person--unless, of
+course, it suited my convenience and inclination at the time.
+
+As I have said, the affair had been most intelligently handled from the
+first. There had not been enough of my canvases comfortably to fill the
+wing of the big New South Wales Government Museum and Art Gallery which
+was available for exhibitions, but my friends, rather than pull the show
+off at a less pretentious and worse lighted gallery, had added enough of
+their own pictures to relieve the coldness of otherwise blank walls.
+These were also South Sea marines--it was a straight seascape show
+throughout,--but more or less conventional in inspiration and execution.
+Benchley might have been painting marine backgrounds for an aquarium, so
+faithfully did he labour to reproduce every detail of jutting coral
+branches and floating seaweed. Crafts, on the other hand, had fallen
+early under the influence of Turner, and persisted in bulling the yellow
+ochre market by drenching his Great Barrier Reef seascapes with such a
+flood of golden light as was never seen save at the head of the Adriatic
+and now and then on the coasts of Tripoli and Algeria.
+
+I would hardly characterize my own work as a compromise between these
+two extremes.... It was _not_ that, though I _was_ less of a slave to
+form than Benchley, and by no means so emancipated from it as Crafts.
+Rather, I should say, I was striving, independent of either classic or
+contemporary influence, to paint such depth, warmth and atmosphere into
+my tropical seascapes as would make them convey an _intenser_ suggestion
+of reality. I did not expect water spaniels to pay me the subtle
+compliment of trying to gambol in my breakers, nor children to try to
+launch their toy sailboats in my lagoons.... Benchley's "colour
+photograph" effects were more likely to attain to those distinctions
+than my comparatively impressionistic sketches. What I was striving for
+was an effect that would compel some such comment as old Jackson had
+made the first time he stood off and conned my "Swells and
+Shells"--"Gawd bly'me, that's _it_! That water's wetter 'n a swept deck,
+an', s'elp me Mike, but I c'n bloomin' near sniff them bloody clams!"
+
+Very naturally, then, since the sea was what I was painting, the
+impressions of anyone who didn't know the sea as intimately as did my
+beach-combing cronies of Kai wasn't going to worry me much. The opinions
+of men who knew less about the subject of my pictures, and more about
+how pictures in general were painted, didn't strike me as anything that
+counted very seriously. Nevertheless when, at Brisbane on the voyage
+south, I got the Sydney papers with the account of the opening of the
+show, it was a good deal of a satisfaction to find that my work appeared
+to have got over with the art critics. These had, of course (since they
+were denied Jackson's facility of expression), to confine themselves to
+the jargon of their kind. It was plain, however, that they had been
+favourably impressed, and were doing the best they could with their
+comparatively restricted vocabularies. Mere city dwellers, too, most of
+them, one had to allow for their limited capacity of appreciation for
+something--the sea--which they knew only from other pictures. But even
+allowing for that, it was reassuring to find that they were coming
+across so whole-heartedly. Such capsules of praise as they had in stock
+were scattered with lavish hands for whoso would to swallow. "The soul
+of the sea palpitates through every canvas," said the _Herald_; "you
+leave the gallery with the tang of blown brine fresh in your nostrils,"
+said the _Telegraph_; "Australia is honoured with having the first
+chance to see this brilliantly distinctive work," said the illustrated
+_Australasian_, and promised four full pages of reproductions of the
+"gems of the collection" in its next issue. The young lady (I judged she
+was young) who was on the job for the Melbourne _Age_ gushed
+breathlessly for a column and a half. This was a sample: "In
+'Mother-of-Pearl' he has woven with a warp of sunbeams and a woof of
+rainbow--a shimmering brocade of exultantly sentient brightness!"
+Capsules of praise, every one of these; but they were from the top shelf
+beyond a doubt, and the fact that they had been reached for indicated
+that at least something of my message had dribbled over the frames.
+
+The _Bulletin_ had done rather better than the others in commissioning
+for the occasion an "art critic" who (as transpired in the course of his
+half-page article) had sailed his own sixty-footer to Auckland and back.
+He, at least, had met the sea on more intimate terms than was possible
+through Sunday mixed-bathing at Coogee and Manley (with occasional
+ferryboat passages, about the limit the others had gone, I reckoned).
+Said he, in speaking of "The Seventh Son of a Seventh Son": "The beat of
+the eternal sea was behind every slash of the brush with which this
+Franco-American wizard of light and colour painted that rolling mountain
+of water. I felt my fingers involuntarily clutching at the spokes of the
+wheel to bring her up to meet the menace of that curling crest. I forgot
+where I was ... I almost felt the heave of a deck beneath my feet...."
+
+I rather liked that, I must confess; though perhaps it didn't give me
+quite the double-barrelled thrill of "Heifer" Halligan's comment when I
+sent for him to pass judgment on that same picture before the paint of
+my finishing touches upon it was dry. A month before, as I have already
+mentioned, I had given the "Heifer" a pretty severe pummelling with the
+four-ounce gloves, and, like the good sport he was, to show that there
+was no hard feeling on the score of his battered optics, he had
+volunteered to sail me in his sloop to Tuka-tuva (the reef on which Bell
+lost the _Flying Scud_, it may be recalled) so that I could make some
+close-range studies of hard-running waves at the point of breaking. And,
+just to show that there was no hard feeling on _my_ part over the wallop
+below my belt with which the "Heifer" had finally brought the bout to a
+close, I accepted. The studies had been made--just a few slashes on
+oil-cloth with a rather useful waterproof paint I had mixed specially
+for "sloppy" stunts like that--with my shivering anatomy lashed to the
+_Wet-Eyed Susy's_ bowsprit, while the "Heifer" tacked back and forth
+just beyond the line where the pull of the shoaling reef, dragging at
+their bases, let the green-black tops of the combers tumble over in a
+thunderous roar. As he was really taking a good deal of a chance of
+losing his handy little pearler, if nothing else, it was only right that
+the "Heifer's" request for a first look-see at the completed picture
+should have the call.
+
+He studied it in silence for a minute or two, legs wide apart and his
+bullet head cocked judicially to one side. Then his fine teeth were
+bared in a broad grin and he vented a throaty chuckle of amused
+admiration. Said he: "Mister Whitney, that hulkin' ol' lalapalooser
+there looks like he has all the kick behint him of that bally wallop on
+the solar plexus you floored me with the other day." Not even the Sydney
+_Bulletin's dilletante_ yachtsman could do quite as well as that--from
+my standpoint, at least. But of course I had a weakness for the Kai
+viewpoint.
+
+The Exhibition had been opened early in the week--the usual affair of
+the kind, "Under the Patronage and in the Presence of His Excellency,
+the Governor General and Lady X----," and a long list of specially
+invited guests. Amiable old Lord X---- had made one of the happy little
+speeches for which he was famous. Then they had all had tea and a look
+at the pictures. This inevitable formal session out of the way, the show
+was opened to the general public. Under the stimulus of the
+astonishingly enthusiastic press, the public had come through beyond all
+expectations. For the next three days the crush at the gallery was, as
+the _Bulletin_ had it, like a "bargain day rush at _Morden's_." On
+Friday, it was advertised, Sir Joseph Preston, R.A., a very
+distinguished English artist visiting in Australia, had consented to
+speak at the Exhibition on "The Painter with the New Method and the New
+Message." This was the day of my arrival in Sydney. It did not occur to
+me at first just who the subject of the discourse was to be. When it
+finally came home to me, I began speeding up my transformation process
+at once. By dint of rushed valeting and dressing, I just managed to
+reach the gallery as Sir Joseph was getting under way.
+
+I won't endeavour to set down his speech, not even in outline. It was
+highly complimentary from first to last--and not even condescending,
+which was as surprising as pleasing when one considered how lofty an
+eminence Sir Joseph occupied in the art world. One thing I was just a
+bit disappointed about, though, was that the speaker seemed to assume
+that the pictures on exhibition represented my ultimate expression, the
+best I could do, or could be expected to do; whereas I knew that I had
+hardly got my foot well planted on the first rung of the ladder. I
+regretted without resenting this. I hadn't painted my hopes and
+ambitions into the pictures, so how was Sir Joseph Preston, more than
+anybody else, to see what I was driving at? I rather wanted to tell him
+about it, though. I hadn't talked with an artist of the old boy's
+calibre since I was in Paris, and not often there.
+
+I was just screwing up my nerve to push in and introduce myself, when
+Benchley pounced upon me with a joyous whoop and did the thing as a
+matter of course. Totally oblivious of the widening circle of wondering
+cackle that arose as the news of my unexpected, and not undramatic,
+appearance spread outward through the jam, I held forth to the beaming
+Royal Academician on the things that had been passing through my mind.
+The great man fired as though he had been of tow and my words--my
+ideas--were a torch laid to the inflammable mass of him.
+
+"Magnificent! Perfectly ripping!" he exclaimed with enthusiasm; "but
+what a shame I didn't know that ten minutes ago so that I could have
+told them! By Jove, I'll tell them now! Better yet--jolly good idea;
+_you_ tell them. Just the things you've been telling me."
+
+Benchley, Crafts and my other sponsors descended upon me like a pack of
+hounds at those words, and the first thing I knew I had been hustled up
+onto their little dais, and Sir Joseph was introducing me as "a
+gentleman who can make a few pertinent additions to my late remarks."
+
+I hadn't been called upon for a speech since I won the middle-weight
+boxing championship of Harvard in my Junior year, and speaking was by no
+means my long suit even in those days. I bucked up and went through it
+now though, just as I did on that first occasion. It's no very difficult
+thing to get away with when you know what you want to say--and have the
+crowd with you. I spoke briefly, but very earnestly--very much to the
+point, too, I think. When the crowd had quieted down a bit, tea was
+served. The next morning, when I read the papers in bed, it was to
+discover that I had become a fully fledged--or perhaps maned is the
+proper word--lion.
+
+In one of those same papers there was an interesting item of news about
+another lion. The special representative the _Herald_ had rushed to
+Townsville immediately the news of the _Cora Andrews_ affair had been
+received, wired that the Hon. Hartley Allen, replying from the
+Quarantine Station to a note the correspondent had addressed him there,
+announced definitely that it was his intention to pay a visit to his old
+home town of Sydney. He would leave by the first steamer sailing after
+the doctors had certified him free of the danger of plague infection.
+
+That was good news. The best I could have hoped for. It confirmed my
+growing belief that I was not going to have to do much, if any, seeking
+in order to meet my man. And it was a hundred to one that the doctor
+with whom I had talked on the _Utupua_ had told Allen of the
+conversation as soon as the latter came out of his long sleep, I was
+even inclined to the opinion that his decision to go south as soon as he
+could had been influenced by a desire to find out once and for all what
+attitude I was going to take toward him. This was all to the good. There
+was no need of my hurrying back to Townsville now. I could stay in
+Sydney and enjoy my triumph while watching that of the Hon. Hartley
+Allen develop. With a lighter heart than I had known since the rumble of
+the _Cora's_ anchor chain awakened me on that day of hateful memory in
+Kai, I tumbled out of bed, took a cold bath, and went down to the
+dining-room for breakfast--the greatest burst of early matutinal energy
+I had shown in years.
+
+The avidity of the interest of the public in the Hon. Hartley Allen
+increased day by day as the time approached for the hero to come south.
+All of the important papers had special men on the job in Townsville,
+and every scrap of news bearing the least relation to the man of the
+hour was instantly put on the wires and rushed into print. Save for that
+one announcement that he intended visiting Sydney, Allen himself gave
+out nothing. The correspondents had to confine themselves to reports of
+his continued improvement in health, as passed out to them by the
+doctors, and to speculation--columns of it--as to what effect Allen's
+return might be expected to have upon racing. His elder brother--Sir
+James, who was now in England--had allowed Hartley's stable to run down
+a good deal after the latter had been shipped off to the Islands. There
+were a few good horses left after the best of the string had been sold
+to pay off debts, and these would form a nucleus which could not fail to
+develop quickly into a factor to be reckoned with in the meets of next
+season. There was no limit to the discussion of this phase of the
+affair, Melbourne and Sydney racing experts devoting even more space to
+it than the special men in Townsville.
+
+Of the story of the _Cora Andrews_ there was nothing new whatever being
+brought out. If Allen was telling the doctors at the Quarantine Station
+anything, it must have been in confidence, for these professed to have
+learned nothing further every time the correspondents pressed them for
+details. The schooner herself, it was reported, had broken from her
+mooring during a gale and been driven upon the beach of Cleveland Bay,
+some miles from the town. A hole had been stove in her bow and it would
+be impossible to get her off before considerable repairs were carried
+out. As she had not been disinfected since the removal of the plague
+victims, there would probably be some delay about the repairs,
+especially as the question of her ownership was in doubt. She had
+belonged to the man who sailed her in the labour-recruiting trade, and
+he was dead. So was the Skipper who had taken her over in the
+Louisiades. It looked like the Hon. Hartley Allen had the most valid
+claim to her, but that was a matter to be adjusted by the courts in any
+event. In the meantime, the schooner, as she was lying in fairly quiet
+water, was probably safe until the next gale. Thus the papers.
+
+When Allen finally came out of quarantine it transpired that he would
+have a wait of three days on his hands before there was a steamer
+departing for the south. The delay was unavoidable, although an
+enthusiastic Sydney paper had suggested that the Admiral commanding the
+Australian Naval Station should detach a gunboat to bring the hero home.
+Allen, it appeared, had actually tried to avoid meeting the newspaper
+men, and consented to do so finally only on the condition that he would
+not be expected to give out anything in the way of an interview in
+respect to his past, present or future. As they had no alternative in
+the matter, the correspondents accepted the ultimatum, but only--as most
+of them confessed--in the hope of getting it modified when action was
+joined. They were doomed to disappointment.
+
+Allen received them on the veranda of a house that had been put at his
+disposal by a prominent local shipping man--a detached bungalow in the
+grounds of the latter's home on the outskirts of the town. They reported
+him looking rather soft--a good two stone heavier than his former riding
+weight. He was heavily browned from the tropical sun, showed a tinge of
+yellow--doubtless from malaria and _dengue_,--and his face was deeply
+lined about the eyes and mouth. He looked to have aged rather more than
+the five years of his absence: but life in the Islands was hardly the
+rest cure most Australians fancied it. No, not by a long shot.
+
+Except for his refusal to tell anything whatever of the story of how he
+had brought the plague ship through the Great Barrier Reef, Allen had
+been very courteous and agreeable to the pressmen. They all agreed that
+he was in good fettle--quite full of beans. Indeed, it was Allen who did
+all of the interviewing. Persistently refusing to answer any questions
+about himself, he was avid of interest concerning all that had happened
+in the racing world during his absence. What were the real facts behind
+the breakdown of the Colchester filly after she had won the Victoria
+National so handily? Who was that colt _Ballarat Boy_ out of?--the one
+that had upset all the dope in the spring meet at Adelaide. Were Tod
+Sloan and Skeets Martin still piling up wins in England? What was the
+secret of their success? Was there any chance of these or any other of
+the Yank jockeys coming to Australia?
+
+Answering such questions as these for an hour was the way that bunch of
+high-salaried feature writers interviewed the Hon. Hartley Allen. And
+when, as one of them put it in somewhat mixed simile, they were "pumped
+dry as a last year's dope sheet," the hero announced that the interview
+was over.
+
+Disappointed in their endeavours to pry any pearls from the oyster
+into which Allen (for reasons best known to himself) had metamorphosed
+himself, the correspondents made the best of a bad job by playing up
+the modesty of the man they had been sent a thousand miles or so to
+interview. Modest was an adjective that--in the light of what most of
+them knew of Allen's past--it hadn't occurred to any of them to use
+before. Now, however, they made up for lost time. The modest hero did
+this, or the modest hero said that.... There was modesty in the way he
+stroked his chin, in the shrug of his shoulders, in the way he crossed
+and uncrossed his legs when sitting. His habit of looking sideways
+when speaking was rated as a sign of modesty; so was the trick of
+stroking his cheroot between thumb and forefinger as he smoked.
+_Modest_--_hero_--those words became permanently wedded in my mind
+during the week that I was reading leaders written with them for an
+inspiration, the report of sermons preached with them as a text. I
+cannot hear the one of them to this day without thinking of the other.
+_Modest hero!_ In the estimation of the public "Slant" Allen, whom I had
+always thought of as the most egotistic man I had ever known, remained
+that to the--until public estimation ceased to interest him.
+
+There was one little item of news telegraphed from Townsville which I
+read with a good deal of grim amusement. The day before his departure
+Allen was given some kind of a send-off in the Town Hall. As he was
+riding down the main street on his way to this affair, a man ducked
+under the rope holding the crowd back at the curb, rushed at the open
+carriage and aimed a blow at the breast of the hero with a knife. No
+whit perturbed, the latter had coolly deflected the thrust by striking
+up the assailant's elbow with his left hand. Then, seizing the ruffian's
+wrist with his right hand, he had brought it sharply down on the edge of
+the carriage door, shattering the bones and causing the knife to fall
+from the relaxed fingers to the pavement. Infuriated by the dastardly
+attack, the crowd had set upon the would-be assassin, who was only saved
+from being mauled to death through the interference of none other than
+Allen himself.
+
+The correspondents were much impressed, not only by the behaviour of the
+generous-hearted hero in intervening to save the life of the man who had
+just tried to take his own, but also--and especially--by a curious
+little circumstance in connection therewith. It was observed, in short,
+that, while Allen had defended his own body most effectually with his
+bare hands, as soon as he saw that the man who had attacked him was on
+the verge of being killed by a bloody-minded mob, quite beyond police
+control, he whipped out a revolver and used the menace of it to clear a
+space around the trampled body of his late assailant. The correspondents
+all thought that was rather fine; indeed, I was inclined to think so
+myself.
+
+Allen had flatly refused to lodge a complaint against the man who had
+tried so desperately to knife him, and even declined to help the police
+in their attempt to identify the fellow. "Just an old Island affair, the
+big-hearted hero had explained with a careless laugh, as he turned on
+his way to receive the Golden Key symbolizing the Freedom of the Queen
+City of Northern Queensland." That was the way the _Herald_ man had it.
+
+At the Police Station the prisoner was recognized at once as a man named
+Saunders, who had been convicted of a series of bullion robberies in the
+Kalgoorlie gold fields of Western Australia some years previously.
+Because of his diabolical practice of throwing red pepper and vitriol to
+blind his victims, he had gained the sobriquet of "The Squid." He had
+escaped after serving but eighteen months of his twenty-five-year
+sentence and made his way across the "Never-Never" to Port Darwin, where
+all trace of him was lost for the time. He was supposed to have slipped
+away to the Islands. This was confirmed a few months later, when a
+boatload of out-bound placer miners were held up and robbed of the
+fruits of their season's work in the Fly gold fields of New Guinea. Even
+if one of them, who had once been in Western Australia, had not
+identified Saunders, the fact that a jar of sulphuric acid had been
+thrown into the midst of the miners would have connected "The Squid"
+with the crime beyond a doubt. Australia had but fragmentary record of
+his later crimes, but he was known to have been mixed up in a number of
+pearl robberies in and about Thursday Island. He had continued to
+practise his vitriol-throwing trick (varying it occasionally with a
+fiendishly original stunt with some native concoction), and was still
+known as "The Squid." How long he had been lying low in Australia, or
+why he ventured there, he refused to tell; neither would he offer any
+explanation of his savage attack upon the hero of the hour. All he had
+said in the latter connection was: "'Slant' 'll twig why I took a flyer
+at returning the pig-sticker to him--it was his onct."
+
+I understood at once that the root of "The Squid's" grudge against Allen
+struck back to that affair of the old pearl pirate's missionary-reared
+daughter--a copper-haired, ivory-browed Amazon of a girl who had become
+one of the most consummate sirens in the pearleries after a three-months
+trip with "Slant" to Singapore had broken her in. Amazing story the
+whole thing, from its beginning with the girl's mother--a teacher in the
+Gospel Propaganda Society's school at Thursday Island who had fallen
+afoul of one of "The Squid's" tentacles long before his conviction--to
+its ghastly finish, when the girl herself settled her accumulated
+account against all mankind with the body and soul of one--a hot-headed
+lump of a young missionary just out from London.
+
+According to the version current in Kai, Allen had not been greatly to
+blame in the affair with the temperamental rack of bones and red braids
+that the girl was when she burst upon the Islands from the Auckland
+convent; but "The Squid" evidently felt that the man who had set the
+snowball (not a very apt metaphor, for I never heard the girl compared
+to anything so frigid) rolling was the one to settle with. I had heard
+of three or four rather ingeniously thought-out attempts he had made to
+square the account, all of which, however, had failed as a consequence
+of Allen's quickness of wit and hand in sudden emergency. The knife
+figuring in the Townsville attack, it occurred to me, was probably the
+one the resourceful "Slant" had put through "The Squid's" shoulder at
+twenty paces a fraction of a second before the latter had delivered a
+flask of red pepper from his upraised hand.
+
+I also thought I understood why Allen had bluntly refused to make any
+explanation of the attack. A veritable Turk in his relations with women,
+that Island Lothario had also the Turk's dislike for discussing his
+women in public. When sober, Allen rarely if ever boasted about
+anything. When very drunk, he would occasionally toot a horn anent his
+racing wins; and once, when he was all but swamped--awash to the rails
+with "Three Star"--I had heard him give a maudlin monologue on men he
+had put away. But I--and no one else, so far as I knew--had ever heard
+him talk of the girls he had bagged, though the Lord knows there had
+been enough of them. (The nearest he ever came to it was in that little
+joke of his I have mentioned--the one about having "a son and a saddle
+in every island group in the South Pacific,"--and that was only a sort
+of delicate implication.) His close-mouthedness about women was one of a
+number of little things I couldn't help but liking in the rascal.
+
+Since Allen and Saunders would not talk, and since the knife that
+figured in the affair--a heavy dirk, with a shark's hide handle and the
+mark of a Lisbon cutlerer on the blade--could not talk, the ever-baffled
+Townsville correspondents had been able to gather practically nothing
+about what their journalistic noses told them was a red-hot human
+interest story. Blocked on that trail, they devoted a lot of space to a
+discussion of the interesting revelation of the hero's Island nickname.
+More or less ingenious theories as to "Why 'Slant'?" filled the columns
+of the papers for a number of days. None of them was within a mile of
+the mark. One of the correspondents fancied the name had been given
+Allen because of his "aquilinity, his wiry slenderness, so that he clove
+the air like a slant of sunbeams as he rode." Another writer was sure
+the name was suggested by the hero's peculiar crouching seat--the slant
+of his back as he urged on his mount. They were quite incapable of going
+beyond Allen's physical characteristics, or of visualizing him save on
+horseback.
+
+That added another little item to the list of things I could have
+enlightened the press and the public on about "Slant" Allen, and, in
+this particular instance, I wouldn't have minded passing on the facts at
+once. Indeed, I made rather a hit at a Government House luncheon one day
+by telling how the nearing hero (he was expected to be landing at
+Brisbane on the morrow) had qualified for his queer nickname. Jackson,
+who was responsible for the title, had confided to me how he came to
+bestow it. There was no story behind it, as some of the papers had
+hinted. Old "Jack," after having known Allen pretty intimately for a
+couple of years, came to the conclusion one day that the lanky
+Sydney-sider was the first man he ever met who persistently and
+consistently kept him guessing. Given a situation, and the foxy old
+highwayman had discovered that he could usually tell in advance how any
+given man would be likely to meet it. It was after he had guessed wrong
+about Allen some dozens of times, without once guessing right, that
+Jackson made up his mind that there was no forecasting the "slant of his
+course from the slant of the breeze." And because something in the
+mellifluous sound of the word struck pleasantly on the trader's ear, he
+began applying the name to the man who had inspired it. "No re'l reason
+for it," he explained; "but it sure do seem to fit 'im like a new copper
+bottom does a schooner."
+
+The Governor General's Aide-de-camp, who was something of a follower of
+the ponies, confirmed Jackson's opinion and the fitness of the
+sobriquet. Said the gaily uniformed "Galloper": "The great secret of
+Allen's astonishing success as a point-to-point rider was his amazing
+faculty for bringing off the unexpected. Once, at Launceston, I saw him
+win on a hundred-to-one shot (how he happened to be riding the skate I
+don't know) by deliberately bolting the course and putting his mount
+full tilt through a thorn thicket. He was in tenth place, with a mile to
+go when he did it, and he won the race by a dozen lengths--his own and
+the waler's hide in tatters.
+
+"Another unexpected win of Allen's," he continued with the wry grin of a
+man who speaks of dearly bought experience, "was that 'Totalisator' coup
+of his at Adelaide. His pals got in on the 'Tote' somehow, and--" A
+warning cough from Lord X---- checked the loquacious "Galloper's" tongue
+in mid-flight, and, with reddening gill, he faded away with: "Sorry,
+sir, but I forgot it isn't quite--quite the thing to remember that
+little chapter of Hartley Allen's past. Quite right, really. My mistake.
+Dead sorry, sir...."
+
+There was no doubt that Allen was going to have a clean-scored slate to
+begin writing anew on. I was thinking of that, and "Why 'Slant'?", as I
+walked back to the hotel an hour later. "No forecasting the slant of his
+course from the slant of the breeze!"... "Faculty for bringing off the
+unexpected." I hoped that he wasn't going to disappoint me in the matter
+of bringing things to a showdown on his arrival in Sydney. But no.... My
+every instinct told me that he would not side-step that. So I made all
+preparations properly to receive "Slant" Allen, and, on the day of his
+triumphant home-coming, was waiting for him in my room at the
+_Australia_, as I have already told.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XI
+
+                          A HERO'S HOMECOMING
+
+
+It was two o'clock when I began powdering and screening the yellow-hued
+inner lining of my sea shells. Subconsciously, I must have set three in
+my mind as the time my caller would come, for it was not until that hour
+that I ceased my absorbingly interesting labours and looked at my watch.
+So far as I can recall, I felt no concern one way or the other. I simply
+noted that the hour had gone by without bringing my expected visitor,
+and went back to my work.
+
+As a matter of fact, having just made a most gratifying discovery, I was
+rather glad that the interruption had not come. I had isolated a new and
+wonderful colour--a dark coppery gold that I had yearned for every time
+I saw sunlight filtering through brine onto the gently undulating leaves
+of reef-rooted kelp. Now I had it; and it was not an accident--I could
+do it again. By standing on edge a fragment of one of the big bivalves I
+was experimenting with, I discovered that a sharp blow with the side of
+my pestle caused the thinnest of chips to fly from its enamel-like
+lining. These, glassily translucent as they fell, when reduced in the
+mortar gave a warm, almost glowing powder of exactly the hue I sought.
+Now if I could only devise a way of mixing it effectively....
+
+So well were my innermost faculties set to respond to that expected
+knock, that, when it came, not even the mazes of exultant speculation in
+which my discovery had set my brain--my outward wits--to wandering,
+prevented instant ganglionic reaction. I didn't have to think. That had
+all been done an hour before, and the necessary orders given. At the
+alarm, these had only to be carried out as prearranged. My legs and arms
+simply obeyed the directions that had been registered for them in some
+convenient little nerve-knots strung along my spinal column. That
+carried me, stepping softly, out of the bathroom, through the bedroom,
+and past the middle of the sitting-room, well beyond the direct line of
+vision of anyone opening the door from the hall. It was a position from
+which I must see anyone coming in before he was able to locate me. The
+rest of the order--carried out simultaneously--had to do with laying the
+pestle lightly on the bathroom table and thrusting the hand that had
+been wielding it deep into the right-hand pocket of my old shooting
+jacket.
+
+In the second or two that it had taken me to reach the middle of the
+sitting-room from the bathroom, my wits had relinquished their rainbow
+dreams and were back on their workaday job. They it was which, now the
+limit of ganglionic action had been reached, stepped in and took
+command. It was not from nervousness that I swallowed once and flashed
+my tongue across my lips before speaking. I only wanted to be sure my
+voice was as firm as I knew the resolution directing it to be. Speaking
+sharply, but in a tone not above the ordinary, I said: "Come in, Allen!"
+
+Among the several little surprises in store for me in the course of the
+next few minutes, not the least came when the man on the other side of
+the door coughed and cleared his throat as his hand began to turn the
+knob. I was just telling myself that such palpable symptoms of
+nervousness were very unlike "Slant" Allen to display, when the door
+swung inwards and "Slant" Allen stepped into the room. Allen, but not
+the Allen I had known. Absolutely nerved to readiness as I was, the
+contrast of this flushed, slightly embarrassed, almost diffident young
+chap and the ruthless, cold-blooded badman I had made every
+preparation--physical and mental--to meet came nigh to taking me aback.
+It was like clambering up out of a companionway, all set for a hurricane
+sweeping the deck--and finding it calm. For an instant my jaw must have
+come near to sagging in the amazement that swept over me. I pulled
+myself together quickly, though, and if Allen noticed my momentary
+lapse, he gave no sign of it.
+
+He was the first to speak. "So you were expecting me?" he said, but not
+as though greatly surprised.
+
+"Ra-_ther_," I replied with emphasis. "Look at this!" and I pulled out
+the revolver from my right-hand pocket, released the hair-trigger
+adjustment, slid the safety-catch, and laid it on the table by the
+window. I would not have been guilty of such an obvious act of bravado
+had not my preternaturally acute senses told me that, so far as Allen
+was concerned at least, there was not going to be any occasion to use
+the weapon. That feeling persisted even when, as Allen turned slightly
+in the act of closing the door, I noticed a very perceptible bulge where
+the flimsy corner of his pongee coat swept his lean right flank. The
+instant he entered the room I knew that, whatever motives had brought
+him there, the intention of trying to kill me was not among them.
+Scarcely less strong were my doubts that I would be able to establish
+any valid grounds for killing him. My old sneaking liking for certain
+things about the debonair rascal was not dead.
+
+He grinned appreciatively at the sight of the gun, and then, with a
+perfunctory "You don't mind, do you?" stepped over and picked it up. I
+watched him without misgivings, my mind still busy adjusting itself to
+the new aspect.
+
+"Was that the toy you used the day you put a bullet hole through the
+crown of my new hundred-dollar Payta hat?" he asked, fingering the
+exquisitely turned barrel admiringly. "My own fault, of course. I egged
+you on by expressing some doubts of your ability to do it from your
+jacket pocket. This looks like ..."
+
+"Same gun--same jacket--new pocket," I cut in laconically; adding: "I
+was prepared to repeat the operation just now--with about half a finger
+less elevation on the muzzle."
+
+It was the real old Allen grin that opened out as the significance of
+those concluding words sunk home. Not the mocking smirk which had curled
+his lips so much of the time, but a good, broad, healthy grin that
+betokened genuine inward enjoyment. The fellow--I had remarked it
+before--had a really keen and inclusive sense of humour--even inclusive
+enough to permit his hearty participation in a laugh that was on
+himself. But that irritating sneer (which had died on his lips as a full
+realization of Bell's bigness in giving him his choice of going on the
+_Cora_ or remaining at Kai came to him)--that sneer, with the amused
+contempt for all the world it connoted, did not reappear. Indeed, I am
+not sure that I ever saw it again. Had there been some inward change in
+the man to dry up the fount of contempt from which that ironic smirk
+rose to his lips? I wasn't clear on that point yet: but certainly he had
+been profoundly shaken--deeply stirred.
+
+Save for that expansive grin of real amusement, Allen made no comment on
+my implication that I had been waiting to send a bullet--a few inches
+below the crown of his hat. "Sweetest balanced little piece of light
+artillery I ever trained," he remarked inconsequentially, holding the
+revolver at arm's length and squinting along the sights to where his
+reversed image menaced back from the depths of a full-length mirror. He
+really admired the little gun--I could see that by the way his fist
+closed on the checked vulcanite grip, by the caressing touch of his
+forefinger on the locked trigger.
+
+"Made to order by the S. and W. people for my father," I explained,
+trying to fall in with his mood as far as I could. If he had come to
+talk about revolvers--well, who in Australia knew more about them than I
+did? I continued:
+
+"There's two or three of the Governor's own little gadgets on it, and
+one or two I had added myself. The one that I like best is that
+safety-catch.... Stranger can't release it till he's been shown how. You
+never can tell who may be picking up a gun that's left lying around, you
+know. You'll have to admit it would be doubly painful for a man to be
+plunked with his own revolver."
+
+I couldn't for the life of me have refrained from that last little
+sally, and Allen seemed to enjoy it as much as I did. His broadened grin
+showed an extra tooth or two at each end as he relaxed his extended arm.
+"I haven't the least intention of trying to impose that indignity on
+you," he laughed. "Besides, you needn't fear that the significance of
+that sag in your left-hand pocket has been lost on me. Had me covered
+from there all the time, didn't you?"
+
+"As a matter of fact, I had," I replied, beginning to grin myself; "but
+this confounded sawed-off _Mauser_ automatic has an upkick that makes
+anything like delicate work quite out of the question. I could wing you
+with it from there, no doubt; but the job wouldn't be a pretty
+one--nothing that I could take any pride in."
+
+I laid the stubby automatic on the table where the other weapon had
+been, saying that I always did hate the drag of a gun in my pocket.
+Then, letting my glance wander to the bulge on Allen's right hip, I
+added pointedly: "... especially when I can't see any immediate use
+ahead for it."
+
+Either missing the point of that gentle hint, or else ignoring it
+completely, Allen went on playing with the little S. & W. Breaking it
+gently with practised hand, he studied with bent head the smooth, easy
+action of the automatic ejector. Just a bit more of a bend, and the six
+cartridges slid noiselessly forth and fell into his hand. He commenced
+shoving them back, one by one. It was the last, or the next to the last,
+of the greasy cylinders that slipped from his fingers, struck the floor
+and rolled under the table. I remarked with admiration the magnificent
+swell of the flexed saddle muscles as the thin _pongee_ tightened over
+the bent thighs; the narrow hips, the lean, powerful back, the--
+
+"Good God!"
+
+The voice, hoarse with awe and surprise, was mine; but my own mother
+would hardly have recognized it. For an instant my quaking knees almost
+let me collapse to the floor; then my faltering inward control stiffened
+and clapped the brakes on my skidding nerves. By the time Allen,
+startled by my sudden exclamation, straightened up from his scramble
+after the still unretrieved cartridge, I had myself fully in hand again.
+I could not be sure whether his flush and quick breathing were from
+surprise or the stooping posture in which he had been.
+
+"Did you speak, Whitney?" he asked, after running his eyes over the room
+and assuring himself that no one had entered. I held his eyes with my
+own till I was sure my voice was steadied. When I spoke, it was
+deliberately and evenly. "So Rona came back," I said.
+
+The train of lightning mental processes by which I had arrived at that
+astonishing conclusion had not much of an edge on Allen's quick
+comprehension of what had started that train going. For only the
+briefest instant his eyes were blank with surprise. Then, with a look of
+complete understanding, he clapped a hand to the side of his neck and
+began smoothing straight the limp collar of his soft silk shirt. The
+ghost of what would have been a sheepish grin flickered up and died
+away, and to his face came something of that half-embarrassed,
+half-eager look that had sat upon it when he entered the room, as he
+said: "Yes, Rona has come back. That was one of the things I came to see
+you about. She--we--the both of us have a bit of a favour to ask of
+you."
+
+Quite the master of myself now (and of the situation, too, I thought), I
+came back banteringly with: "If it's that red, white and blue neck of
+yours you want tied up, I have one of B. and W.'s little First Aid
+cases in my bag...."
+
+It was the shockingly torn and bruised neck that had been revealed when
+Allen's collar had slipped back as he stooped to recover the rolling
+cartridge that set my swift train of thought going. This must have been
+something of the order of it, but electrically rapid of action:
+Lacerated neck--old Chinaman at Ponape whose neck was scratched when
+Rona ran away from him--Rona a specialist in neck-scratching--probably
+scratched Allen's neck (Question--Was it done in the course of one of
+the attacks she was known to have made upon him on the _Cora_?)--Could
+not have been done on the _Cora_, as they had left her over two weeks
+ago and these half-healed scratches were not over five or six days
+old.--Hence, Rona had scratched Allen's neck inside of the last week,
+and, therefore, could not have drowned herself in Ross Creek a
+fortnight ago. Conclusion--Rona has come back.
+
+It had taken not over a second or two for my quickened mind to run that
+devious course, and Allen's must have covered a good part of it in even
+less time. The wits of the both of us were keenly on edge. There could
+not but have been a fine display of sparks had he been in his wonted
+aggressive mood. But he had not come for fighting, physical or mental,
+it seemed. He had come to ask a favour--"for the both of us."
+
+"_For the both of us!_" The significance lurking in those words had
+eluded me for a moment in the sudden adjustment my mind was called upon
+to make in coming to a realization of the fact that Rona--the lissome
+lovely Rona--was not dead--that the bright flame of her was unquenched
+after all. But: "_a favour for the both of us!_" A sudden chill checked
+and throttled the thrill that had started to flood my being. "_A favour
+for both of us!_" "So--Bell dead--'Slant' Allen takes the girl in the
+end!" I said to myself. Then, the echo of Kai's estimate of Allen's
+track strategy: "An easy starter but a hell of a finisher, 'Slant'.
+Don't worry about what he's doing when the starting flag drops; watch
+him head into the stretch." "... _head into the stretch_," I repeated to
+myself. "Then what about the finish? Is he already under the wire?"
+
+These thoughts, like the train preceding them, must have flashed through
+my mind very quickly, for it was Allen's voice replying to my badinage
+about First Aid for his lacerated neck that brought me out of them.
+
+"The neck's doing very well, thank you," he was saying, "considering
+that its windpipe was closed for all of sixty seconds, and that most of
+the hide was clawed off from it all the way round."
+
+That was really very interesting intelligence, but my mind, deep in
+another channel, was quite incapable of compassing the significance of
+it for the moment.
+
+"So you've landed the girl after all," I said woodenly, cursing
+myself inwardly for the gallery play that had left both guns beyond
+my reach. For of course he had deliberately put Bell out of the
+running--shouldered him in the stretch.... Reviving suspicions brought
+also a realization of what it was up to me to do, now that there was no
+longer doubt....
+
+"That depends very largely upon you." Allen's quick reply cut short
+further conjecture.
+
+"Depends upon me?" I interrupted incredulously. "What do you mean by
+that? Oh, I see. Now that you've put Bell out of the way, perhaps you
+think that I, as his closest friend, ought to--to distribute his estate,
+so to speak. If that is the way you figure it, let me tell you that all
+the distributing you can count on me for will take the form of spraying
+lead over your worthless hide. You won't mind handing me one of those
+guns, will you? I don't mind which."
+
+It would have been sheer madness--straight suicide,--that outburst,
+had Allen been moved by the least desire to get me out of his way. I
+have never been quite able to make up my mind as to whether it was
+my instinctive feeling that he had no such desire that prompted me
+to take more leeway than prudence--nay, the commonest motive of
+self-preservation--would have dictated; or whether I simply lost my
+head--let my feelings get away with me. It may well have been the
+latter, for shocks had been crowding pretty thick, and it was hardly to
+be expected that the gears of my self-control wouldn't slip a cog now
+and then under the strain.
+
+Allen's brows drew together in a black scowl for a brief space, and his
+eyes contracted and grew hard as steel. Then, slowly, the scowl smoothed
+out, leaving only a deep flush behind it. It was not replaced by his
+former look of anxious embarrassment, however. Rather his expression was
+one of a serious, controlled determination.
+
+"That matter of my putting Captain Bell out of the way, as you choose to
+phrase it," he said sharply, "is one of the things I called to talk with
+you about. Since you've stated so plainly what you intend to do about
+it--assuming it's a fact,--perhaps it would be in order to take it up
+before--before the other matter. As for these pistols.... Since they're
+yours, help yourself to both of them." Stepping back from the table,
+well out of reach of the guns, he added: "But I'd rather appreciate it
+if you could see your way to refraining from using them until I'm
+through with what I've got to say; after that ..." (he gave his
+shoulders an indifferent shrug) "it's up to you. Do what you think best
+with them. I don't want them--neither one of them."
+
+"Of course not," I sneered. "Quite naturally, you'd prefer to use your
+own. Quite right, too. Get it out of your hip-pocket while you've got a
+chance. That's a new chum's way of carrying a gun, anyhow. I'm just a
+bit surprised to see a practised killer like Mister 'Slant' Allen
+resorting to it. No chance in the world to make an even break of it with
+a man with a gun in his side-pocket. Tail of your coat's always getting
+mixed up with your fingers just when you want to use them."
+
+Allen had braced himself after my first taunt came so near to getting
+him going, and this second one--galling as it must have been--hardly
+moved him. Only the faintest flutter of a corrugation between the brows
+told that another scowl had been repressed. The half-surprised tap he
+gave to the bulge on his hip--a gesture that would most certainly have
+drawn a shot from me had I had a gun in hand--suggested that he really
+had forgotten that there was anything there. I am positive that I could
+have grabbed a revolver from the table and beaten him to it on the draw.
+A move so naïve on the part of an old gunman convinced me, even before
+he had spoken a word, that I had let my feelings send me off at
+half-cock.
+
+"I haven't a pistol in my hip-pocket," he said evenly. "Never did carry
+one there, and wouldn't be likely to begin it if I was going gunning for
+a specialist like you. You'll have to take my word for that. Yes, and
+since I'm going to ask you to take my word--my unsupported word--for a
+number of other things, it may be in order to try to make you believe
+that my word, when I give it to you straight, isn't quite--that it isn't
+on just the same plane with the rest of my doings."
+
+I was just a bit surprised that he didn't take out whatever it was that
+created that bulge in his hip-pocket, but hardly reckoned it worth while
+mentioning. I was fully assured that, far from seeking trouble, it was
+the one thing he had steadfastly resolved to avoid. That was enough for
+the moment. He was also about to speak of the one thing I was interested
+in above all others--the doping of Bell. There was every reason why I
+should encourage him to speak of that. The matter of Rona would come up
+in due course. He evidently had something to say about her also.
+
+"Sit down," I said, and extended my cigarette case.
+
+He declined my fat gold-tipped Egyptians, heavily salted with _kief_
+(another accursed habit I had picked up in Paris), and lighted a slender
+Sumatra cheroot from his own case. It was not as a move of precaution (I
+was through with all pretence of that now) that I set the big lounging
+chair I shoved up for him so that he would sit facing the light. I
+merely wanted to watch his face. Yet even that was not necessary to
+satisfy me of his sincerity, at least for the moment. His every tone and
+gesture was sufficient proof of that.
+
+"In the matter of the value of my word...." Allen was losing no time in
+getting to the point. "In the time you have spent mooching about the
+Islands, Whitney, you have doubtless heard me referred to by a good many
+hard names, such as pirate, murderer, thief, blackguard, jail-bird,
+crook, and so on without end. You've heard all of these, haven't you?"
+
+"All, and many others," I assented readily. His frankness rather
+appealed to me just then.
+
+"Quite right. Yet I dare say you didn't happen to hear the name of liar
+included among the number. If you did, it was used by some cove who had
+a grudge against me, and didn't care whether he stuck to facts or not. I
+don't mean that I haven't put over a lot of crooked deals in my time,
+nor that I haven't come out with a gratuitous falsehood now and then
+when it suited my purpose. I don't claim to be a George Washington. But
+I do mean just this: that when I have deliberately assured a man that a
+thing was, or was not so, I was giving him the dead straight of it to
+the best of my knowledge. And that's the way I'm speaking when I tell
+you that I haven't a revolver on me, and that that dope I slipped into
+Bell's whisky at Kai had nothing to do with his playing out on the
+voyage. As for the reason of that ..."
+
+Allen frowned slightly and ceased speaking for a few seconds. When he
+resumed it was not to take up the thread where he had dropped it.
+
+"I don't know whether you'll have difficulty in believing it or not,
+Whitney," he went on after a half-dozen puffs at his slow-burning
+cheroot; "but this is the first time since I was packed out of Australia
+five years ago that I've tried to explain to anyone anything I've said
+or done--tried to make out a case for myself. That was simply because I
+didn't give a damn whether anyone approved of it or not. The reason I am
+doing it now--well, there are two reasons."
+
+He puffed quietly for a few moments again, as though gathering his
+thoughts. Then he continued: "The first reason is that I owe it to you
+for the consideration you showed in the matter of not telling them at
+Kai what an ass I'd made of myself. That was dead white, Whitney. I've
+got to give it you for that. No one but a thoroughbred could have held
+his tongue for five minutes about a thing like that, especially seeing
+you were under no obligations of any kind whatever to me. And, for all I
+can learn, you've held your tongue for a month. How do I know? Well, I
+know about Kai (the only ones I care much about anyway) through a letter
+Jackson got off to me from Samarai--after he'd delivered you over to old
+'Choppy' Tancred to bring south. Got it the night before I left
+Townsville. It wasn't much of a literary effort, but he managed to say a
+few things that--things that I knew he wouldn't have said if you had
+given them the facts--all the facts about my departure in the _Cora_. As
+for Australia.... If you had been dishing up any inside dope in this
+nest of old women and busybodies, no fear that it wouldn't have come to
+me before this. I know them. Their tongues will waft gossip from
+Melbourne to Port Darwin quicker'n the telegraph. My word, don't I know
+them!"
+
+Quickened puffs registered the bitterness of unpleasant memories as
+Allen fell silent for a brief interval. "I'm not fool enough to believe
+that you kept quiet here out of any regard for me," he went on
+presently. "That wouldn't be it, for you haven't any. I don't blame you.
+As a matter of fact, I don't seriously care what Australia thinks
+anyway. I'm through with them here for good and all. But the Islands are
+different. The rest of my life, such as it is, is going to be lived
+there, and the only men I have ever had any great respect for are living
+there now. So, whatever reason there was behind it, Whitney, I'm deeply
+grateful to you for not showing me up in Kai. It was dead white of
+you.--I say it again. I've thought of it a good many times since I got
+Jack's scrawl, and it was the first thing I intended to speak to you
+about today. Only, my slate got a bit upset. That little gun of yours
+deflected my thoughts, and then--but you saw how I got forced off on
+another tack.
+
+"The other reason" (Allen hurried on as though anxious to avoid hearing
+any observations I might feel impelled to make on what he had just said)
+"why I am going to the trouble of trying to clear up your suspicions in
+the matter of Bell's death is because, if I don't, there will be no hope
+of your granting the request I have come to make of you--and I can't run
+any chances of failure with that.
+
+"I didn't want to kill Bell, but--well, it seems that I was equal to
+playing a damn dirty trick to get him out of the way. I won't need to
+tell you why. I hate to drag the girl into it, but it can't be helped.
+She must have bewitched me, I'm afraid. Not intentionally. Quite to the
+contrary, she never gave me a look. I admired Bell--in spite of his
+rather standoffish way with me--as much as any man I ever met. That was
+the only reason I held myself in about the girl as long as I did. I
+don't know just what would have happened if the schooner hadn't come.
+Chances are, since I was getting pretty near the limit of my
+self-control, I would have blown off some other way.
+
+"The opportunity which I saw to get rid of Bell in the schooner was too
+great a temptation to be resisted. So far as getting him clean away with
+the _Cora_ was concerned, I have only my own hot-headedness to blame for
+failing. I was simply asking for trouble when I went prancing down to
+take over the girl before the schooner even had her hook broken out; and
+I found it. No more than I deserved, though."
+
+Allen paused while the old humorous grin spread over his face for a
+moment. Then: "I trust you won't mind if I don't go into details about
+how I came to put my head into the noose," he said, still grinning. "It
+wasn't very edifying, you know--from my standpoint, I mean.
+
+"But it would have made no difference even if Bell had got away, while
+the girl and I remained behind on the island. She wouldn't have had
+anything to do with me anyway--at any rate, not while she had any reason
+to hope that Bell was still alive,--and probably she would have knifed
+me at the first chance for the part I had in getting him away. She would
+have found the chance, too, let me tell you. That girl creates her own
+opportunities--there's no holding her once she takes the bit in her
+teeth. What she wants to do, that thing she does. And what she wants a
+man to do for her, that thing _he_ does. She'll put through what she's
+after if she has to go through hell for it--and no minding whom she
+takes with her."
+
+The queer unnerved look on Allen's face drew my first interruption. "So
+it's come to that?" was all I said.
+
+"Yes, it's come to that," he assented, the seriousness of his eyes
+belying the whimsical smile on his lips. "But I'll be returning to that
+presently.
+
+"About that dope I gave Bell," he went on--"it was absolutely harmless.
+I bought the stuff in Macassar a few months ago, more out of curiosity
+than anything else. The old Sultan at Ternate had told me about it, and
+I was just a bit interested in its effects. It was pretty concentrated,
+though not a hundredth of the strength of the essence from the same
+plant that Rona took it for--the deadly poison, which has the same
+pungent smell. It was a considerable overdose of the stuff I took one
+night that put me on to the fact that, after a short spell of rather
+pleasant mental stimulation, it would drug a man to sleep for an hour or
+two. Hardly any after-effects at all, except a deuce of a thirst for
+liquor for a few days. I had talked about it with Doc Wyndham two or
+three times, and am perfectly certain of what I tell you.
+
+"It was the only stuff I could lay hands on that promised to do the
+trick. You see, I was afraid that if Bell wasn't drugged, he would
+become suspicious when I failed to return to the schooner, and come to
+look for me--perhaps even chuck up the stunt entirely. If he hadn't been
+pretty drunk (much the furthest along I ever saw him--probably on
+account of the beastly heat--you remember it?) he must have sniffed the
+half-dozen drops I put in his half-emptied glass of whisky while he was
+conning that old chart he had on the wall. It was a light dose (I've
+taken twice that much myself), and though he went under jolly fast--due
+to his being so far gone with whisky, probably--he was up and taking
+command of the schooner inside of an hour. And you'll remember how he
+was going right on ahead getting under way to catch the tide, even
+though I hadn't returned. The best nerves I ever saw in a man, bar none,
+that chap had. Will of iron and eyes for nothing but the thing he set
+out to do. There was a lot in common between him and the girl on that
+score. No wonder they were so strong for each other."
+
+Allen fell silent again, stroking his cheroot between thumb and
+forefinger--the habit the correspondents had characterized as a sign of
+modesty. "I hope you won't insist on my telling any more about the
+voyage than I have to in connection with Bell's death," he said at last.
+"I hate to speak of it at all. The thing is almost as much of a
+nightmare in memory as it was in fact. You saw how things were on the
+schooner when we got away. Well, just picture them getting worse and
+worse day by day for--how long was it?--something over a week, I
+believe, but it seemed a lifetime. The whisky I kept bracing up with
+made it a lot easier for me to stand--kept me from going crazy and
+jumping overboard, as so many of the niggers did. But Bell--he didn't
+have the whisky--wouldn't have it. Yes, he kept up that mad joke of his
+about being a 'soba skippa' to the end. That was what killed him--just
+that, and nothing else. It was beyond a being of flesh and blood to do
+what he set himself out to do--and live. He tried to (my God, how he
+tried!)--and died.
+
+"I never felt such pity for any living thing, unless it was old Recoil,
+my first steeplechaser, when he lived for twenty-four hours after
+staving in his chest against a stone wall. I was hardly more than a kid
+then. I lay in the straw of his box all that time with his battered,
+bleeding frame, and swore I'd kill the first man that tried to shoot
+him. Then I pulled myself together and did the humane job myself. But I
+couldn't shoot Bell, and he wouldn't shoot himself. That would have been
+the easy way out (since he had steeled his will against taking another
+drink), but he wouldn't follow that short-cut either. Said he was--how
+did he put it?--'goin' to ride the wata wagon all the way to po't, an'
+then fall off good and plenty.' Some Yankee expression about keeping
+strict teetotal, wasn't it?
+
+"It got to me worse than the crazy niggers--watching the agony of his
+mind and body contorting the muscles of his face, as he tried to hide
+what he was going through. The girl was a good deal of help to him for
+the first day or two, and he admitted that he was glad she had decided
+to join his 'li'l' pa'ty at the last minnit.' But even she failed to
+create a diversion as his cravings for whisky became more and more
+intense, and he seemed to try to avoid her as much as he could toward
+the last--probably because he couldn't hide his suffering from her. I
+saw that it was killing him--that he would never last out the voyage on
+the course he was heading,--and tried hard to make him see that it was
+only reasonable to allow himself at least enough whisky to ease off the
+tension on his breaking nerves. But he wouldn't listen to it.
+
+"'I gave it out official,' he said, 'that I was goin' to keep soba on my
+next ship, if I eva got one. An' soba's the wo'd.' To put an end to the
+matter, he turned his back on me and went for'ard among the niggers.
+
+"After that I tried to explain to Rona (I had managed to get on speaking
+terms with her as soon as she became satisfied that Bell had not been
+poisoned) how things stood, in the hope that she would fall in with a
+plan I had for giving him small doses of whisky with the coffee he had
+taken to drinking with increasing frequency as the craving for liquor
+grew on him. She flew into a temper at once, however. Said that, far
+from helping me to give him whisky on the quiet, she would taste every
+cup of coffee after it was poured for him in the galley, and then take
+it to him herself. She ended by saying that if I tried that trick she
+would knife me with her own hands: in fact, rather regretted that she
+hadn't done it when she had a chance at Kai. I couldn't for the life of
+me see why the girl should take that attitude, when it was so plain that
+whisky was the only thing that would pull Bell through; but take it she
+did, and that was the end of it, at least as far as co-operation from
+her was concerned, I mean. That simply left it up to me to watch my
+chances and do the best I could on my own.
+
+"Bell had insisted on standing watch-and-watch with me from the first,
+usually, in his own watch, taking the wheel himself, probably because it
+gave him something to occupy his mind--and his hands. (He was beginning
+to tear the skin of the palms of his hands from clenching and
+unclenching his fingers.) What broke him finally was discovering that he
+was no longer fit for a trick at the wheel. His eyes went bad rapidly
+under the strain, and it was not long before he could not distinguish
+the readings on the compass card. He told me about it at once, but was
+confident he could manage to hold a course by the stars. This went on
+all right as long as it was clear. But one night, when it was squally
+and overcast, he lost the 'Cross' (which had been giving him a shifting
+but fairly approximate bearing), and fell back on trying to keep her a
+couple of points off the wind. This would have done all right if the
+Trade had held from the southeast. But it hauled up to east in a squall,
+and Bell, following it around by the 'feel' of it on his face, had the
+schooner all but onto the Baluka Reef and shoal at daybreak. I let him
+extricate himself to save his feelings; but he knew that both the Bo'sun
+and I had twigged what had happened, and why, and it must have been the
+realization of the fact that he had become quite useless in navigating
+the ship that hastened the final collapse.
+
+"He came on the following night for his watch--the 'graveyard,' from
+midnight to four in the morning,--but made no objection when I stuck on
+at the helm. We were closing the tangle of the Barrier Reef by then, you
+see, and it wouldn't have done to trust the wheel to a nigger. In fact,
+when I went on at eight the previous evening, it was practically the
+beginning of the thirty-six-hour trick at the wheel that ended when we
+anchored off Townsville.
+
+"When Bell let me stay on at the wheel at midnight, he showed the first
+voluntary signs of giving in, not in the matter of closing his lips to
+whisky--nothing could affect his decision on that score,--but to the
+other alternative. I mean that he gave up hope of holding on till he had
+brought his ship to port--gave up hope of living to the end of the
+voyage. Up to that time he had always tried to pass the whole thing off
+as a sort of a joke, running on with patter like that about the 'wata
+wagon.' But he dropped all that from the moment I refused to give way to
+him at the wheel.
+
+"'Youah quite right, Allen,' he said in a weary sort of voice, and went
+over and sat down on the rail of the cockpit. His voice was hollower
+still when he spoke again, maybe ten minutes later. 'Allen,' he croaked,
+'I've got a hunch I'm not up to pullin' my weight in this heah schoona
+any longa. I'm all in--no mo'n so much ballast. Just a dead drag.'
+
+"I didn't reply to that. I was too much awed--yes, awed--even to urge
+him again to take the drink I knew would be the saving of his
+mind--perhaps his life. He didn't speak again till after I roused him to
+prevent the main boom giving him a crack on the head as I put her about.
+(We were working through a nasty patch of broken coral--the outskirts of
+the Barrier--but scant seaway and fluky airs.) As he settled back on the
+weather rail of the cockpit he said, speaking very slow as though hard
+put to control his voice: 'Allen, I make it about two hundred miles to
+Townsville by youah noon position. Say thirty-six to forty hours'
+sailin', with the wind holdin' up. Do you reckon you an' Ranga--good
+man, Ranga--do you reckon you an' he ah up to pullin' it off alone?
+I'm--damn it all, I'm seem' hell-west-an'-crooked just as we hit the
+dirty navigatin' Allen, take my wud fo' it, this soba skippa stunt ain't
+all it's cracked up to be--not by a long shot. I'd rather ha' had the
+plague by a damn sight, Allen.'
+
+"He wouldn't mention the other alternative--whisky--even then, and I
+simply didn't have the nerve to take advantage of the opening and
+suggest it to him outright. But I did what I thought was the best thing
+under the circumstances--waited for a stretch of open sailing, gave the
+wheel to a nigger, fished up a convenient bottle of whisky, and set it
+down just behind him against the cockpit rail. I didn't speak even
+then--just pressed his shoulder, tilted the neck of the bottle against
+his hand where it clutched the rail, and went back to the wheel.
+
+"I had the feeling (and I still have) that I was doing the decent and
+humane thing, just as I did when I put old Recoil out of his misery;
+though the cases aren't quite parallel of course. But I knew it would
+force a crisis one way or the other, and that was what, in all
+sincerity, I thought was the kindest thing to do. If Bell drank (though
+it well might be that he would go on drinking until he fell in a
+stupor), it would surely save his life. What if he did get dead drunk?
+He wouldn't be any more useless in navigating the schooner than he was
+already. On the other hand, if he still refused to drink, the heightened
+temptation of the handy bottle would increase the tension and hasten the
+collapse of mind and body, which was now but a matter of a few hours at
+the outside. I think you'll agree with me, Whitney, that I did the
+kindest thing possible under the circumstances."
+
+"I wouldn't venture an opinion on that offhand," I temporized; "but, in
+any event, it's the thing I would undoubtedly have done myself had I
+been in your place. There's no question in my mind on that point at
+least."
+
+"I'm glad to hear you say that," he said warmly; "especially as there
+was one person--a rather important person to me--who didn't approve of
+my action.
+
+"Bell's only acknowledgment of what I had done," Allen went on, "was a
+sort of disjointed muttering. 'Many thanks, ol' man. Nothin' doin'. Good
+intentions. Soba skippa to the fareyewell!' (I think that was the word).
+He shoved the bottle along out of easy reach, but didn't even make a
+bluff at throwing it over the side. I have an idea that the reason for
+his restraint on that score was due to the fact that he remembered I had
+told him that the supply was running low (I had been putting an awful
+crimp in it), and didn't want to deprive me of it. He was quite
+considerate enough to think of that sort of a thing, even with his
+senses toppling, as they must have been from the beginning of the watch.
+
+"It was a moonless night, and heavily overcast, so that I could just
+make out the blur of Bell's head and shoulders against the deckhouse
+where he sat hunched up on the port rail of the cockpit. But there was a
+crack opening up in the beastly binnacle, and through it an inch-wide
+welt of light slashed diagonally across his tortured face. One eye, the
+side of his nose and half of his mouth were sharply lighted up. The rest
+was a shadowy blank. The vivid gash of light, like a magnet, kept
+drawing my gaze away from the compass. That one eye, wide and staring,
+never blinked in the bright beam. The nostril, distending and
+contracting jerkily, was red, like that of a horse that has been
+galloped to the point of death. The teeth looked to be clenched through
+the lower lip, and blood was trickling over the lighted streak of
+clean-shaven chin. Not all his sufferings had made him miss his morning
+shave. Almost like a rite with him, that was."
+
+"Holdover from his Naval life," I suggested hastily, fearful less he
+should be tempted to digress upon irrelevant details.
+
+"I don't know just when it was that the end came," Allen resumed. "I was
+expecting every moment that he would jump up and begin his restless
+pacings, as he had done on previous nights. But at six bells his
+position was still unchanged, and to blot out that beastly slash of
+light across his drawn face I threw a piece of canvas over the top and
+back of the binnacle, so that the beam from the crack was cut off. Just
+as the morning watch was called a nasty bit of a squall was threatening
+to bore in and give us a raking, though it finally passed astern of us
+and spun off down to leeward. My hands were full for some minutes
+preparing against the imminent onslaught, and it was not until the
+menace was past and I had taken over the wheel from Ranga (who had
+relieved me when I went for'ard to have a squint ahead for myself), that
+it struck me that Bell had been paying no attention whatever to all that
+had been going on--didn't appear to have shifted at all, in fact.
+
+"I was just going to call to him to suggest that he go below and turn in
+for a spell, when the nigger on the lookout in the bows sung out
+'breaka--dead ahead!' It was a near thing, but I managed to sheer off
+and avoid grounding on a patch of barely submerged coral, just becoming
+visible in the shimmer of the false dawn. As I knew that the main wall
+of the Great Barrier must be close at hand to lee, I was chary of
+letting her fall off very far in that direction. I had just ordered a
+man to stand-by to heave the lead at the first sign of shoaling water on
+the starboard bow, when the tail of my eye caught a glimpse of Rona
+stepping out on deck from the cabin companion way. (We had sulphured out
+the Agent's cabin and made it fairly comfortable for her use. It was out
+of the question her sleeping on deck, on account of the incessant
+squalls.) She headed straight for Bell, who was still hunched up on the
+weather rail of the cockpit, the outlines of his face just beginning to
+show in the ashy light of early morning.
+
+"As her hand touched his shoulder she let out a shrill squeal and
+plumped down on her knees beside him. In doing this she must have bumped
+the whisky bottle, which had been rolling back and forth on the deck
+with the lurches of the schooner. It was with more of a hiss than a
+scream that she grabbed it up and flung it straight for my head. Oh, I
+should hardly say _straight_," Allen corrected himself, "for Rona
+evidently can't throw any better than the run of her white sisters. The
+bottle smashed against the wheel, deluged the cockpit with broken glass
+and one of my last half-dozen quarts of whisky. If I had not been pretty
+sure that Bell was already dead, the fact that the smell of the old
+familiar juice welling up from the deck didn't bring a twitch to his
+nostrils would have been enough to drive it home to me.
+
+"Without waiting to observe the effects of her throw, Rona launched
+herself right on after the bottle--only a shade better aimed. Unluckily,
+the cross-cut she took to my throat carried her right over the
+wheel--and at the very instant that the appearance of a second line of
+foam down to leeward confirmed my fears about our desperately scant
+working room. The instinctive lifting of my right arm to block the
+girl's grab at my face came near to bringing disaster. I fended the
+clutch from my throat all right, but the weight of her body falling
+across the wheel tore the spoke from my left hand and threw the schooner
+up into the wind.
+
+"Ranga's quick presence of mind was all that saved the situation.
+Jumping into the cockpit regardless of the broken glass cutting his bare
+feet, he grabbed the girl about the waist, disentangled her flying arms
+and legs from the wheel, and smothered her struggles against his side. I
+threw the wheel back an instant before she jibed, and then, for two or
+three seconds, things hung in the balance. Finally, very slowly, she
+filled away on the port tack again, and the immediate danger was over.
+Had the schooner gone about, nothing could have saved her from running
+onto the reef. There was not enough room left in which to wear her
+round.
+
+"Bell must have given up the fight along toward the end of the
+'graveyard' watch. I heard him muttering off and on for a while, but the
+last coherent words that came to my ears were, not unfitly: 'Nothin'
+doin'. Soba skippa to a fareyewell.'
+
+"That rub with the reef was the nearest squeak we had--though I can't
+say that I remember much about the navigation that took us through the
+Barrier and on to Townsville. Drunken man's luck doubtless. I was sure
+drunk, and no mistake, though both my legs and my head were grinding
+right along to the finish--only ceased functioning when there was
+nothing more to do.
+
+"The girl--when Ranga let her go again--went back and settled down by
+Bell's body. Wouldn't let anyone come near it. Only left it on the two
+or three further occasions that she took to fly at my throat when she
+thought I wasn't looking. I didn't want to lock her up (it was inviting
+the plague to force her to stay 'tween decks for too long), but managed
+to get around the difficulty finally by having one of the crew stand-by
+to push in and absorb the impact whenever she made a break in my
+direction. She gave up trying after that. Seemed to loathe the touch of
+a nigger. But with Ranga it was different. She grew quiet as soon as he
+picked her up--something like a kid with its nurse.
+
+"The big fellow was wonderful, by the way. Always doing the right thing
+without waiting for an order, always cool and quiet, always
+good-natured. Spent his spare time sitting on the taffrail and peeping
+to the sea-gulls on a queer little Malay flute he always carried in his
+belt--some kind of hollow stem, full of little wooden balls that gave a
+weird sort of ripple to the notes. First and last, Ranga was the man to
+whom the bulk of the credit was due for taking the schooner through. I
+still feel a bit guilty that I didn't divide the whisky with him. But
+perhaps it was best to stow it where I did.... You never know how a
+yellow man or a black man will react to the stuff. It's hard enough
+guessing with a white man sometimes."
+
+Allen smiled whimsically as he lighted a fresh cheroot. He was through
+with the worst of the story and seemed a good deal relieved. It was
+plain enough that he spoke the truth when he said that the memory of it
+was still a nightmare, and that he hated to have to speak of it. He said
+a few words more in explanation of why he had not buried Bell at sea,
+which appeared to have been mainly because he was afraid the girl would
+have followed the body over the side. He had no misgivings about keeping
+it aboard, he said, as he was quite certain that it carried no plague
+infection. He mentioned incidentally, that they had found a lot of stick
+brimstone among the stores, and that the thorough smudging they gave the
+after quarters with this was probably responsible for the fact that the
+plague had not reappeared there. It had been impossible to devise a way
+to disinfect the big 'midships hold where the labour recruits were
+housed, on account of the more or less crazy condition of all of the
+niggers.
+
+Allen looked at his watch, but went on with his story as though in no
+particular hurry. "You're doubtless impatient to hear about the girl's
+turning up again," he said. "You've already heard of the rather
+remarkable escape she made from the Quarantine Station--Butler, one of
+the doctors, mentioned that he told you about it on your steamer. At the
+Station it was the theory that the girl had broken out so that she could
+kill herself on Bell's grave--that she was more or less off her head
+anyhow. That was a mistake, though a natural one. She had just one thing
+in view when she clambered out of the mad cell and over the wall: that
+was to lie low until I came out and then, watching her chance, try to
+make a better job of polishing me off than she had done on the schooner.
+She realized that they were on their guard against her at the Station,
+and that she might be kept under restraint indefinitely, or at least
+until I was out and gone beyond her reach.
+
+"Her mind was working well enough to make her reckon that that Chinese
+shawl (which everyone would have noted) was the one garment she had that
+could not fail to be recognized. So--it must have been something of a
+wrench for her--she left it on the bank of Ross Creek and went to seek a
+hiding place.
+
+"Luck was with her in the search. Locating the native quarter after
+wandering for a while, she circulated around until she came upon the
+signs--in Hindustani, I fancy--in front of the shack of an old East
+Indian drug seller and money changer. How she got around him I don't
+know; but at any rate she persuaded him to keep her there until I was
+out of quarantine. She even contrived to get the old rascal to spy out
+the refuge I had flown to--a bungalow just out of town, where I figured
+I would be a bit quieter than at the hotel. Then she took a hand in the
+game herself.
+
+"It was on the second night after I came out, and I had turned in early.
+I had taken no precautions of any kind against attack. Never have
+bothered much with that kind of thing. The doors and windows were wide
+open. I had a servant--a Chino,--but he was sleeping in his own hut in
+the rear of the grounds.
+
+"It was the window she came in by, though she could just as well have
+used the door. I was more than half awake (hadn't been sleeping very
+well any of the time since my two-day snooze after landing from the
+schooner), lying on my back under the mosquito net, with no covers over
+me. It was probably her intention to slip up quietly and get her hands
+under the net before disturbing me. She had no knife, by the way. They
+had taken that little Malay dagger away after she had tried to stick me
+at the Quarantine Station. As she would have had no difficulty in
+raising another through old Ratu Lal had she wanted it, I take it that
+she felt confident enough of doing the job with her hands. No idle dream
+that, either; you know something of the strength of them.
+
+"I sat up in bed in a dazed sort of way as her shadow darkened the
+window. (There was a bit of a moon, shining on that side of the house.)
+It must have been my movement under the netting that made her change her
+plan. Very naturally, she counted on my shooting first and asking
+questions afterwards. It was the rational and proper thing to do, and it
+is probably what I would have done had my pistol been handy. But, not
+dreaming of an attack (this was the day before old 'Squid' Saunders
+turned up and took a jab at me), my gun was in my coat pocket. I have
+always carried it there--when I had a coat on--ever since I saw your
+little exhibition of pocket gunnery at Kai," he added with a humorous
+smile.
+
+"As I was saying, the stir I made under the mosquito net forced the girl
+to speed up her schedule a bit. You saw the jump she made the time she
+caught up the schooner at Kai. Well, it must have been about that same
+kind of a spring over again. She never touched the floor between the low
+window ledge and my bed. Landed right on my chest, bringing down the net
+under her weight, and went to my throat with an instinct as sure as that
+of a fighting bulldog. She was choking me right through the net before I
+really knew what had happened.
+
+"Of course, taking it for granted that she was dead, I didn't have the
+ghost of an idea it was Rona who was sprawling on my chest and shutting
+off my wind with steel fingers that seemed closing in to meet at the
+base of my brain. I didn't even know that it was a woman. In fact, the
+deadly pressure of that grip argued all the other way--that I was being
+throttled by a man, and a deucedly powerful one at that. If I did any
+speculating at all, I probably figured it as some kind of a thieving
+stunt. But a man fighting for his life--and that is precisely what I was
+doing--doesn't waste much time in conjecture. My immediate problem was a
+simple one. If that grip wasn't broken inside of a minute, it might stay
+there forever as far as my shaking it off was concerned. I had been
+choked before, and also done a bit of choking on my own account; so I
+knew to within a few seconds how long it is before the head of a man
+whose wind is shut off begins to reel.
+
+"Still quite the master of myself, I tried on, very deliberately, the
+best thing I knew for breaking a strangle grip--that simple little
+_jujutsu_ trick of thrusting your arms between those of the man choking
+you, and then throwing back your shoulders and expanding your chest.
+Stiffening the chest muscles, I mean--of course you can't expand it with
+air while your windpipe is closed. That never fails if you are both on
+your feet, and will sometimes work even when you are on your back. Here
+the tangle of the net blocked the up-thrust of my arms, and I failed to
+get enough leverage to break the hold on my neck.
+
+"Then I tried my next best bet--that of turning over and over and sort
+of unwinding the grip on your throat. I was a shade less confident now.
+Time was getting short. I did some jolly active wriggling in trying to
+work along far enough to roll over the side of the bed, but again it was
+the net that defeated my effort. I was getting a good deal peeved with
+that bally canopy; and yet, in the end, it was the very thing that got
+me clear.
+
+"Nine times out of ten a man being held down and choked by another
+man--that is, if the choker knows his job--has no chance of doubling up
+in a ball and kicking his assailant off by straightening out his legs.
+If the man choking you flattens his body closely enough against yours,
+you simply haven't the room to start doubling your knees. My assailant
+knew his business right enough, but the folds of the net (some of the
+corners of which were still clinging to its frame), prevented his
+flattening in close to my legs. The sag of the woven bamboo bed springs
+also gave me a few inches of leeway.
+
+"There was nothing deliberate or confident in the jerk with which I
+began drawing my knees up against my chest. I had already failed twice
+with what I rated as decidedly better bets than that one, and the time
+limit was nearly up. My head was already beginning to swim. It was neck
+or nothing this heat. The sheer desperation of my effort won out for it.
+The push of my knees against the chest of the incubus did not lift it
+quite enough to break its hold, but it did enable me to squirm my right
+foot up and get it firmly planted in the pit of the creature's stomach.
+Then, with all the strength left in me, I straightened out in a terrific
+kicking push.
+
+"In reverse, the flight of the muscular body that had been holding me
+down must have been fully equal to that opening jump from the window.
+Indeed, I am almost sure that it hit the further wall before it did the
+floor. The hold on my neck was the only point of contact that did not
+break readily, and there the result was--as you saw a moment ago. As
+those steel-claw fingers would not give an inch, they simply ripped out
+through the flesh. I can consider myself dead lucky that they didn't
+hook onto my windpipe or jugular. Both of them would have come right
+along with all the flesh and hide those unrelaxing talons took with
+them.
+
+"It didn't occur to me for a few moments that I might have knocked out
+my assailant, and I was a good deal surprised when he neither returned
+to the attack nor made any break to escape. The laboured gasping in the
+darkness on the other side of the room quickly told me the reason,
+however. I had knocked the wind out of him with my mighty kick. I knew
+that spasmodic gasping for air meant that I wasn't going to be greatly
+troubled for a minute or two at least, so took my time about fumbling
+for my automatic and lighting the lamp.
+
+"A bit dazzled by the light for a moment, I took the lanky yellow figure
+huddled up against the wall to be a Hindu coolie. The thin legs and arms
+were like those of the East Indian indentured labourers of the sugar
+plantations, and the two or three yards of white cloth trailing off
+along the floor suggested a Madrassi waist and shoulder rag.
+Presently--for that one rumpled wrapping was all she had worn--I saw
+that it was a woman; and then--but as a matter of fact I think that the
+girl spoke before I recognized her face.
+
+"'"Slant,"' she piped out in that bird-like chirrup of hers; '"Slant," I
+guess I make a meestake. 'Scuse me, ple-ese, "Slant."'
+
+"Could you beat that for cheek? Trying to tear a man's throat out one
+minute, and asking him to 'ple-ese 'scuse' her for it the next. And what
+do you think of a man who would tumble for it, especially after the way
+she had made me jump through and roll over at Kai? But that's Rona; yes,
+and that's me. I tumbled, and--I may as well admit it--I am still
+tumbling.
+
+"Having the girl turn up like that--after I had been thinking of her as
+dead for a week or two--didn't give me quite the shock it would have if
+that voice had come out of the darkness without my seeing her first. It
+was a deuce of a surprise even as it was; but, when all is said and
+done, a pleasant one, in spite of the rather startling way she chose
+to--to re-materialize. I was glad to find that she was alive, whether it
+meant anything more to me than that or not.
+
+"We didn't talk much that night--there wasn't much talk left in either
+of us as a matter of fact. Rona continued to croak and hiccup, while my
+own swollen vocal chords smothered every other word I tried to get past
+them. I managed to assure Rona that I quite understood her feelings
+against me (though I didn't entirely, and don't yet), and begged her to
+give me a chance to explain the way Bell had come to his finish. She
+admitted that she had begun to believe that she might have been hasty in
+her decision and action, and said she would be glad to hear what I had
+to say. She told me where she was in hiding and asked me to come there
+in the morning; also to do what I could to square her with the
+quarantine authorities for breaking out of the Station ahead of time,
+and on no account to let anything happen to old Ratu Lal for giving her
+refuge. She seemed to take it as a matter of course that I would do
+these things. You'd have thought I was some sort of a _mayordomo_ taking
+orders.
+
+"It was not very late and, luckily, the bungalow (which Ralston had
+occupied himself at times) had a telephone. I ordered a closed carriage
+sent out, and also got the Quarantine Station and arranged for one of
+the doctors--Butler, the chap you talked with on the steamer--to come to
+the landing and wait for me to pick him up. They had been very decent to
+me at the Station, and I wanted to avoid having to explain things to a
+strange doctor.
+
+"Rona tied my neck up for me--very handily, too--and when the carriage
+came I bundled her in and gave the driver the direction which carried
+him along the edge of the 'foreign quarter.' I dropped her at a corner
+not far from Ratu Lal's joint, promising to look in on her early the
+next morning. Butler was waiting for me at the landing when I got there,
+and I told him about Rona's coming to life, and its sequel, as we drove
+back to the bungalow. After he had dressed my neck I told him what I
+wanted him to try to do for me and sent him back to the landing, where
+his boat had hung on for him.
+
+"Rona was looking a bit white about the gills when I called the next
+morning, and complained that her stomach 'got mad' every time she sent
+food down to it. I told her that she still had the best of me, as I
+didn't expect to be able to get any food down to my stomach for a couple
+of days yet. That seemed rather to buck her up, and she had a good laugh
+over it. Then we got down to business, and had an hour's yarn in the
+drug-scented quiet of old Ratu Lal's back room.
+
+"As my Malay is fairly good, we talked without difficulty. I told her
+more or less what I have just told you about Bell and why I had given
+him the whisky. She said, rather grudgingly, that she thought she could
+understand why I had done as I did. Then I said a few things
+about--well, about my personal feelings toward her. Finally, I asked her
+point-blank if she would go back to the Islands with me. Told her she
+could live anywhere she wanted, and in any way that she wanted. I didn't
+say that I was willing to marry her, because (since, if she has any
+religion at all, it's Hindu or Mohammedan) I felt that would make no
+difference to her one way or the other.
+
+"Am I really willing to marry her?" (It was the lift of my eyebrows that
+suggested the query to Allen, for I did not speak.) "Well, yes, I think
+I am, if she made that a condition. But I don't think the question is
+one likely to arise.
+
+"The girl took in the whole thing without giving away by word or look
+how it impressed her. When I had finished, she coolly suggested that I
+run along and square matters up with the quarantine people about her and
+Ratu Lal. She added that she would be obliged if I'd look up her Chinese
+shawl for her. She also started to speak about her dagger, but changed
+her mind and said to let that go for the present. As for what I'd been
+telling her.... Well, perhaps if I could see my way to dropping in again
+toward evening she might have an answer for me. High and haughty as a
+Sultana, she was, sitting cross-legged on a mat and pulling away at one
+of Ratu Lal's big 'hubble-bubbles.'
+
+"I went to the Quarantine Station straightaway, and, in spite of the red
+tape tangling up a thing of that kind, managed to get them to agree to
+discharging the girl without anything more than a perfunctory call from
+a doctor to certify her free of plague. That done, the rest was easy. I
+told the story--omitting, of course, the girl's attack upon me--at the
+Police Station, and they agreed not to arrest Ratu Lal as long as the
+quarantine authorities were satisfied and lodged no complaint against
+him. They said they were only too glad of a chance to do me a favour.
+Then I got them to let me have the shawl, and begged them to keep the
+news of the girl's turning up quiet as long as they could.
+
+"'Squid' Saunders's little diversion that afternoon gave the pressmen
+something else to take up their minds, and the matter of the missing
+girl was forgotten, at least for the remainder of my time in Townsville.
+The fact that she did not drown herself must have leaked out since, but
+they probably haven't been enough interested in it--now that the hunt
+has followed me here--to wire it south.
+
+"When I broke away from the official reception committee and dropped in
+on Rona at the end of the afternoon--impatient enough, I can tell
+you--she gave no sign that the matter I had come for an answer about was
+in her mind at all. She grabbed the Chinese shawl out of my hand with a
+yelp of delight, but almost dissolved in tears when she saw how the
+embroidery had been smudged and ruffled in her scrambles over trees and
+walls and ditches the night she escaped from the Quarantine Station. You
+may remember that it was a big peacock that was embroidered on the
+shawl--pretty nearly life-size--rather a fine piece of work, it always
+struck me. Well, ignoring me entirely, she spread that old peacock out
+over her breast--something in the way she used to display it when she
+wore the shawl in Kai--and began chirping and crooning and muttering to
+it like a dove to its nestlings. She would nuzzle into the plumage,
+smoothing the ruffled feathers with her lips, just like she was the old
+peacock preening himself. Every little bit of torn floss she would try
+to put back where it came from.
+
+"Stiff with funk, I sat quiet until she had gone all over the moulting
+old bird, but when she started in working down from his crest again, I
+thought it was time to remind her of my presence. I had never sat around
+waiting on anybody like that before, Whitney; even my old nurse couldn't
+make me do it. So I cut in and told her that I had arranged things at
+the Quarantine Station--that she wouldn't need to go there again; also
+that old Ratu Lal need not worry any longer about a visit from the
+Police. Incidentally, I mentioned that I was making him a present of ten
+pounds to show my appreciation of his consideration in not claiming the
+reward offered for her.
+
+"She took no notice of anything I said. Just went on crooning and
+preening and stroking down the ruffled feathers, giving a little sob
+every now and then as she came to a place where they were badly mussed
+up. Then I went off on another tack, saying that I knew of a shop in the
+town that carried Chinese embroideries, and suggesting it was possible a
+skilled needle-worker might be found there competent to undertake the
+restoration of the bird's damaged plumage. She deigned to cock up an ear
+to listen to that, but her only reply was a disconsolate shake of the
+head, as though anything like proper restoration was a matter beyond all
+hope.
+
+"That quieted me for a while, but after twirling my thumbs through ten
+or fifteen minutes more nuzzling and crooning, my patience gave out. I
+jumped up to the accompaniment of a good lively string of oaths, and
+asked her point-blank if she had made up her mind about the matter we
+had been speaking of in the morning. She broke into a ripple of smiles
+at that, and cooed sweetly: 'Ye-es, I think 'bout that plenty, "Slant."'
+Then she slipped into voluble Malay and laid down a perfectly simple and
+direct proposal, on the fulfilment of the conditions of which she was
+willing to return to the Islands with me. It was not what I had
+expected,--not what anyone would have dreamed of expecting under the
+circumstances; yet ridiculously easy of fulfilment in the event a
+certain third party fell in with the idea. That third party is you,
+Whitney. That's the main thing I have come to see you about. Everything
+is up to you now. Perhaps that will make it easier for you to understand
+why I rattled on for an hour or more in the hope of putting myself right
+with you about Bell. I've never tried to justify myself with any living
+man before, and probably will never do it again. But it had to be done
+this time, Whitney, and I hope I've been successful."
+
+My nod might have meant almost anything, but I was not unwilling that
+Allen should interpret it in his favour. As a matter of fact, he had
+convinced me wholly that--after the abortive attempt at drugging in
+Kai--he had played straight with Bell. As for Rona--well, if he was also
+ready to play straight with her (and he had just about convinced me on
+that point, too), what was it to me? If she could forget Bell so easily,
+it was her own affair. If Allen were trying to carry her off against her
+will--that would be a different matter of course. But he was not.
+Plainly it was the girl herself who held the whip hand. The whole thing
+was a bit obscure yet, but what Allen had still to say might do
+something to clear it up. Without committing myself by more than that
+one nod, I waited for him to go on.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XII
+
+                            A BAD MAN'S PLEA
+
+
+The expression of nervous anxiety I had noticed several times since he
+came was on Allen's face again as he started to speak. "It's a queer
+enough proposition," he began. "You see, it's like ..." He hesitated,
+stopped, got up and walked to the window, where he stood for a few
+moments, frowning and biting the end of his cheroot. Suddenly he turned
+to me with: "Whitney, what do you say to a bit of a turn in the fresh
+air? I've been talking more than I'm used to, and this stuffy room of
+yours is getting on my nerves. We might walk out through the gardens to
+the Domain. I can tell you all that I have to tell out there."
+
+I did not need to look at my watch to know that it was getting on toward
+five o'clock. Only the absorbing interest of Allen's narrative had
+prevented my becoming conscious of that fact before. My own nerves were
+less under control now, and the inevitable end-of-the-afternoon
+restlessness was surging strong upon me. But I was anxious to hear Allen
+out, and no reason occurred to me why it should not be in the open air.
+If there was any decision to be arrived at, that could be made on the
+morrow, or whenever I felt up to it.
+
+"Right-o, Allen," I cried; "I'll be glad to get out myself. I shall want
+to be back in about half an hour though."
+
+I was grateful for his restraint in not greeting that last with an
+indulgent smile, for I knew that he fully understood what it was that
+focussed my interest upon five o'clock. It was very evident that the man
+had retained all the finer instincts of a gentleman, little opportunity
+that he had had to exercise them in the last five years.
+
+I got my hat and stick, and, feeling sure I would have no use for them,
+put both the revolver and the automatic pistol into the drawer of the
+table upon which they had been lying. I was rather glad of the chance to
+show Allen that I had confidence in him to that extent anyhow.
+
+Anxious to avoid recognition, Allen pulled on a pair of dark spectacles
+and drew the brim of his Panama low down over his forehead. Turning out
+of crowded Pitt Street, he removed the spectacles, and as we passed the
+entrance of the Botanical Gardens took off his hat and fanned his brow
+with it as he walked. He had not spoken so far, but with the deep breath
+he inhaled as he felt the springy turf underfoot his restraint passed
+from him.
+
+"It's a great relief to get clear of those damn walls and pavements," he
+said fervently, opening his coat to let the cool breath from the Bay
+strike his chest. "I can't get used to them again. I've been free of
+them too long now. But I'm finished with them for good, I hope." Then,
+as we came out upon a broad path: "Bear away to the left, if you don't
+mind. I want to take a squint at that bunch of palms as we pass."
+
+As we came abreast of a big bed packed with a riot of dense tropical
+growths, he pulled up and appeared to be searching for something. "Ah,
+there she is!" he ejaculated presently, and pushed in close to a queer
+little dwarf palm, which straggled drunkenly on a half-dozen spindling
+legs set something like those of a camera tripod. Pulling up the stamped
+metal marker, he gave it a quick glance and then handed it to me with a
+grin. "The fruits of my first and only dip into botanical research," he
+remarked. "What do you think of it?"
+
+"_Pandanus Bensoni Allensis_," I read in large letters, and below:
+"Habitat: Portuguese Timor. Very rare. The only other catalogued
+specimen is in the Royal Dutch Gardens at Buitenzorg, Java."
+
+"So that _Allensis_ stands for you, does it?" I said, not a little
+impressed, as I handed him back the metal disc. Then added: "And racing
+and polo cups weren't the only objects you collected."
+
+"The merest accident," he replied. "I had always liked plants and
+flowers, ever since my nurse used to wheel me down this very walk in my
+pram. I suppose that gave me an interest in the tropical growths of the
+Islands, after they packed me off there. I thought this little fellow
+looked a bit on the unusual when I chanced upon it one morning in a low
+valley back of Deli; so I dug it up and shipped it to Sydney direct on
+the China Line steamer, which touches in there. It turned out to be a
+real find. Benson of Kew Gardens, the great authority on tropical palms,
+described it, and tacked my name on as the discoverer. The old cove's
+letter contained the only kind words addressed to me from the outside
+world in the last five years. And now look at them ..."
+
+I had come to expect that note of bitterness in Allen's voice every time
+he spoke of the past, and especially of his "transportation" to the
+Islands. He evidently thought that he had been badly treated; too badly
+for even the present wave of frantic adulation to make atonement. He was
+through with it for good. Several little things he had let drop
+indicated that.
+
+The incident of the palm was interesting in throwing an illuminative
+crosslight on the gentler human side of a man who had generally been
+rated as without either gentleness or humanity. So, also, was the very
+evident appeal to Allen's sense of natural beauty made by the matchless
+panorama of the Bay as it unfolded to us from the far end of the point.
+
+We had skirted the Naval anchorage of Farm Cove, picked our way along
+the path below the ledges where benighted "sundowners" were wont to boil
+their "billys" and spread their "blueys" in the shallow wave-worn caves,
+and climbed up through the gums to the rocky lookout on the outermost
+tip of the sharply-jutting point. The clocks in the town behind us began
+chiming the quarters heralding the hour of five, and presently, on the
+first of the heavier strokes, the flotilla of trans-bay ferry-boats slid
+from their slips at the inner curve of the horseshoe of the Circular
+Quay and "fanned" out on their divergent courses to points on the
+opposite side of Port Jackson.
+
+"That sight has never failed to quicken my pulses from the time I used
+to wait and watch for it as a kid down to today," Allen said with almost
+a thrill in his voice. "It is the one picture that has remained clearest
+in my mind all these years I've been--shut out from it. Did you ever
+read Henry Lawson's lines to 'Sydney-Side,' written from somewhere in
+the West, I believe? Something like this they go:
+
+    "'Oh, there never dawned a morning in the long and lonely days,
+        But I thought I saw the ferries streaming out across the bays--
+    And as fresh and fair in fancy did the picture rise again
+    As the sunrise flushed the city from Woollahra to Balmain:
+
+    "'And the sunny water frothing round the liners black and red,
+        And the coastal schooners working by the loom of Bradley's Head;
+    And the whistles and the sirens that re-echo far and wide
+        All the light and life and beauty that belong to Sydney-Side.'"
+
+"A sentimentalist, too," I muttered to myself, the surprise of that
+revelation checking for a few moments the rising tide of my
+absinthe-hunger.
+
+Allen led the way back to where a flat ledge of rock made a rough
+natural seat. "'Lady Macquarie's Chair,'" he explained, motioning me to
+sit down. "Named from the wife of a former Governor who was supposed to
+slip away out here and enjoy the view. The Domain runs right back behind
+the Government House, you know. I always used to mooch along out here
+for a look-see every time I got a chance, partly for the fine prospect
+of the Bay and partly for the comprehensive visualization it permitted
+of what I might call 'The Rise and Fall of the House of Allen.'
+
+"Haven't you an expression in the States to the effect that it's 'three
+generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves'? Well, here in
+Australia we put the same natural law of evolution in the form of a
+conundrum and answer. It goes: 'How long does it take for an arrow to
+become a boomerang?' The answer varies, but for the 'House of Allen' it
+is: 'Four generations.'
+
+"The arrow, you understand, is the 'Broad Arrow' that marked the
+transported convicts, while the boomerang merely suggests something that
+rises, circles and returns to the point of departure. Well, from this
+place where we sit I can trace the full circle of the 'arrow-cum
+boomerang-cum arrow' of the Allen quiver. Look! I'll show you. Follow me
+closely.
+
+"Over there," he said, pointing seaward and easterly, "are the Heads, in
+through which sailed the brig bearing Jim (alias 'Crab') Allen, convict,
+with a few hundred more of the scum of London, to the shores of
+Australia. That is, I've always liked to fancy my distinguished
+progenitor sailed in through the Heads, though it's quite possible that
+the brig beat around into Botany Bay direct. Now" (he pointed westerly
+to where the Paramatta wound out of sight between green hills) "at the
+end of that deep cove over there is the slaughter house where the
+convict's son, James Allen, dealt in hides and hoofs and horns and laid
+the foundation of the family fortune, the fortune that wasn't seriously
+dented when the convict's grandson gave a hundred thousand pounds to a
+drought-relief fund and drew down a Baronetcy. That big red-brick pile
+among the trees on Darling Point" (Allen was pointing east again) "is
+the mansion of the late Sir James Allen, Bart., and now owned by his
+eldest son, the New South Wales Agent in London. Old Sir James' second
+son, Hartley, was born in the south wing of that unsightly heap of red
+bricks.
+
+"And here" (this time he turned and pointed south where a sharp
+dagger-blade of inlet plunged deep into the heart of Sydney's lowest
+slums) "is Wooloomooloo, where young Hartley Allen, descending from the
+soft refinements of Darling Point, found his level, organized his own
+'push' of rock-throwing, head-smashing larrikins and completed the
+social circle. The cycle of metamorphosis had begun its round. I was the
+throwback, Whitney. Old 'Crab' Allen, the transported convict of
+Houndsditch, lived again in young Hartley Allen, whom most people
+thought of as a racing man and polo player, but who had all the natural
+qualifications of an out-and-out crook.
+
+"I can trace all of my little moral obliquities, Whitney, back to old
+'Crab,' and, everything considered, I think he would rate me as rather a
+credit to his name, whatever contempt he might have had for my
+comparatively law-abiding father and grandfather, to say nothing of my
+pillar-of-the-state elder brother. 'Crab' was transported as a
+consequence of his persistent disregard of his fellow townsmen's rights
+to their lives, wives and silver plate. I--well, I never did care much
+for silver plate."
+
+All this would have been intensely interesting to me an hour earlier,
+but now the fervour of my longing for my "_solitude à trois_" (as I was
+wont to call my séance with the long green bottle and the glass of
+cracked ice) was getting beyond control. The flowing lines of the
+reaches of cove and inlet glowing in the slanting light of the declining
+sun were becoming jerky and jagged and intershot with dazzling little
+spurts of light like one thinks he sees after receiving a crack on the
+head. The evening breeze lapped clammily about my chest and I fumbled
+clumsily with the buttons of my coat, trying to shut out the chill.
+
+"I ought to have been back at the hotel before this," I mumbled, getting
+to my feet. "You had something more to tell me, hadn't you? You can do
+it as we walk back. I've got to be going now."
+
+By this time I wasn't in a state to observe things very carefully.
+Undoubtedly (as I've thought it over since) Allen had been stalling to
+gain time and screw his nerve up to advancing the plan he had in mind.
+This being so, it must have jarred him a bit to have me call the turn so
+suddenly. I don't remember whether his face showed consternation or not.
+The one thing I recall was the quick movement of his hand to that hump
+on his right hip.
+
+I did not recoil an inch. I am sure of that, for I felt no apprehension.
+I was beyond apprehension--save over delay. But Allen's hand came back
+empty. "I'll tell you at once," he said brokenly. "But please sit down.
+Don't go just yet. We'll have to come to a decision straightaway." Then,
+seeing I was turning to go: "It's just this: Rona wants you to paint her
+picture--on the schooner--the _Cora_. Wants a picture done of the whole
+layout--ship, Bell, her, me, Ranga, niggers, everything. Says she'll
+pose for it on the schooner. Says I must pose too. Seems to be bitten
+with the idea of perpetuating the event for posterity, or something of
+the kind. Crazy scheme, but she's set her heart on it. Says when it's
+done, if she likes it, she may go back to the Islands with me. Nothing
+certain for me, but it's a chance and I've got to make the most of it.
+Will you do it, Whitney? She says you've always wanted to paint her
+picture, and now she's all for it. You won't turn it down, Whitney?"
+
+The incongruity of "Slant" Allen in the rôle of a plaintive pleader
+struck me with scarcely less astonishment than his strange and
+unexpected request. I was, however, totally unfit to cogitate upon
+either just then.
+
+"I'll think it over and let you know tomorrow," I said dully. "Got to go
+now."
+
+"It has to be decided here and now, once and for all," Allen answered
+firmly. "Here!--" This time there was no hesitation in the movement of
+his hand to the hip-pocket hump. When it came back it was holding a fat
+stubby flask--one of the thermos type, just coming into general use at
+that time.
+
+"I know what's calling you away, Whitney," he said steadily, unscrewing
+the top of the flask and pouring into it a bright green liquid with a
+familiar smell and sparkle. "On the off chance that we might be detained
+beyond the hour when you're used to depending upon it, I had this cooled
+at the Marble Bar--old hangout of mine--and brought it along with me.
+Don't use the stuff myself, but I know the hooks it throws into a man
+who does use it. Drink hearty!"
+
+He handed me both the brimming screw-top and the flask itself. The
+contents of the former might have been drugged heavily enough to kill a
+horse for all I cared. It was absinthe beyond a doubt, and cold enough
+to frost the outside of the little nickled cup that held it. I gulped it
+down hungrily; replenished and repeated. The third cup I drank less
+greedily, letting my eyes rove slowly where the jerkily jagged zigzags
+of hill and headland and foreshore were smoothing into a softer fluency
+of contour. Sipping the fourth cup, I unbuttoned my coat to give more
+intimacy to the caress of the milk-warm evening breeze.
+
+"Not bad stuff, Allen," I breathed at last. "Very good of you to think
+of it. What was it you wanted me to do just now?" Five minutes later I
+had promised to meet "Slant" Allen at the railway station in time to
+catch the nine-thirty train for Brisbane, en route Townsville.
+
+It appeared that Rona's ultimatum had stipulated that Allen was to be
+back in Townsville with me, ready to begin arranging for the picture,
+inside of ten days. The only northbound boat, the _Waga Tiri_, which
+would arrive within the limit, had already left Sydney but could be
+overtaken at Brisbane by entraining at once. Allen had booked sleepers
+for the express and wired for cabins on the steamer before he called on
+me at the _Australia_. There was nothing left to do but throw together
+what things I wanted and get to the station.
+
+It was rather a wrench, checking myself after getting all poised for
+flight with the "Green Lady," but not so hard as it would have been had
+I really "got off the ground." The contents of Allen's flask were hardly
+more than a strong bracer. Once I got back to the hotel and into my
+packing, it was easy going, especially as my enthusiasm was mounting for
+the work ahead. To have Rona for a model at last! And for such a
+picture!
+
+The dramatic appeal of the thing grew on me with every passing minute.
+It was not, to be sure, quite the kind of a work I was best prepared to
+do. With my ambition to become a marine painter, I had gone in more for
+colour than for anatomy and drawing; but I was still confident that I
+could make good with anything that gripped my imagination strongly. And
+"The Saving of the Black-birder" (I had already given it a tentative
+name) fairly took me by the throat. I would not fail with it. Nay, more,
+I would triumph. Perhaps--why not?--Paris! Yes, "The Black-birder"
+should open a short-cut to my goal. The rails beneath the wheels of the
+speeding Brisbane Express were clicking _black-bir-der_--_black-bir-der_
+when I dropped off to sleep that night somewhere along toward the
+Queensland boundary.
+
+That the morrow should bring some reaction from this fine frenzy was
+inevitable, but it was a comparatively slight one. That Allen had
+deliberately planned to draw me away and take advantage of my weakness
+for absinthe to gain my intervention in his favour was evident enough.
+Indeed, the consummate manner in which he turned the trick argued an
+almost pathological intimacy with the reaction of the insidiously subtle
+essence of wormwood upon the human brain. But I did not hold this
+heavily against him. It was plain that he had only done it to play safe
+in a matter respecting which he did not dare to take any unnecessary
+chances of failure. I could not but admit to myself that I would
+probably have fallen in with the plan ultimately in any event. There was
+no disloyalty to my friend in making him (as I intended to do) the
+central figure in a picture that I hoped would become famous in two
+hemispheres. On the contrary, what greater tribute was there I could pay
+to his memory? If Rona cared to flaunt that memory by going off to the
+Islands with Allen, it was her own kettle of fish. Besides, she had not
+gone yet; didn't even appear to have committed herself definitely in the
+matter.
+
+To minimize explanations and the possibility of complications, Allen and
+I had agreed to defer wiring our Sydney friends of our departure until
+after we were aboard the _Waga Tiri_ in Moreton Bay. His message to the
+Chairman of the Reception Committee, and mine to Benchley at my
+Exposition, went ashore on the tender that brought us off, and the
+steamer was under way before they could have been put upon the wires. It
+was not until the next northbound boat brought the Sydney papers to
+Townsville that we learned what a wave of surprise and speculation had
+been started by our joint hegira.
+
+In the course of the voyage Allen told me some few further details of
+developments in Townsville. Before his departure he had managed to
+induce Rona, for her own comfort, to move her headquarters from Ratu
+Lal's joint to the Medical Mission of the London Bible Society. The head
+surgeon of the Mission he characterized as "a good old sport" he had
+knocked up against in the Straits and the Dutch Indies. He was just like
+an ordinary missionary to look at, but redeemed in "Slant's" eyes by a
+real love of horses, and even--very much on the quiet--a shrewd interest
+in racing. "It's in his blood. He can't help it," Allen explained
+laconically but comprehensively.
+
+Explicit instructions had been left at the Mission that Rona was not to
+be worried about her spiritual future. She was to be just a "straight
+boarder" until Allen's return. She was well provided with money, as he
+had seen to having everything Bell had with him at the time of his death
+deposited to her account at a local bank. This had included eighty gold
+sovereigns, found in a money-belt around Bell's waist, and some hundreds
+of Chilean silver _pesos_ he had brought off to the _Cora_ in a canvas
+sack.
+
+Ranga had been put up at the Sailors' Home. There had been a flat
+refusal to receive him at first, on account of his colour, but this was
+promptly withdrawn when it was found the request came from Allen, whom
+the town was going pretty strong on delighting to honour just at that
+juncture. Allen, who seemed very fond of the big fellow, also saw that
+the latter was comfortably provided with money.
+
+Allen did not speak again of the proposed picture until the steamer was
+nosing up to her buoy in Cleveland Bay. Then, after inquiring if I had
+everything I needed to go ahead with, he intimated that he would
+probably find Rona fretting to get things under way. "She seemed to have
+some wild sort of an idea," he said, "that the whole thing would be done
+on the schooner--that we all might move out there, bag and baggage, and
+make it our head-quarters until the picture was completed. She even
+wanted me to go out to that plague-rotten wreck with her and look the
+ground over before I left. I had no time for it, of course, and am jolly
+glad I didn't. Can't see what the good of it would have been anyhow. I
+was hoping I had seen the last of the damned hulk, though I suppose I
+can stick it for an hour or two in a pinch. I fail to see what she's
+driving at, but whatever it is you may as well make up your mind that
+she will have her way about it."
+
+I assured him that the picture would probably be mostly studio work as
+far as he was concerned, though I myself might want to sketch a few
+details on the schooner. It might save time, however, I suggested, if
+the whole lot of us went aboard before I began work so I could figure
+out a tentative grouping and get a general idea of the composition. Then
+I could make notes and sketches of whatever parts of the schooner would
+be included, and be ready to work on the individual figures as soon as I
+rigged up a studio.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIII
+
+                      THE SCENE OF THE FINAL DRAMA
+
+
+We spent the night at the hotel and went together to call on Rona at the
+Mission the following morning. The change in the girl was startling, far
+too great to be accounted for by the baggy Mother Hubbard that had
+replaced the close-clinging _sarongs_ and _sulus_ in which I had grown
+accustomed to seeing her at Kai. Her face was thinner and the former
+peach-like bloom of her cheeks had given way to a dusky sallowness. The
+curve of her lips had flattened--and hardened; hard, too, was the fixed
+stare of her great sloe eyes. To a stranger the pucker of concentration
+between her eyebrows might almost have suggested sullenness. The lines
+about her eyes and mouth, which spoke to me of suffering, might have
+seemed to another as stamped there by hate. She was still beautiful, but
+in a new way. It was a wild, fluttered sort of loveliness that haunted
+rather than allured. The woman before me could never "sit Buddha," I
+told myself; those dreamy spells of repose had not punctuated her
+present life with intervals of Oriental peacefulness.
+
+Decidedly reserved in her manner toward Allen, Rona tried to be warm in
+her greeting to me, but quickly showed signs of restraint and
+embarrassment. She became even more ill at ease when "Slant," after
+genial old Dr. Oakes invited him out to see a new saddle horse that had
+just arrived from Singapore, excused himself and left us alone. She
+sheered off so sharply from my first mention of the name of Bell, and
+became so palpably nervous at a couple of attempts I made to lead round
+to him by degrees, that I gave up trying to induce her to speak of him
+out of sheer pity. Even my inquiry after the health of "Peeky" of the
+embroidered shawl drew only a weary little smile and a sad shake of her
+riotous tumble of blue-black hair.
+
+She was ready enough to talk about the picture, though even in that
+connection I was at once conscious of a lack of real enthusiasm on her
+part. She seemed anxious to get it started, however, and said she
+supposed we would be going to live on the schooner in a day or two. She
+even confessed to having worried a good deal for fear the _Cora_ would
+be broken up by a storm before the picture was made. When I told her
+that we would not need to live on the schooner, and perhaps would not
+have to make more than one or two short visits to it, she appeared a
+good deal put out for a few moments. She scowled angrily and started to
+speak; then thought better of it, bit her lip and held her tongue. She
+appeared a bit mollified when I said we would make our first visit, to
+plan the picture, just as soon as the quarantine people would disinfect
+the schooner for us. (That this had not been done yet I had already
+learned through 'phoning to the Station the night before.) She observed
+impatiently that she thought disinfection was a needless precaution, and
+I had to explain that it was not a matter of precaution at all on our
+part; that it was against the law for anyone to board a ship that had
+carried plague until it was disinfected, and that if we tried it on the
+_Cora_ the whole lot of us would probably be clapped in jail and
+quarantined afterwards.
+
+She softened a little as I got up to go, and her "Next time I show you
+'Peekie,' Whit-nee--'Peekie' is a ver-ee sick bird," sounded almost like
+old times. The hand she gave me was hot and dry but unshaking, and the
+almost cutting grip of it tense with nervous force. I noticed that her
+finger nails, though trimmed closer than of old and no longer stained,
+were still of unusual length.
+
+I found Allen, his face flushed with enthusiasm, putting the doctor's
+new colt up and down the sward before the Mission chapel in sharp bursts
+of terrific speed. The animal, Oakes explained to me, had been given to
+him by a petty Rajah of the Federated Malay States as a token of his
+appreciation of the doctor's success in removing a troublesome appendix
+from a favourite dancing girl some months previously. It was a chunky
+bay gelding, only his small head, full neck and a certain trimness of
+hock bearing out Oakes' claim that he was out of a Mameluke imported
+direct from Bassorah by the Sultan of Johore. For the rest he favoured
+his Timor dam, and looked built for endurance and handiness rather than
+speed. The instant Allen was on his back, however, his sure instinct
+told him that the powerful little beast had swiftness as well as staying
+powers, and he was already itching to put his judgment to the test. A
+week later, having quietly entered him in the race of the day--the
+Planters' Handicap--at the Townsville midsummer meet, he rode the
+gelding himself and gave the local betting public the worst jolt in
+North Queensland track annals by winning at two-hundred-to-one. Every
+pound that the wily Allen cleaned up on the race went to build the good
+Doctor Oakes, shortly transferred to Fiji, the largest and best equipped
+Medical Mission in all of Polynesia. The full story of what the winning
+of that race meant to the game old missionary with the sporting blood
+has yet to be written.
+
+My plan of visiting the _Cora_ to make a preliminary study of the
+"Black-birder" met with an unexpected check. The quarantine people had
+readily consented to give the schooner a rough disinfection, one that
+would make it quite safe for us to board her as long as we kept clear of
+the holds, which would require more drastic treatment. Before the
+formaldehyde squad got away, however, several cases of smallpox were
+reported in the native quarter, and all the available disinfecting
+apparatus was called upon for use there. It would be at least a week or
+ten days, we were told, before an outfit would be free for the _Cora_.
+
+Personally, I didn't mind the delay in the least; for one reason,
+because Rona's strange mood had quenched my initial surge of ardour for
+the picture, and, for another, because I had still to find a suitable
+place in which to work. Allen seemed to be worrying very little over the
+forced wait. "I've laid my bets to win or lose, and I'll be there to
+cash in after the finish," he said philosophically. He spent most of the
+time in the saddle, getting out mornings at daybreak to give the
+"Missionary Colt" (as he called the Oakes gelding) workouts on the
+quiet. As far as I could observe, he saw very little of Rona.
+
+It was the girl who really chafed under the inaction of waiting. Two or
+three times she sent for me to urge that we disregard the quarantine
+regulations and go off to the schooner. Allen mentioned that she had
+also begged him to take her out for a look-see at the _Cora_ on the
+quiet. How she spent her time I did not know. Oakes told me that she
+went out for long walks every day, sometimes going toward the hills and
+sometimes along the shore. I found freshly picked tiger-lilies on Bell's
+grave the day I visited it, and it occurred to me that the gathering of
+these might have furnished the motive for the solitary walks. But if she
+was still devoted to Bell's memory, why wouldn't she speak of him?--and
+why the plan to go off to the Islands with Allen? The girl's conduct was
+quite beyond my understanding. That was one thing I was sure of, at
+least.
+
+Meanwhile I went ahead looking for a place I could turn into a studio.
+It had been Allen's idea that the suburban bungalow he occupied after
+coming out of quarantine would be suitable, but I was compelled to veto
+it on account of the poor light--a consequence of the dense tropical
+growth surrounding it. The same difficulty--light--ruled out a number of
+other attractive places that were offered me, and I was about to close
+with a rather squalid little shack near the beach as a last resort, when
+Allen got wind of a temporarily vacant house on a big sugar estate, some
+miles from town.
+
+This little gem of a hillside bungalow had been built by the sugar
+people for a sub-overseer of the plantation, who had gone to Melbourne
+to meet and marry a girl from home. As the lucky chap had been given a
+three-months holiday for a honeymoon in New Zealand, the local manager
+of the sugar company decided that there could be no objection to my
+occupying the nest in the interim; in fact, he was sure his directors
+would be highly honoured to have their property used by so distinguished
+an artist, and for so laudable a purpose. He hoped I would not hesitate
+to call upon him for help at any time. He would see to it that the
+servants already hired against the return of Borton and his bride
+reported at once, and that Borton's trap and saddle horses were placed
+at my immediate disposal.
+
+I was greatly pleased with my find for a number of reasons besides the
+fact that it had a large and well-lighted living-room that could be made
+all I could ask to work in. Not the least of these was its location.
+Several hundred feet above the sea, its wide verandas caught cool
+currents of the Trade wind that the sultry lower levels never knew.
+Infinitely refreshing, too--both in fact and in suggestion,--I found the
+splendid stream which circled close under the rear wall, forming, where
+a mossy ledge reared a natural dam, a deep, clear pool to which I could
+jump from my bedroom window. The revitalizing effect of an early morning
+plunge, I had found by long experience, was beyond comparison the best
+antidote against the insidious absinthe poisoning paralyzing body and
+brain at the end of the night.
+
+A couple of hundred yards further down the stream took a swift run
+through a verdant tunnel of fern fronds and overhanging palm leaves,
+before it leaped in a fine compact spout of green and white over the
+verge of a creeper-clad cliff, to a lucent hyacinth-lined basin thirty
+feet below. From there, quieter of mood and mind after its hillside
+gambols, it meandered by pleasant reaches across a broad belt of
+shimmering sugar cane, beyond which it disappeared in tangled growth of
+primeval bush. By dark ways and devious, broadening and deepening in the
+lower levels, it finally lost itself in the mangrove swamp that fringed
+the sea fifteen miles to the northward.
+
+I mention this stream particularly because of the part it was destined
+to play in the final act of the drama of the _Cora Andrews_. For a
+similar reason it may be in order to say a few words about the great
+flume, which took off from the stream at the pool below the waterfall
+and led down to the big central sugar mill on the shore of the first
+deeply indented bay north of Townsville. It was built, following the
+successful Hawaiian practice, for the purpose of floating the cut cane
+from the fields to the mill, a method which, wherever the natural
+conditions were suited to it, had proved both cheaper and more
+expeditious than the old system of transporting the succulent stalks by
+tramway and bullock carts.
+
+The flume itself was built of imported Oregon pine planks, and was
+carried on a trestle of rough-hewn blue-gum and _jarra_ trunks. In
+section, the box of the flume was about four feet wide by three feet
+deep. The water it carried--about a quarter of the normal flow of the
+stream that fed it--varied in depth according to its velocity. The
+latter, of course, depended upon the grade of the flume, this varying
+from two or three per cent. in the broad upper valley to all of fifteen
+per cent. in a couple of short steep pitches near the coast.
+
+I was interested in this flume from the first time I saw it. In the
+course of a visit to Hawaii some years previously, I had found no end of
+sport in what was called "sugar-fluming"--riding from the mountainside
+plantations down to the mills seated on a water-propelled bundle of
+sugar-cane. On my inquiring of the local manager if the highly diverting
+stunt was practicable here, he had answered with a most emphatic
+negative. "You could go down the flume all right," he said, "but the
+volume of water is so great that you could not stop yourself by holding
+to the sides even where the grades are the slightest. On the sharp
+inclines, where the flume runs down to the mill, a team of bullocks
+couldn't hold you back. Only one man ever tried the feat deliberately,
+and we were picking fragments of him out of the _bagasse_ for a month.
+Also spoiled a lot of sugar--everything from the juice in the vats to
+the unfinished article in the centrifugals had to be thrown away. Same
+thing has had to be done on the several occasions coolies have fallen
+into the flume while at work. Jolly costly accidents for the company. I
+hope that you're not contemplating...."
+
+I hastened to assure him that, after what he had told me, I most
+certainly had ceased any contemplations I might have allowed myself to
+indulge in up to then. Still I couldn't help picturing in my mind what
+sport could be got out of the thing if only some sort of buffer were
+rigged up at the lower end. That prompted me, a day or two after I was
+settled in the bungalow and while time was still hanging on my hands, to
+put my horse down the bridle-path along the flume when I went out for a
+ride in the cool of the afternoon. After that I lost all interest in
+"sugar-fluming" as a sport. It was just conceivable that a man of great
+strength and agility might stop himself by gripping the sides of the
+flume at several points in the first five or six miles, but from where
+the sharp descent to the coast began I was inclined to agree with the
+manager's statement, that the drag of a man's body in the pull of the
+racing stream would take a team of bullocks off their feet.
+
+I dismounted and leaned over the edge of the flume where it ran through
+a narrow cut in the rock at the brow of the great basaltic cliff that
+followed the curve of the beach of the bay. This was the upper end of
+the first of the two sharp drops and the water, which was running within
+a foot of the top of the flume a hundred yards above, and here flattened
+down to a scant six inches in the bottom, grey-green and solid like a
+great endless belt of flying steel. The butt of my riding-whip was all
+but jerked from my hand as I touched it lightly to the speeding water,
+and a curving fan of spray was projected up into my face and over the
+sides. The evidence of such a solidity of kick in running water seemed
+almost beyond belief, until I recalled having heard how a jet escaping
+from the pressure pipe of a hydro-electric plant somewhere in the
+American West had penetrated a man's body, cleanly, like an arrow.
+
+My desire to ride the flume died then and there, though even yet I
+couldn't help regretting that there wasn't a level stretch above the
+jump-off, where a man could check his headway and crawl out. It would
+have been rattling good sport down to there, but beyond--sheer suicide.
+There was, it is true, a couple of hundred yards of perhaps five per
+cent. grade between the first steep pitch over the edge of the cliff,
+and a second one, even steeper, that seemed to run almost directly upon
+the roaring, churning mass of cane-crushing machinery that began at the
+upper end of the big mill. Even there the water was lightning-swift,
+however, so that a man, once over the edge of the first pitch, looked to
+be less than a thousand-to-one shot in bringing up before going on into
+the second. And that would have been--how was it the manager put
+it?--more "spoiled sugar"--another "jolly costly accident for the
+company."
+
+The bridle-path I had been following continued on along the flume to the
+mill, but, desiring to strike the main highway to Townsville as quickly
+as possible, I put my sure-footed little Timor mare down what appeared
+to be an abandoned road graded into the face of the cliff. When I
+finally came out in the rear of what was plainly the remains of an
+ancient water-driven cane-crushing mill, I realized that the old grade
+by which I had descended must have been the bullock-cart road from the
+plantation. The mill was a picturesque old ruin, with its mossy
+water-wheel, crumbling roof and sprawling pier, and I made mental note
+of the lovely little cove as a place well worth returning to with
+paintbox and easel when opportunity offered.
+
+Returning through the town, I had the good luck to be hailed from the
+sidewalk by my bluff old friend, Captain "Choppy" Tancred. He was
+southbound with the _Utupua_ again, he said, but she was going to go to
+drydock immediately on arrival in Sydney and he was going to command the
+_Mambare_--a new steamer just turned out on the Clyde for the
+company--and start north the following day. It was hard luck missing his
+week at home with the wife and nippers at Manley, but his promotion to a
+ship on the Singapore run was some consolation. He would be back in
+Townsville again in a little over a week, and, as he had a lot of sugar
+to load for the Straits, hoped to have the time for a good yarn with me.
+It must have been more from habit than anything else (for the old boy
+should have read enough about me in the papers by this time to be
+convinced that I was not a fugitive from justice), that he repeated his
+injunction that I must not fail to let him know if there was ever
+anything he could do for me--"ye'll ken wha' I mean, lad." And, equally
+from habit, I assured him that I "kenned wha'," and would not fail to
+call upon him in my extremity.
+
+As I had nothing but what I had brought with me on the steamer to move,
+and as the house was practically ready for occupancy, I was comfortably
+settled in my hillside bungalow at the end of the third day after our
+arrival from the south. A Chinese cook and house-boy, a Hindu groom, a
+couple of New Hebridean blacks as roustabouts, and Ranga as general
+factotum, gave me a very tidy and self-contained establishment. Ranga I
+had taken to at once. He was quick-minded and quick-handed, extremely
+good-natured, and ready to do anything at any time of the day or night.
+I resolved to keep him with me indefinitely as a personal servant--that
+is, if it fell in with his own inclinations after he had given me a fair
+trial.
+
+I made a number of rather successful studies of Ranga by way of getting
+my hand in again, and that suggested that it might be profitable to put
+in the days of waiting by trying what could be done along the same lines
+with the others who were to figure in the picture. Allen, although busy
+with his secret training of the Oakes colt (all unknown even to the good
+missionary, by the way, who thought that "Slant" was merely borrowing
+the gelding for his morning ride), found time to come up and give me
+several sittings. It was easy to see that he hated the whole thing, and
+was only going through with it as a part of the bargain with Rona. The
+latter, after promising me faithfully to come, was reported missing on
+all of the three occasions I sent the trap for her. As her whim was at
+the bottom of the whole mad plan, I was not a little mystified at the
+girl's action. Also, as it was she whom I was most anxious to do full
+justice to in the picture, I was a good deal annoyed. Allen had no
+explanation or excuse to offer for her, saying the girl had him pocketed
+at every turn anyhow, but volunteered to try and round her up for me
+himself as soon as the Planters' Handicap was out of the way, and he had
+a bit more time on his hands. For all of his light way of speaking, I
+knew that he was as hard hit as ever, and had thrown himself into the
+training of the "Missionary Colt" only to give him something else to
+think about.
+
+Two unostentatious acts of kindness on the part of Allen in the course
+of the week which followed added fresh refulgency to his halo of
+popularity. Townsville had gone madder than ever about him following his
+sudden and unexpected return from the south, and the same appeared to be
+true of the rest of the country. In all sincerity, he had tried to do
+both of the things I have referred to strictly on the quiet, and that
+they became public was only a consequence of the zeal of the fresh army
+of "war correspondents" that had been rushed north again to camp upon
+the hero's trail.
+
+One of Allen's little kindnesses was an appeal, in his own name, to the
+Governor of Western Australia to have dismissed the proceedings that had
+been instituted to bring "Squid" Saunders back to be locked up for the
+twenty-three and a half years which still remained to be served of his
+original twenty-five-year sentence. This appeal was accompanied by a
+promise to send the ex-convict, immediately he was released, back to the
+Islands at Allen's expense.
+
+Doubtless the momentary magic of Allen's name had something to do with
+the Westralian Governor's complaisance. In any event, "Squid" Saunders
+was out of jail and off as a first-class passenger on one of the Solomon
+Island boats inside of a week. Allen, the correspondents were not long
+in learning, had bought the ticket, footed all of the very sizable
+telegraph bills, and given the purser of the steamer a hundred pounds in
+gold to be handed to "Squid" when he was disembarked at Bougainville.
+The correspondents, long baulked of any real "Allen stuff," went to that
+story like hungry hounds.
+
+But scarcely was the "Squid" Saunders story onto the wires before it was
+followed by the news of Allen's astonishing win of the Planters'
+Handicap with the rank outsider, Yusuf, at two-hundred-to-one. That win
+was spectacular enough in itself, but when, on the heels of it, was
+flashed the word that not only the thousand-guinea purse hung up for the
+race, but approximately twenty-five hundred pounds paid to Allen by the
+"tote" as well, had been donated to the owner of Yusuf to forward the
+realization of his long-cherished dream--the erection of a modern
+medical mission in Fiji--the climax was capped. Australia echoed anew
+with acclaim of the "philanthropist hero" (it was now), and press and
+pulpit moralized and maundered afresh on the Hon. Hartley Allen's
+goodness of heart and greatness of soul. The clamour of the people of
+the country to see their idol in the flesh fused the Townsville wires
+from every direction. It was all very well that the incomparable heroism
+of the saving of the _Cora Andrews_ should be perpetuated upon canvas,
+but why should the pushful American artist drag the hero off before his
+own people had a chance to do him homage? Let the artist rise to the
+occasion with a display of that famous "Yankee hustle" they had heard so
+much about and get the job over "right quick." It was the man himself
+they wanted; let the picture wait if it couldn't be finished
+straightaway!
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIV
+
+                           HELL'S HATCHES OFF
+
+
+That may give some hint of the state of mind of Australians when,
+waiting on the tip-toe of expectancy for word of the next dashing act of
+their hero, they received a message of quite another tenor. It was the
+Sydney _Herald_ man who sent the message that swept the country like the
+blast of a hurricane. He wired just the bare facts and no more. His
+imagination, even his reasoning faculties, as he confessed in a later
+dispatch, were numbed for the moment, temporarily paralyzed by the
+staggering shock of the horror he had looked upon.
+
+"The Hon. Hartley Allen was found at an early hour this morning" (ran
+the telegram) "bound, gagged and lashed to the wheel of the schooner
+_Cora Andrews_, which has been aground for some time at a lonely spot on
+the beach of Cleveland Bay, several miles north of Townsville. Allen,
+who was taken to the General Hospital as soon as he was brought back to
+town, is a raving maniac and not expected to live out the day. From
+information in the hands of the police, there is no doubt that the
+worse-than-assassin was the ex-convict, 'Squid' Saunders, recently
+released from jail and deported to the Solomons through Allen's generous
+efforts on his behalf. He is known to have escaped from his northbound
+steamer at Cairns, stolen a fishing sloop, and is believed to have
+headed back to Townsville to carry out the dastardly act his disordered
+brain has evidently nursed for years. As the police seem likely to yield
+to the popular pressure to employ bloodhounds in running down the
+fugitive, his capture is probably the matter of but a few hours."
+
+It was a fairly sane, reasonable-reading dispatch, that. None but a man
+who had felt his blood turn to ice-water at the sight the _Herald_ man
+had looked upon that morning could appreciate how much credit he
+deserved for stating the facts so coherently. For myself, at the moment
+the launch brought us back from the _Cora_ and put us ashore at the
+landing, I would have been incapable of writing my own name correctly.
+There was only one thing I could do--nay, would have had to try to do if
+the world had been disintegrating beneath my feet--and I did it. That is
+why so much of the next thirty-six hours is a blank in my mind.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was on a Saturday that Allen had made his spectacular killing in
+winning the Planters' Handicap, and on Sunday afternoon, to escape the
+importunities of Townsville generally and the correspondents in
+particular, he had ridden up to pay me a visit at my hillside bungalow.
+I had missed the race (through another appointment for a sitting with
+Rona, which, like the others, she had failed to keep), and so took the
+occasion to get some account of it at first-hand from Allen. He was in
+high spirits over his success, but rather inclined to be put out with
+the impulsive Oakes for breaking down in church that morning and
+proclaiming to all and sundry the real source of the thirty-five hundred
+and odd pounds that had fallen at his feet like manna from the skies.
+What had come nearest to flooring Melanesia's leading bad man, I think,
+was that the missionary had publicly announced his intention of naming
+the new medical mission at Suva after the donor!
+
+Allen also, somewhat to my surprise, was not averse to speaking of the
+"Squid" Saunders episode. "The only redeeming thing about the old
+ruffian," he observed, "is his affection for that girl of his--the
+red-haired one, I mean--the black-and-tans don't signify. Rather a
+remarkable girl, that one, Whitney. She was one of the kind that must
+either soar to the high places or wallow in the low ones, and I've been
+sorrier than I can tell that I was slated to--well, not to start her
+winging for the heights exactly. I really wasn't a lot to blame in the
+matter, but--that isn't either here or there. Old 'Squid' _thinks_ I
+was, and will go on thinking so till his dying day--or mine. I tried to
+get the old reprobate to call it quits when I shipped him off the other
+day. Do you think he would? No fear. Not the 'Squid.' Indeed,
+considering the bother I had wangling him out of serving that Kalgoorlie
+sentence of his, he was rather nasty. He asked me if I was trying to buy
+him off for fear he'd get me in the end. There wasn't much I could say
+to that under the circumstances, so I just let him go. Now the purser of
+the _Nawarika_ wires me from Cooktown to say that the 'Squid' slipped
+ashore at Cairns and failed to show up again before sailing time. Purser
+says he still has the hundred quid I gave him to slip Saunders when they
+put him off in the Solomons. I have turned the wire over to the police,
+but have asked them to sit tight unless Saunders shows up in this
+section again. I hate to drag the old fire-eater into a new mess,
+especially after all the trouble I had getting him out of the old one.
+So I hope he won't be fool enough to come mooching south again. Don't
+suppose he will, but--I'll be keeping an eye lifting just the same
+against the loom of a vitriol bomb on the weather skyline."
+
+Allen tapped his coat significantly at those last words, and that
+reminded him that there were two or three little things about
+"pocket-gunnery" he wanted me to coach him up on. Nailing a foot-square
+of discarded canvas to the swelling bole of a bottle tree down by the
+stream, we put in a half-hour of "by-and-large" practice at it. Allen,
+thanks to his natural gift for judging distance and angle, proved a very
+apt pupil.
+
+By way of return for his gunnery lesson, "Slant" volunteered to show me
+a few tricks of knife-throwing, in which he was reputed to have no equal
+in the Islands. "I'm about as much of a walking arsenal as you were the
+time you waited for me at the _Australia_, Whitney," he said with a
+grin, as he produced a broad-bladed dagger from a sheath slung
+unobtrusively on his right hip. "This knife, by the way," he went on,
+tilting it lightly across his forefinger, "is balanced especially for
+throwing. They are made in Lisbon, mostly for export to Brazil I
+understand, where they seem to go in for that kind of stunt a good bit.
+I bought it from the skipper of a Portuguese gunboat at Deli, who also
+taught me the principles of chucking it. First and last, I've had a lot
+of sport out of practising with it, and have an idea I would have an
+even break with the _Capitano_ himself when my hand's in. I was very
+grateful to old 'Squid' for handing it back to me the other day. I only
+hope he won't be forcing me to pass it on to him again."
+
+Allen's skill with the wicked-bladed _facon_ was decidedly impressive.
+If anything, he was a shade more accurate in planting the point of it
+than I was with a bullet from my pocket. Little luck as I had in
+throwing it, I was quite as fascinated with the appearance and "feel" of
+the formidable weapon as Allen had been with my target revolver in
+Sydney. "I trust you won't have to part with it again, to Saunders or
+anyone else," I said as I handed it back to him.
+
+Before he mounted for his ride back to town, I mentioned to Allen that
+Rona had left me in the lurch again the day before, and intimated that,
+unless she began to show more interest in the picture, I would have to
+consider packing up and going back to Sydney. As a matter of fact, the
+girl's perversity had already been responsible for effectually dampening
+down my first flush of enthusiasm, and I began seriously to doubt my
+ability to make a success of the picture when the way was clear to work
+at it. Allen begged me not to be discouraged, and assured me again that
+he would look up Rona himself on the morrow and see if he couldn't get
+some line on what she was sulking about. He also said he would see if
+the quarantine people couldn't be prodded along to get at the job of
+disinfecting the _Cora_.
+
+Rona still failed to show up on the following day, and in the evening I
+was unable to get 'phone connection with Allen's bungalow in an
+endeavour to learn if he had seen her. Dr. Butler, whom I got on the
+wire at the Quarantine Station, said that Allen had rung them up that
+morning, urging them to get a move on with the _Cora_. They had told him
+that they were planning to send a squad off before the end of the week.
+As word had just come to them, however, that men were seen climbing over
+the schooner that afternoon, they had decided to clean up the job in the
+morning. As long as the ship remained in her present condition, he said,
+she would continue a possible spreader of disease. She should have been
+attended to before. If I cared to go off with them, he added, he would
+pick me up at the landing at eight o'clock. I thanked him and told him I
+would be glad of the chance to look things over before going to work.
+
+I drove down early in the morning, taking Ranga with me on the chance
+that Allen and Rona might care to go off and plan a tentative grouping.
+A black boy cutting weeds with a sickle in front of Allen's bungalow
+told me that "white marster stop townside" for the night and had not yet
+returned. At the Mission I found Oakes a good deal perturbed. The day
+before, he said, Allen had called just after lunch, talked with Rona a
+few minutes, and then borrowed Yusuf and gone off for a ride. He had not
+returned at dusk, but during the night the horse, dangling a broken
+bridle rein, had come galloping back to his stable. The missionary was
+fearful the rider had been thrown and stunned, and had been lying all
+night on the road. He had sent out boys to search soon after daylight.
+He was not sanguine of an early report from them, as Allen on his rides
+always avoided the metalled main highways to save his horse's feet. No,
+Yusuf's knees showed no signs of his having stumbled. He was as
+sure-footed as a goat and as gentle as a kitten. Not in the least given
+to shying or bolting. Besides, the colt wasn't foaled that could unseat
+Hartley Allen. Of course, he must have struck his head against a
+low-hanging limb in galloping some bush path, but that was unlikely.
+Hartley had his wits too much on the alert to be caught like that. He
+was beginning to be just a bit suspicious of foul play. Had I heard that
+"Squid" Saunders had left his steamer at Cairns and was believed to have
+sailed south in a stolen fishing-boat? He was just about to call up the
+Police Station and tell them of Allen's disappearance when I came.
+
+Rona had been off on one of her long walks the previous afternoon, Oakes
+said in answer to my inquiry, and was not yet up. He had spoken with her
+through her window, just after Yusuf came back, in the hope that she
+might be able to give him some hint of the road Allen had taken. The
+latter had not mentioned where he was going, she said. She herself had
+been "away inland"--Oakes had encountered her on his weekly round
+through the plantation villages. She was a tireless walker, and very
+restless--altogether a strange character. I did not disturb the girl, as
+I reckoned there was no use in taking her off to the schooner until
+Allen was along to talk our plans over.
+
+It would have seemed that this word of Allen's disappearance, taken in
+conjunction with the fact that men had been seen on the wreck of the
+_Cora_ the previous day, might have given me just a shade of preparation
+for what I saw as I followed Butler and the _Herald_ man over the
+schooner's side an hour later. But it was not so, probably because my
+mental faculties were at their dullest at so (for me) unwontedly early
+an hour. If the news had come to me in the afternoon, possibly I would
+have traced some connection between the two events, and so have been at
+least slightly braced and stiffened for the coming shock. As it was, I
+bumped into it all unset, and the staggering impact of it came near to
+bowling me over.
+
+It had been Dr. Butler's theory, propounded as the launch put away from
+the landing, that the figures descried on the _Cora_ the afternoon
+before were those of blacks or coolies, attracted to the hulk by the
+hope of loot. As a matter of fact, he said, they would doubtless have
+made quite a haul, as nothing but the ship's papers had been taken
+ashore on the day of her arrival. Considerable "trade" and all of the
+personal effects of her former officers had been left for removal after
+disinfection.
+
+As we came out into the bay the coast to the northward began to open up,
+and presently the wreck of the _Cora_, heeled sharply to port with the
+foremast over the bows, became visible against the deep green of the
+mangroves a couple of miles distant. Butler studied the hulk closely
+through his glasses as we closed it.
+
+"Looks as though I had another guess coming," he remarked finally,
+lowering the binoculars with a puzzled air. "Someone aboard her now.
+Seems to be jiggering the wheel. Can't be a pirate stunt, can it?
+Wouldn't be possible to drop a petrol engine into her, block up the hole
+and get off to the Islands on the quiet? But of course not. That's a
+drydock job--'count of the propeller and shaft."
+
+At a quarter of a mile he raised his glasses again. "Chap at the wheel's
+the only man in sight," he reported. "He don't seem to have spotted us
+yet. Must be deaf, not to hear the explosions of our exhaust. Ah,
+perhaps that accounts for it! He's an old cove--big shock of white hair.
+'Bout time he was getting his helmet on, though, with this sun beginning
+to bore into the back of his neck. Ahoy, there!..."
+
+But there was no reply. The lone white-haired figure was still jiggering
+at the wheel when the launch, nosing in cautiously in the up-boil of
+reversed propellers, slid past the _Cora's_ stern and the loom of her
+counter cut it off from our view.
+
+A moss-shiny Jacob's Ladder hung over the starboard side amidships,
+where a section of the "nigger-wire" had been cut away, doubtless when
+the labour-recruits were disembarked. Butler climbed up first, then the
+_Herald_ man (who had come off on the Doctor's invitation to see the
+ship made famous by the great exploit of the Hon. Hartley Allen), and
+then myself. Butler lingered at the ladder for a few moments, giving
+orders to his men about bringing the disinfecting paraphernalia aboard;
+so it was given to the newspaper man to be the first to go aft and
+discover that the moving, gibbering white-haired wretch lashed to the
+wheel of the schooner represented the sum total of the mental and
+physical remnants of the man whose doings he had been detailed to
+chronicle.
+
+The horrified reporter uttered no sound--simply froze and stood rooted
+to the deck in amazed consternation. It was as though the basilisk stare
+of the maniac's eyes had turned the flesh and blood of his rangy frame
+to stone. When he stirred finally, it was to tip-toe softly back two or
+three paces to where I, in turn, had frozen in my tracks. It was his
+hand on my shoulder and his white face thrust close to mine that broke
+my own trance. Then the both of us must have retreated another step or
+two, until we bumped into Butler, similarly petrified with horror.
+
+I am almost certain that not one of the three of us made any outcry, or
+even uttered a word, so paralyzing was the effect of the apparition at
+the wheel. The first sound I definitely recall as breaking in upon those
+muffled mowings from the cockpit was a booming gasp as Ranga's mighty
+chest sucked in a lungful of air, and then the big Malay's quiet "'Scuse
+me, Tuan," as he started to shove past between me and the deckhouse.
+
+The yellow giant had seen too many men, white and black, lose their
+minds and their lives on that reeking old schooner to let the snapping
+of one more brain, or the parting of one more life-line, ruffle unduly
+his solid Oriental composure. He had been fond of Allen, however, and I
+could see that he was shaken, though not, like the rest of us, unnerved.
+There was a rumble of concern and anxiety even in that respectful
+"'Scuse me, Tuan," as he started to push past the blockade the cowering
+forms of three lesser men had made in the narrow passage.
+
+Ranga's steadiness was good for the rest of us. Butler checked the Malay
+with upraised hand and, muttering something about his duty as a doctor,
+started aft, the _Herald_ man and I pushing in his wake. If it had been
+possible for the fear-distorted features of the wreck of "Slant" Allen
+to express extremer terror, that heightened degree was registered when
+Butler extended his opened clasp-knife to begin severing the lashings. I
+have no wish to attempt to describe that hell-haunted face. Indeed,
+there will be scant need of my doing so, for there can be few readers of
+this record who are not already familiar with its tortured lineaments.
+It seared itself into my brain with a white heat of intensity that left
+no room for any other image. At the moment it seemed as though it must
+be blazoned there as long as my body was quick with the spark of life,
+or at least until my reason recoiled at the horror of it and tottered
+from its throne. A little later, when the dread face itself had been
+hidden from my sight, a light seemed suddenly to flash out in the
+distance, and in groping toward it I found relief.
+
+The ghastly shadow of the Hon. Hartley Allen was standing wedged in
+between the wheel and the binnacle-stand, his wrists lashed to the
+spokes of the former and a maze of tangled line binding his knees to the
+latter. The lashing was a length cut from the taffrail-log-line, another
+piece of which had been used to secure a gag of wadded oakum. The only
+wound visible (save for the wrists chafed through to the white cords of
+their tendons in his desperate tuggings to tear free) was a
+half-inch-wide incision on the right inner side of the neck, evidently
+made by the point of a knife pressed in close to the swell of the
+jugular vein. As this cut was hardly more than a deep prick, it seemed
+probable that the knife had been used, not to inflict injury, but rather
+to compel the victim to remain quiet while he was being secured.
+
+As the wrist lashings fell away, Allen lurched savagely forward with a
+throaty "g-rrr" and did his best to claw Butler's throat with his
+fingers. His strength was spent by his night-long struggles, however,
+and Ranga easily smothered the attack in the crook of his interposed
+arm. The removal of the gag did not, as might have been expected from
+the way the chest had been labouring, release a frantic scream. The
+passages of the throat, although the neck revealed no evidences of
+having been choked--recently, that is,--appeared to be swollen almost
+shut. The windpipe would carry air to the lungs, but every effort to
+expel it violently seemed to clap a sort of automatic muffler on the
+vocal chords.
+
+Allen collapsed limply into Ranga's arms when his leg lashings had been
+cut, but he would not swoon. The dread of the damned continued to stream
+from his staring and unbelievably dilated eyes; those hoarse heavings of
+throat-throttled shrieks continued to issue from his gaping mouth; every
+time a hand or foot was freed, he continued to strike or kick with it to
+the limit of his pitifully drained strength.
+
+Butler said that the only hope of saving the man's mind, and probably
+his life as well, was to rush him to the hospital and put him under an
+opiate as quickly as possible. Ranga picked up the tortured body
+carefully, as he might have handled a struggling kitten, and passed it
+down to the launch. Butler had the forethought to have us all sprayed
+with the disinfectant before we went over the side, so as to minimize
+the chances of our carrying off any plague germs.
+
+Just as the launch was about to shove off, Ranga begged the coxswain to
+hold on for a moment, and went clambering back up the latter. He ran
+aft, picked up something from the deck, and came back tucking his little
+Malay flute into the waistband of his dungarees. He had dropped it in
+the cockpit, he explained.
+
+About all I can recall of the run back to the landing was the
+interminable number of times the _Herald_ man insisted on telling us
+that he had been talking to Hartley Allen all the while the latter had
+been shifting into his jockey togs for the Planters' Handicap, and of
+how Butler, each time, replied: "And he slept in my pajamas all the time
+he was in quarantine." Possibly I said equally trivial things; but I
+don't recall them. I was conscious of a great pity for the plight of the
+man for whom I had come to have a genuine liking, and a dull sort of
+wonder as to how the tragedy might have happened and who was responsible
+for it. But the haunting horror of that fear-stricken face hung like a
+curtain in front of my mind, dimming or blanking everything behind it.
+
+At Butler's suggestion, he--with Ranga to help--took a carriage at the
+landing and drove direct to the hospital with Allen, while the _Herald_
+man and I went in my trap to the Police Station to report to the Chief.
+The latter had recently come to his present job from Charters Towers,
+where he had made something of a name for himself by breaking up a gang
+of outlaws who had long been doing pretty much as they pleased in that
+rough and ready bonanza town. He was a chap of great determination,
+energy and courage, but of little subtlety--rather the type of a
+Western American sheriff than a city police chief. I had met him at the
+Club two or three times, and liked him for his steady eye and open
+straightforwardness.
+
+The Chief was a little impatient at the _Herald_ man's repetitions of
+the togs-shifting episode, and possibly also of my own wooden silence;
+but he got to the salient facts readily, and was no less forward with
+his deductions therefrom.
+
+"'Squid' Saunders beyond a doubt," he pronounced decisively. "His sloop
+was sighted twice between here and Cairns, the last time only fifty
+miles to the north'ard. He could have landed night before last easy. Any
+of the lagoons running back into the Caradarra Swamp would hide his
+sloop. That would have given him all day yesterday to scout for Allen.
+Why the schooner I don't quite twig. But the 'Squid' was always adding
+devilish little embroideries to his jobs, and leaving a man to rot on a
+plague ship has all of his ear-marks. Never mind, I've had two launches
+patrolling the north coast for him since yesterday morning. He must have
+landed before they got there. But they'll nab him if he pulls out with
+the sloop again, and if he doesn't, _I'll_ nab him. I hate to do it with
+a white man, but I'm going to put Rawdon's 'nigger-chasers' on his
+trail. I've got 'Squid's' old suit of clothes--the one he threw away
+when Allen bought him a new outfit--stowed away here, and I fancy a
+sniff of it will be enough to put them on the scent with. If I don't
+miss my guess, Mr. 'Squid' Saunders will be enjoying our bed and board
+again before another twenty-four hours has gone by."
+
+The Chief dropped his professional manner for a few moments as we arose
+to go. "Allen was a good friend of yours, Mr. Whitney," he said, laying
+a kindly grip on my shoulder. "I don't wonder that you're a bit dazed by
+the thing. Rather puts a damper on the picture, I'm afraid. Going up the
+hill now, are you? Good--a bit of a rest will steady you no end. Ring up
+this evening and we'll give you the news. It won't be long before we
+have our man."
+
+The _Herald_ man, with the Chief's approval, rushed off to the telegraph
+office to dispatch his wire. I drove round to the hospital to pick up
+Ranga and inquire for news of Allen. Butler came down to see me in the
+reception-room and reported that it had taken an astonishing quantity of
+morphine to have any effect upon the patient, but that he was at last
+beginning to grow quieter. His heart action was very irregular and there
+was no saying yet what turn things might take. He asked me to let Ranga
+remain at the hospital for a day or two. They were short of orderlies as
+a consequence of the smallpox epidemic, and the big Malay was a very
+useful attendant on account of his strength, quietness and good sense.
+As they were trying to avoid the necessity of putting Allen in a
+strait-jacket, they wanted someone in the room able to handle him if he
+became violent again on coming out from his opiate. I told him to keep
+Ranga as long as he was needed.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XV
+
+                                THE FACE
+
+
+The Chief of Police's allusion to the picture had started a nebulous
+idea in my head, but it took it several hours to crystallize. Driving
+alone up the hill, my mind gravitated dully to the matter of the
+identity of the perpetrator of the unspeakable outrage. I found myself
+speculating as to whether or not the Chief of Police, had he known of
+Rona's previous attacks upon Allen, would have been as ready as he was
+to attribute the guilt to "Squid" Saunders. And would he--had he known
+of them--been able to trace any connection between Rona's repeated
+attempts to induce Allen to go off to the schooner with her and the fact
+that the crime had been committed there? And didn't it look just a
+little as though Rona's whole strange plan for having a picture painted
+was only a subterfuge to open the way for a carefully plotted revenge?
+And yet, if she had done all this, she surely must have had--or thought
+she had--a good reason for doing it. But had not Oakes established a
+clear alibi for the girl when he met her "away inland" the same
+afternoon men had been reported to have been seen on the schooner?
+Probably, but not certainly. Oakes himself had said that she was "a
+great walker" and "very restless."
+
+It was conceivable that the girl might have doubled back and waylaid
+Allen on the road. Or perhaps she had met him by appointment. He had
+admitted that he was becoming increasingly subject to her will. But how
+could she have induced him to go off to the schooner, and how had they
+gone? No boat had been sighted along the beach (we had looked for one
+through Butler's glasses on our return to the landing), and none was
+reported missing from the harbour. The Chief had inquired on that latter
+point while we were with him at the Station.
+
+And how had Rona, or anyone else for that matter, been able to get the
+better of such a man as Allen, fully armed and on the alert as I knew
+him to have been, and noted for his resourcefulness in emergency? That
+train of thought reminded me that we had found no arms on Allen when we
+released him. His right coat-pocket was empty, and so was the
+knife-sheath on his right hip. But his pocketbook, containing a
+considerable amount in notes, had not been taken.... It was all too much
+for my tired brain, which, ready enough to suggest questions, was quite
+incapable of grappling with them. When I drove into the home clearing I
+was wondering whether the broken glass I had noticed in the bottom of
+the cockpit was that from the whisky bottle Allen had told me Rona had
+thrown at him the morning Bell gave up the fight.
+
+I was horribly tired, both in mind and body, and hoped that, with a
+glass or two of absinthe to relax my nerves, I might be able to sleep at
+least through the heat of the noonday. Shifting into my pajamas,--after
+telling Suey, my China boy, that I would not want lunch and not to
+disturb me until I sent for him,--I crawled under the mosquito-net and
+tried to drop off. But it was no use. No sooner would I begin to doze
+than the expiring images of my thoughts would shuffle up and sharpen
+with a steel-clicking suddenness into the dread likeness of The Face,
+with its dilated eyes boring me to the spine.
+
+At the end of a couple of hours of fevered tossing, I gave it up, threw
+off my pajamas, stepped to the low back-window ledge and took a header
+into the cool green pool below. The Face dissolved as the thrill of the
+refreshing embrace of the water ran through my blood, but only to return
+when, after donning a fresh suit of drills, I began a restless pacing of
+the floor of the big living-room--my studio. Always it flashed a pace or
+two ahead of me, floating backward as I advanced upon it and swinging
+with me at the end of the room. I could not wheel swiftly enough to lose
+it, and it made no difference whether my eyes were opened or closed. I
+tried it both ways.
+
+It was in the course of an experimental lap I was trying with my hands
+over my eyes that I bumped into the big rectangle of canvas I had
+prepared in advance against the day I should be ready to start work on
+"The Saving of the Black-birder." Ten seconds later I was pawing over my
+colours with feverish haste. The idea swimming in my head had
+crystallized. It was, in effect: _Put The Face on canvas and it will
+cease to haunt and harrow your mind_. That sounded reasonable. Certainly
+The Face couldn't be in two places at once, and if I once got it
+anchored to the canvas I could cover it up when I wanted to get away
+from it. It would all depend upon how faithfully I did my work,
+something told me. If the face on the canvas was a replica of the other
+to a hair, to a line, to the fear in the hell-haunted eyes, then the
+phantom face would enter into it and become subject to my control. If
+not--then I would never know sleep nor peace while I continued to live.
+
+No artist can ever have approached a task under empire of the flaming
+intensity I threw into this one. I was painting to save my reason,
+perhaps my life. That is not a figure of speech. I mean it quite
+literally, for I am convinced to this day that I stumbled upon the only
+path that would have led me clear of complete mental and physical
+collapse.
+
+There was a rather remarkable coincidence in connection with the way I
+started to work. Nothing told me that those first nervous slashes of my
+brush signalized the beginning of a picture the fame of which was
+destined to reach the outposts of the civilized world before the year
+was out. All thought of "The Black-birder" was erased from my mind. I
+had no idea of a picture in my head. I was not even beginning to work
+upon a figure. I was only conscious that I was going to put all I had
+into the task of reproducing--recreating, if that were possible--with
+coloured pigments a phantom of my brain--a face--The Face.
+
+I had no thought, I say, of beginning a picture. I sketched nothing in,
+not even the outline of the haunting shadow I was going to try to
+capture. A very few minutes after I began squeezing out colours onto my
+palette I was smearing them upon a patch of the big six-feet-by-ten
+expanse of woven cotton in front of me. The coincidence I have mentioned
+became apparent some weeks later, when I discovered that, of all the
+sixty square feet of canvas before me, the something less than one
+square foot upon which I concentrated my paint and energies for the next
+thirty hours chanced to be in exactly the place it _had_ to be for the
+result of my effort to assume its proper place in a somewhat intricate
+composition. I will tell of that in due course.
+
+Save for the strain of the terrible tension under which I worked, the
+task to which I had set myself proved absolutely the simplest I ever
+attempted. It seemed that I could not go wrong. It was not like painting
+a face from memory, nor yet like painting one from a model. It was more
+like colouring a photograph, for the image, terrible as life, was right
+there on the canvas at the end of my arm. At first, as I tried to
+visualize it at shorter range than the five or six feet at which it had
+been floating, it was a bit hazy; but presently my intense concentration
+of mind had its reward. The dreadful phantom drew nearer, increased in
+detail, and finally sharpened into clear focus at the tip of my brush.
+After that I became just a meticulously faithful retoucher, working in a
+trance.
+
+It was toward the middle of the afternoon when Suey came in to ask if I
+was going to be home for dinner. He was becoming used to my queer ways,
+and, when I failed to take any notice of his reiterated query, came over
+and touched me on the shoulder. I "came out" with a start, but gathered
+my wits quickly. I told Suey that I should probably be working steadily
+for the next day or two and would want nothing to eat until I was
+finished. If he would bring me a bowl of cracked ice every hour and see
+that no one was allowed in to bother me, it would be all I should want
+of him. He replied with a laconic "Can do," and backed out toward the
+kitchen as though I had asked for curry-and-rice for dinner, or ordered
+something else equally rational and matter-of-fact.
+
+I settled back into my spell of tranced concentration with scarcely an
+effort, working swiftly and surely, with never a pause. The "drawing"
+was all done for me, and even in the matter of colours there was no
+hesitation. Exactly the proper shade or tint drew my brush like a
+magnet; and always it was applied with telling effect.
+
+The sunset shadows of the western hills were driving their black wedges
+across the satiny sheen of the light-flickering levels of the waving
+sugar-cane when I became aware that a sound I had been conscious of for
+some time had suddenly changed and intensified. If my mind had tried to
+catalogue the clear notes that had been floating in through the north
+window, it was probably to credit them to a certain bell-bird friend of
+mine who was in the habit of ringing his vesper chimes from a leafy
+chapel in the big bottle tree toward the end of the afternoon. But there
+was nothing bird-like in the quick staccato of eager yelps that had been
+responsible for bringing me, with ears and interest a-cock, out of my
+trance. "Dogs closing in for a kill," I muttered to myself, realizing
+that it had been the distant baying of hounds on a hot scent that I had
+confused with the more imminent chiming of my Austral bell-ringing
+neighbour. The sounds came from a long way off--probably from somewhere
+in the dense bush beyond the farther borders of the cane fields. It was
+a northerly hauling of the wind that brought them down to me so clearly.
+The air had been charged and electric all day, and the breaking up of
+the trade wind indicated that a hurricane was mustering its forces
+somewhere up among the Islands. I had not looked at the barometer on the
+veranda, but knew that it must be registering a considerable fall.
+
+The crack of a single shot drifted down the wind as the yelping reached
+its climax. Then all was quiet in the distance, with only an occasional
+cackling guffaw of a "laughing jackass" ripping across the silence that
+brooded nearer at hand. I didn't know what there was to hunt in that
+particular neck of Queensland, but thought it might be kangaroos or
+dingoes. It wasn't of enough interest to waste time in speculating upon
+it, just then in any event.
+
+Daylight had given way to twilight, and twilight to moonlight, before I
+stopped work again, this time to respond to an insistent ringing of the
+telephone bell. Oakes' deep voice came excitedly over the wire. "I
+thought you would be interested to know that Rawdon's dogs tracked down
+'Squid' Saunders this afternoon," it said. "He has just been brought in.
+Bullet through his shoulder, but not a serious wound. The report went
+around that he had confessed to the attack on Hartley Allen, and the
+town went wild. Only the Chief's nerve prevented a lynching, and there
+may be trouble yet. Never saw the people so excited." In response to my
+inquiry about Allen, Oakes said that he had been drugged to sleep early
+in the afternoon, and that there was no use trying to forecast what turn
+things would take until he came out.
+
+"That clears Rona, at any rate," was my thought as I drained a glass of
+iced absinthe and picked up my brush again. I found it just a shade
+harder materializing The Face than it had been at first, but managed it
+at the end of a minute or two of close concentration. Save for an
+occasional pause for a sip of absinthe, I worked steadily on through the
+night.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+To make clear what transpired the following day, it will be well to set
+down at this point a few things which I only learned in a conversation
+with the Chief of Police after the last act of the drama was played to a
+finish and the curtain rung down. Contrary to the understanding of Dr.
+Oakes, and all the rest of the people of Townsville with the exception
+of the Chief of Police and a couple of his assistants, "Squid" Saunders
+had _not_ confessed. From what he _had_ said in the presence of all his
+captors, however, it was easy to see how the story had originated. He
+admitted quite freely to Rawdon, after the latter had called off his
+dogs and was lending a hand to plug up the puncture in "Squid's"
+shoulder, that his one purpose in returning had been to settle his
+account with "Slant" Allen. He also said that he would rather be strung
+up straightaway than to be sent back to West Australia and begin, at
+sixty, serving out a twenty-odd-year sentence.
+
+That was about all Saunders said at the time of his capture, but later,
+after expressing himself to the Chief of Police to similar effect, he
+went a little further. He averred frankly that curiosity had always been
+one of his most pronounced characteristics, and, while he entertained
+only the kindliest feelings for whoever it was that had been responsible
+for tying up "Slant" Allen and leaving him alone to meditate upon his
+past, he couldn't help wondering about the identity of a man able to
+pull off such a cleverly thought-out and executed piece of business.
+Might he not suggest to the Chief that the latter try to find some
+trifle that this bright-minded and quick-handed cove had left behind on
+the schooner, and see if those sharp-nosed--yes, and sharp-teethed--dogs
+of his couldn't be put on the owner's trail. They appeared a very likely
+lot of hounds, especially that big black-and-tan brute with a chewed
+ear, who had broken away from the ruck and fastened his teeth in the
+"Squid's" calf.
+
+This all struck the straightforward, open-minded Chief as entirely
+reasonable. It was only fair to Saunders, too, and since saving him from
+the mob that afternoon the Chief had come to take a sort of proprietary
+interest in his prisoner. Going off to the schooner in the morning he
+found a small fragment of red rag in the cockpit, which, though it was
+greasy and dirty, did not show signs of exposure to the weather, and
+must, therefore, have been left comparatively recently. It was a
+six-by-eight-inch piece of flowered red calico, of the kind used by the
+natives of all parts of the South Seas for waist-cloths. Even if he
+wasn't able to locate the particular _sulu_ from which it was torn, the
+Chief reckoned that it would give the dogs something to go by.
+
+Rawdon's "nigger-chasers" were of a foxhound-bloodhound cross that the
+old ex-bushranger had bred especially for the purpose of chivvying down
+runaway blacks from the sugar plantations. The swart sextette displayed
+a very encouraging interest in the greasy rag the Chief brought them to
+sniff; so much so, indeed, that they were far from drained of enthusiasm
+at the end of a bootless day's nosing up and down the coast for tracks
+that gave back the same ingratiating aroma. It looked quite good enough
+to warrant going on with the game the following morning, Rawdon
+pronounced, as he started back on foot for his kennels on the southwest
+outskirts of town. (The old chap had some kind of a theory about its
+being destructive to a hound's keeness to tote him around on wheels:
+also, he had stumbled upon many trails where he least expected them,
+even in the town.)
+
+Rawdon was striding a couple of blocks ahead of his two helpers when,
+crossing the town end of the main westerly highway to the hills, the dog
+he was holding in leash--the big black-and-tan with the chewed ear, by
+far his keenest-nosed hound--broke away and set off up the side of the
+road in full cry. As there was no hope of trying to overtake him on
+foot, Rawdon waited for the other dogs to come up and catch the scent,
+cautioning his men to hold them well in leash and not to hurry until he
+rejoined them. Then he ran back a quarter of a mile to the Police
+Station to summon the Chief and get a horse.
+
+This was about seven o'clock in the evening of Wednesday, the day after
+we had found Hartley Allen bound to the wheel of the _Cora Andrews_.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the moment the big black-and-tan hound tore his leash out of Rawdon's
+hand and started to burn up the footpath beside the westerly hill road,
+I had been streaking a small patch of canvas with coloured pigments for
+something like thirty hours in a desperate endeavour to drive a phantom
+out of my brain. I was near to the end of my labours and--I could sense
+it already--close to victory. I had made a hard fight for it and I
+deserved to win. Using absinthe sparingly--as a fuel and a food rather
+than as a stimulant--and drawing upon my nerves for everything the drug
+would not provide, I had kept going steadily and was finishing strong.
+
+There had been but one interruption since the night before. Early in the
+forenoon Captain "Choppy" Tancred had called up to say that he had
+brought his new command to anchor in the harbour the previous evening,
+and that, as he had a good twenty-four hours' loading to do, he hoped
+that we could find time to foregather for a bit of a yarn in the course
+of the day. Would I come down and have lunch with him at the hotel, or
+would he drive up to me? He would rather prefer the former, as the
+barometer was down and he ought to remain where he could get off to his
+ship in a hurry if it came on to blow. I made the best excuse my
+wandering wits could frame, and hung up. The old boy's voluble protests
+were still clicking in the receiver as I returned it to its hook.
+
+I had a hard time materializing my "model" again after that break, and
+it was fifteen or twenty minutes before I was sure enough of it to
+resume work. For a while, in the back of my brain, there was a flutter
+of apprehension that old "Choppy" would take it into his head to come up
+anyhow, and I was desperately afraid that I might not be able to
+"connect" again after another interruption--that I would fail to focus
+The Face at the one moment of all when I most needed it. There would
+have been comfort in that thought twenty-four hours earlier, but by now
+a desire to finish the portrait for its own sake seemed to have entered
+into me.
+
+But my fears were groundless. "Choppy" was properly rebuffed, and had no
+intention of poking in where he "wasna weelcom'." (He told me so himself
+later.) There was no further interruption, save the negligible one of
+Suey and the cracked ice, sharp on every hour. As the sunset faded and
+the twilight flooded the valley with luminous purple mist, I was
+finished--or nearly finished. The Face was all but complete on the
+canvas now, and all but erased from my brain. It had taken an intense
+effort of concentration to hold it while I put the last touch on that
+writhen lip, as it curled back in a snarl from the bared teeth. But I
+did it. And now--just a stroke in that whorl of iris to accentuate the
+abnormal dilation, to fix the horror in that ghastly stare! Slowly the
+image sharpened in my brain. Again the fear-haunted eyes held my own.
+Now! I was just darting my delicately poised brush forward when the
+sound of voices from the veranda arrested the colour-daubed tip a hair
+short of the blurring eye its touch would have made a hopeless smudge.
+"Maskey--no can do!" came in Suey's brusque _pidgin_; and then,
+following a sudden scuffle and the sharp click of the latch, a familiar
+chirrup floated to my ears. "Let me in, Whit-nee! Hur-ree, ple-ese,
+Whit-nee!" was what it said.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVI
+
+                            A SUDDEN VISITOR
+
+
+As a rider reins in his stumbling horse, so did I rein in my stumbling
+nerves. It was now or never, I told myself. If those final touches were
+not given before I stirred from my tracks, they would never be given. I
+closed my eyes and my ears--not with my hands but by a sheer effort of
+will--and then, inch by inch, as though I were dragging it by the
+throat, brought the phantom prototype back and forced it to merge with
+the face on the canvas. The tip of my brush flashed twice, thrice. Then
+I relaxed the tentacles of my will, and as the phantom face, receding,
+blurred to blankness, it left behind, where a wisp of green-smeared
+camel's hair had touched the canvas, an expression of hell-haunted
+terror streaming from the unnaturally dilated eyes of the _completed_
+picture-face.
+
+I was breathing heavily, like a coolie who throws down his back-breaking
+burden at the end of a hard climb, when I tossed aside my brush and
+palette, but no wretch of a human pack-mule ever knew the depth of
+relief that was mine. A carrier could only experience the physical
+satisfaction of feeling his back was freed of a load: mine was the
+spiritual ecstasy of knocking off the shackles that had threatened to
+bind my soul. And now I was free to rush to the arms of the "Green
+Lady"! No more need of rationing my absinthe. I spilled the remaining
+contents of the bottle at my elbow in the bowl of half-melted cracked
+ice, and wolfed it greedily over the tilted brim.
+
+"Ple-ese, Whit-nee, I have the great hur-ree." Again came the
+click-clack of the imprisoned latch and the thud of a knee or shoulder
+against the door.
+
+"One moment, Rona!" Steadied and alert, I set down the emptied bowl,
+threw a hastily-snatched couch-cover over the canvas so that the space
+upon which I had worked was hidden, and stepped to the door. Already I
+felt the exaltation and relief of having banished the dread phantom. And
+the picture face on the canvas--how easy it was to blot out! The hanging
+corner of an old steamer-rug....
+
+Rona pushed in eagerly as I swung back the door, Suey relaxing his
+restraining grip and backing away noiselessly at my reassuring nod. All
+the old verve showed in the girl's high-flung head and flashing eye.
+Sullenness, depression, sadness alike were gone, replaced by an air of
+eagerness, of suppressed excitement. She was still wearing the baggy
+_holakau_ the lady missionaries had wished upon her, but with it--looped
+over her breasts and under her shoulders _sarong_-fashion--was the
+peacock shawl, outlining softly the lithe curves of shoulder and hip and
+flowing clingingly in folds of amber and scintillant opalescence below
+her knees.
+
+"Whit-nee, I come to make the good-bye," she gushed cooingly, catching
+her breath. "Tonight I take boat go Seengapo. Whit-nee, I come here to
+tell you I ver-ree sor-ree I make you troubl' 'bout the pick-yur. I
+tella you lie, Whit-nee. I cannot--make--the pick-yur. Bel-la, he say--"
+
+At that instant a strange thing happened. Two or three times since she
+entered the room, Rona's eyes, as though drawn there irresistibly, had
+wandered from mine to what could have appeared to her no more than a
+corner of plaid rug hanging over a broad blank of tightly stretched
+canvas. She had done this again as she started to speak, and it was a
+slight widening of her eyes that caused me to turn and follow her
+glance. The hastily-flung rug was slowly slipping back off the easel.
+The fringed corner hanging down in front was rising. Possibly a draught
+from the open door had started the movement, or perhaps the swishing
+blows a wind-lashed tree was dealing the side of the house. Whatever was
+the cause, the effect was that of an invisible hand slowly drawing up a
+curtain.
+
+Rona's tongue framed the sentence that was in her mind, but the
+words came brokenly as her puzzled wonderment increased. As her
+double-syllabled rendition of Bell's name fell from her lips the
+accelerating slide of the curtain quickened to a run, and, with a flirt
+of green fringe, the masking corner disappeared over the top of the
+frame. The Face--"Slant" Allen's hell-haunted face, tortured and
+terrible--glared out at her from the broad white field of the canvas.
+
+There was sheer amazement in the down-drop of the girl's lean jaw and a
+suggestion of terror in the gasp with which she filled her deflated
+lungs. But the piercing "_ey-yu_" with which that air was forced out
+again was a battle-cry. Fortunately, I was standing a couple of paces
+nearer the canvas than was she; but even with that handicap in my favour
+it was a near squeak. I caught the gleam of a flashing blade and a quick
+grab sunk my crooked fingers deep into the flesh of a thrusting arm.
+Hurling the arrested figure back toward the door, I stooped and picked
+up a knife--that beautifully balanced Portuguese throwing-knife that
+Allen and I had been flinging at the swelling bole of the big
+bottle-tree the previous Sunday. To this day I do not know whether Rona
+thought she was attacking a reincarnation or a ghost, or was only bent
+on destroying an uncannily life-like portrait that awakened savage
+memories.
+
+I swished the fallen rug from under the easel and rehung it--evenly this
+time--before turning to confront Rona, where she was readjusting--with
+raised elbows and twinkling thumbs--the hitch of the peacock shawl in
+the opposite corner of the room. She had scrambled to her feet again,
+but gave no sign of returning to the attack. Her eyes were snapping with
+anger and excitement, but I did not have the feeling that she
+entertained any especial personal resentment against me for the rough
+handling I had given her.
+
+"So it was you after all," I said slowly, fingering the tapering blade
+of the tell-tale knife.
+
+Her lips moved as though in reply, but if she said anything coherent it
+was drowned in the roar of a sudden gust of wind that buffetted the
+bungalow at that moment. I turned to the girl again after closing the
+north windows. Her eyes were fixed on vacancy now, and her head, with
+the clean-cut chin slightly elevated, was turned sideways in an attitude
+of listening. As the banging of the trees died down my own duller
+tympana registered a new vibration--and yet not quite new--something
+that I had heard very recently. Ah, now I had it! The baying of a hound,
+very near and very eager. A red-hot scent beyond doubt, I told myself.
+But why were Rawdon's "nigger-chasers" running at that hour, and into
+the teeth of a rising hurricane? There was questioning in both our
+glances as the girl's eyes met mine, but in hers certainly no hint of
+fear.
+
+Before either of us spoke a firm, quick step sounded from the back of
+the house, and a moment later, following a light tap on the door, Ranga
+entered from my bedroom. If he was surprised at Rona's presence, or at
+her somewhat dishevelled appearance, he gave no sign of it. Nor was
+there about me--now that I was holding the knife behind my
+back--anything to suggest to the Malay that he had stumbled upon a
+situation in the least out of the normal.
+
+Tuan "Slant" was sleeping heavily, he said, and so he had snatched the
+opportunity to come up for some of his own Borneo tobacco and a change
+of clothes. They had nothing in the hospital large enough for him. Tuan
+"Slant" was growing stronger in body, but--he finished by tapping his
+temple and shaking his head dubiously.
+
+A heavier broadside of the gathering storm shook the house again, this
+time sending a shudder through its stout frame and wringing a vibrant
+_ping_ from the tautened "hurricane cables" that guyed its windward
+corners. Out of the heart of that blast came the bell-mouthed baying of
+the nearing hound. He was still sounding his clear bugle notes as he
+swung in through the gate from the road, but down the driveway, with the
+incense of the burning trail conjuring visions of an imminent quarry in
+his brain, he began tearing his throat with harsh, savage yelps of
+eagerness. I was looking for his charge to come against the closed front
+door, but a sudden shower of claw-spurned gravel rat-a-tat-ing against
+the glass of the French windows told that he had wheeled in his tracks
+and was circling to the rear of the house. A yell and a clatter of
+saucepans from the kitchen, a scramble of slipping claws upon the
+hardwood floor of the back hallway, and in from the open door of my
+bedroom--drooling-fanged, bloody-eyed and bloody-minded--came dashing
+that black bolt of canine fury, closing on his cornered quarry for the
+death-grapple.
+
+Ranga, on entering, had moved a step or two aside from the door, a
+survival doubtless of his training at sea, where an idle man blocking a
+companionway or a ladder is liable to be taught manners by a rap on the
+head. Rona was still in the corner to which I had hurled her. I was at
+the opposite corner, near the big canvas and twenty feet or more from
+the girl. The flying hound tried to check himself at the doorway, but
+the polished floor gave him no grip for his claws. Down on his haunches,
+with forefeet poked rigidly ahead, he slid the full width of the room,
+tobogganing on a smooth-running Samoan mat for the last half of the
+distance.
+
+With the certainty of Rona's guilt fixed in my mind by her possession of
+Allen's knife, I had no doubt, from the moment the hound's baying
+indicated it had turned into the clearing, that it was hot on her trail.
+But even so, the brute's entry by the bedroom door had been so
+unexpected and so swift that I had not stirred from my tracks to the
+girl's defence when the snarling animal, shooting across the room,
+brought up against the wall close beside her. Even Ranga, leaping
+forward instantly as he had, was scarcely past the middle of the floor
+when the beast regained its balance and bearings almost at the girl's
+feet. Drawing back into the angle of the walls and crouching low like a
+cornered cat, Rona awaited the attack, while Ranga, barehanded, and I
+with the throwing-knife rushed in to her aid. Without an instant's
+hesitation, the savage beast spun to a full right-about and, brushing
+the girl's advanced knee as though it was no more than the piano stool,
+launched itself full at the throat of the yellow man.
+
+Ranga's counter was swift, sure and terrible. He might have been
+fighting bloodhounds barehanded from childhood, for all the surprise and
+dismay he showed at the sudden attack. Where my own instinct (if I had
+not tried to side-step the charge completely) would have been to grapple
+for the brute's throat from beneath, he simply struck--or rather
+grabbed--down from above. The impact crushed the snarling beast to the
+floor, but when Ranga raised his arm again he was gripping his
+struggling canine adversary by the scruff of the neck. Or rather, I
+thought it was the scruff. In reality his grip was a bit more inclusive.
+
+Holding the floundering black form at arm's length with no more effort
+than if it had been a terrier, Ranga suddenly tightened his hold. I saw
+the hound's red-lidded eyes grow slant and elongated like a Chinaman's
+as the skin of its scalp was drawn backward in the relentless vise
+closing from behind; then a grinding snick cut short an unearthly scream
+of pain, and the hound was dangling limp and lifeless with a crumpled
+spine at the end of a gibbet of knotted yellow muscle. Ranga tossed
+lightly aside what a moment before had been a flying bolt of wrath, and
+where the great head doubled under against a flowered chintz
+window-curtain I saw the sprawling outline of a tooth-torn ear,
+doubtless the scar of a fight with a luckier ending.
+
+In its strangely terrible tenseness, the electrically charged silence
+that succeeded has no parallel in my experience. Not a word was spoken.
+The only sound was the banging of the wind-wrenched trees against the
+house and the nearing mutter of the thunder in the north. The
+significance of the fact that it was Ranga the dog had been trailing was
+lost upon neither Rona nor me, nor yet upon the big Malay himself. The
+latter met my questioning glance steadily for a moment, but it was the
+girl's piercing stare of fierce concentration that drew and held his
+troubled black eyes. While one might have counted fifty those two stood
+and (as I have since understood) communed with eye and mind. It was a
+sudden thunder-clap that broke the connection and checked the interflow
+of thought. Ranga had not winced at the blinding flash and
+close-following crash, but Rona's higher strung nerves fluttered for an
+instant, and the wire was down. But Ranga's words indicated that the
+message was about complete.
+
+"Yes, I did it, Tuan," he said quietly, turning toward me as though
+answering my unspoken question. "It had to be, Tuan, and--yes, I did
+it."
+
+It was not until afterwards I recalled that it was to Rona I addressed
+my protest. "But 'Slant' swore to me that he did not kill Bell; that he
+was in no way responsible for his death, first or last."
+
+A spasm of passion twisted the girl's face to the seeming of an ape's as
+she caught the drift of my words, and her reply was almost a scream.
+"Not ke-el Bel-la? 'Slan' do worse than ke-el. He--"
+
+The chorus of the leashed pack that checked her words came from so close
+at hand that it made itself heard above the now unbroken roar of the
+storm. There was the clang of shod hoofs on a metalled road, too, and I
+thought I could distinguish the shouts of men. The hunt was closing in
+for the kill.
+
+"I think I go now, Tuan. I like the better to fight outside." Ranga's
+voice was as quiet and controlled as when he had told me the news from
+the hospital a few minutes before; but there was the lust of battle in
+his flashing eyes, eagerness for action in the quick heave of his chest.
+
+There was no time to debate and decide the question as to who had
+committed the outrage upon Hartley Allen, or of what justification
+there might have been for it. One thing only was clear to me, and that
+was that I was not going to throw either Rona or Ranga to the dogs--no,
+nor to the law either--if there was any way of avoiding it. My mind--as
+was always the case when I had fasted long and drunk absinthe
+sparingly--worked with lightning swiftness.
+
+"Don't fight unless you have to," I said, stepping closer to Ranga as
+the wind and thunder threatened to drown my voice. "Follow down the
+stream over the falls. Jump won't hurt you--plenty of water at the
+bottom. That'll throw off the dogs. Then follow the path by the flume
+down to the sea. The rain'll kill your trail for the dogs. It ought to
+be starting any minute now. Wait for me on the pier by the old sugar
+mill. I'll come for you in a boat as soon as I can."
+
+Baring his teeth in a quick grin of comprehension, the big fellow
+wheeled and started for the front door. I caught his arm and checked him
+just in time. "This way!" I shouted. "Through my bedroom window. Beat
+it! _Lekas!_"
+
+Again that intelligent tooth-flash of understanding. Ranga's
+foreshortened bulk was making a blurred blot against the blue-green
+lightning flash playing across the rear bedroom window as I turned to
+answer a heavy banging at the front door. Everything considered, I have
+always felt that I got away fairly well with the situation with which I
+now found myself confronted. It was Harpool, the Chief of Police, who
+staggered into the room, bracing back against the push of the still
+rising wind. The flutter of the lightning revealed two or three horses
+in the driveway, and three or four men following a bunch of howling dogs
+around the corner of the house.
+
+I was on the point of opening up at the Chief with a facetious sally
+about the way he was sending his hounds around to frighten my lady
+visitors, when I chanced to glance to the corner where Rona had been,
+and lo--I had no lady visitor! The girl was gone, but whether under the
+couch or out of one of the windows I could not guess. So I only gaped
+rather stupidly and said nothing, leaving the Chief to open the attack.
+I was glad the face on the canvas was covered, and only wished there had
+been time to throw something over the crumpled remnants of the big
+black-and-tan.
+
+"I am quite satisfied it isn't you we want, Mr. Whitney," Harpool began,
+with a shade of embarrassment, I thought. "But the fact remains that
+Rawdon's hounds have followed a live scent straight to this house, and I
+have every reason to believe they are on the trail of the man who tied
+up Hartley Allen. Perhaps you can explain--"
+
+"I think I can," I cut in, anxious to gain time for the fugitive, but
+realizing that no end would be served by trying to conceal his identity.
+"You're right that it was a hot scent. Just a few degrees too hot for
+your canine deputy there in the corner. It's the end of _his_ trail, I'm
+afraid."
+
+The Chief strode over to the limp corpse and turned it with his foot.
+"Who killed this hound?" he demanded angrily, regarding me suspiciously
+for the first time.
+
+"Not I, Chief," I replied jauntily; "but can't you guess? You can see
+for yourself that he hasn't been shot--or clubbed--or poisoned. Well,
+then--look at that neck. Do you know of more than one man in these parts
+capable of snapping a bloodhound's spine between his thumb and
+forefinger?" (I added that little thumb-and-forefinger touch with malice
+aforethought, for I wanted to impress upon Harpool--for whatever it
+might be worth--that it was no old broken-down of a "Squid" Saunders
+that he was going to try to run to earth out there in the darkness.)
+
+The Chief's honest eyes opened with amazement as the answer dawned upon
+him. "You don't mean the big Malay?" he ejaculated incredulously. "Why,
+he has been tending Allen like a sister for two days. Everyone in the
+hospital has been speaking about his devotion."
+
+"No other," I answered. "Ranga came up from the hospital less than half
+an hour ago to get a shift of togs. Five minutes later that hound came
+tearing in through the back entrance and flew at his throat--right here
+in my studio. You see the result. That fellow can drop a horse with his
+fist--a dog is no more than a flea to him."
+
+"I can hardly believe it," said the Chief, shaking his head; "but the
+fact remains that if the hound went for him, he's our man. I hope we
+won't have to shoot him.... But Rawdon will never stand by and see his
+dogs pinched out like that. This fellow was his best hound by a mile.
+Drive him crazy when he finds it's been dished. Gawd, that neck might
+have been run over by a steam tram! What in hell--"
+
+A bedlam of howls and yells and savage oaths rising from the rear of the
+house at this juncture broke in upon the Chief and caused him to bolt on
+the double through the door of the corridor leading to the kitchen. The
+unearthly racket, with the rattle of pistol shots spattering through it,
+made me certain that Ranga had run afoul of the hunt at his first jump.
+Shuddering at the thought of the terrible fight that must ensue, I
+pushed on after Harpool, reaching the further end of the corridor just
+in time to catch his reeling form as he staggered back from a bullet
+that had burned his scalp the instant he opened the kitchen door.
+Astride the sill of a kicked-in window sat old Rawdon, his bearded face
+distorted with fury and pain, coughing, sneezing, cursing, and firing
+impartially at all parts of the long, low room. Under the sink, almost
+at Rawdon's feet but quite out of pistol range, crouched Suey, blinking
+blandly and rubbing his almond eyes. He it was who was the author of an
+unpremeditated diversion which was the only thing in the world that
+prevented Ranga being nabbed at the outset.
+
+The late black-and-tan, in following Ranga's trail, had entered the
+kitchen by snapping his way through the light screen door. To prevent
+his lines being thus penetrated a second time, the foxy Celestial, when
+he heard the main pack rallying to the attack, closed and bolted the
+heavy outside door of his domain and, with a little surprise packet in
+his hand, took station beside the little swinging window above the sink.
+Waiting with true Oriental restraint till the clamouring enemy was
+compactly bunched upon the porch outside, Suey gently raised the screen
+and emptied the contents of a can of red pepper into their midst. The
+paprika appeared to have been pretty fairly divided between three of the
+most oncoming of the dogs and their equally forward master. The hounds
+quit for the night, then and there, but the old bushranger's fighting
+spirit urged him on to make the best stand he could with his automatic.
+Considering the way he was being racked with coughs and sneezes, and
+that he only blazed away at the creak of an opening door his streaming
+eyes could not locate, his shot that welcomed the Chief was by no means
+uncreditable. It cut a neat furrow through Harpool's stubby pompadour
+and even drew a drop or two of blood.
+
+The Chief's fervent swearing stayed Rawdon's murderous hand just as he
+had finished fumbling a fresh clip of cartridges into his emptied
+"thirty-eight" and was about to start fusillading anew. Roaring mad as
+he was, his first thought was for the dogs. "Get a wet rag round the
+muzzles o' Dingo an' Jackaroo 'fore you let 'em inter this 'ell 'ole,"
+he growled between sneezes. "Our bloke's somew'ere in this 'ere 'ouse,"
+he went on, laving his smarting eyes at the water-tap of the sink above
+Suey's jack-knifed form. "Don't let 'im slope by the front door, Chief,
+now we've got 'im in 'is 'ole."
+
+"Sloped already," snapped Harpool laconically, adding that most of the
+sloping had been done while Rawdon was setting his dogs on a "bally
+Chink cook." In a few terse sentences the Chief explained the way things
+stood, giving it as his opinion that their man would be trying to follow
+the stream right across the plantation and down through the belt of bush
+to the mangrove swamps. The loss of the big black-and-tan was so great a
+calamity for the old bushranger that it had the effect of sobering
+rather than further exciting him. His red rage burned white and flamed
+inwardly rather than outwardly. "I'll know 'ow to even up for 'im
+killin' Starlight w'en I gets that bloody wombat in a patch o' dry bush.
+Nice bit o' a torch that greasy 'ulk o' 'im'll make. Come along! We'll
+'ave a better chance o' makin' a quick bag if we get 'im in sight 'fore
+the rain starts."
+
+There were still left two dogs with undamaged "noses." Fearful that
+these, if they took the bridle-path down the right side of the creek,
+might pick up Ranga's trail where he would have left the stream at the
+pool, I made bold to suggest a plan calculated to carry them wide of
+that danger point. "Why don't you ford here," I said, "and push straight
+across the plantation to the end of the big loop the stream makes round
+the nigger village? Your man will be all of an hour making that point if
+he wades by the stream. You can make it through the cane in twenty
+minutes and be waiting there to bag him."
+
+The Chief was inclined to favour the plan--until Rawdon cut in
+sarcastically with: "An' wot's to pervent the bloody bloke's givin' us
+the slip a 'undred times 'tween 'ere an' there? One hound down each side
+o' the stream--that's the only way to be sure o' clappin' our 'ooks
+inter 'im."
+
+That was sound reasoning of course--from Rawdon's standpoint,--and I
+didn't dare urge my plan any further. Ten minutes later, when a sudden
+eager baying came down the wind from the direction of the waterfall, I
+felt sure my worst fears were realized. It was, therefore, with only the
+faintest hopes of success, that I pulled myself together to take the
+first step in making good my promise to pick up Ranga at the pier of the
+old sugar mill.
+
+The priceless Suey had crawled out from under the sink as the sounds of
+the hunt grew faint, and turned to tidying the kitchen as though
+cleaning up after a pack of bloodhounds was just a pleasant little
+incidental of the day's work. When I ordered him to get me out a fresh
+bottle of absinthe he did not even forget the cracked ice. I told him I
+should probably be away for most of the night, and that if Rona showed
+up in the interim to see that she was made comfortable till my return.
+"All lightee girl-ee. Otha fell-ee too much peppa can have," he said
+decisively. I told him to do what he liked to Rawdon, but to give the
+Chief a shake-down if he asked for it.
+
+Quaffing a couple of glasses of raw absinthe, I filled a flask, pulled
+on a pair of riding-boots and a raincoat, and pushed out onto the
+veranda. The wind had not increased greatly in force, but the lightning
+and thunder were flashing and crashing almost simultaneously overhead,
+and the first big drops of rain were beginning to spatter. The moon was
+hidden behind a dense pall of black cloud, so that it was by the
+incessant flicker of the lightning that I sized up the three
+saddle-horses tied at the side of the driveway and picked the rangy
+waler of the Chief as the likeliest rough-weather beast. I had no
+compunction to taking him, as the bunch would be breaking away anyhow as
+soon as the sagging bottom of the cloud overhead dropped its contents on
+them. I preferred not to have my own saddle-horse left standing in the
+town if it could be avoided. There would be enough tell-tale posts on
+the course I was going to try to negotiate without deliberately planting
+another one.
+
+The cane fields in the valley were glistening with the opening volleys
+of the rain as I spurred across the clearing, stabbing the night with
+silver gleams in the lightning flashes as the bayonets of massed troops
+throw off the rays of the sun. The wind was behind me as far as the main
+road; then side-on, but broken by the wall of the thick-growing trees. I
+put the waler at top speed, anxious to cover all the distance possible
+while the footing was good. I was halfway to town before the storm let
+go in real earnest, and from then on it was about as much of a swim as a
+ride, especially after the hillsides began to spill off on the lower
+levels. My mount was a sensible beast, evidently no stranger to tropical
+cloudbursts. He took the initiative readily when I ceased to urge him,
+and kept plugging right on through the storm at a good steady
+business-like jog. Nothing but my good fortune in getting a jump on the
+rain prevented my going out in this first lap of my race, as all of the
+four bridges I had to cross must have washed away within a very few
+minutes from the time I put them behind me. Indeed, one of the two
+horses I had left in the driveway, after both had broken away as I had
+anticipated, was drowned in trying to flounder through an open crossing.
+
+The worst of the terrific downpour was over as I rode into the town, but
+the wind--as was to be expected--was blowing with increased force.
+Everyone had been driven indoors by the rain, so that it was in an empty
+street I dismounted and left my horse, knowing that he would be pawing
+at his own stable door within a very few minutes. The rest of the way to
+the landing I covered on foot. As I had feared, the creek was empty of
+launches. I would have to see what could be done at the Burns, Phillip
+offices, which, busy with manifests and other odds and ends of business
+incident to an imminent steamer sailing, were still lighted up. It was
+an alternative I was very reluctant to resort to, as I had been hoping
+that my visit to Captain Tancred might be managed on the quiet. Just as
+I turned to go a red light, bobbing past the outer end of the jetty,
+caught the tail of my eye, and, on the off chance that it might be a
+craft I could hire, I held on at the steps. Smartly handled in the nasty
+cross-lop, a small but powerful steam launch bumped in alongside the
+landing stage.
+
+"Can I get you to take me off to the _Mambare_?" I demanded of the
+uniformed youth who came bounding up the steps.
+
+"Glad to do it, sir. This is her launch," was the cheery reply. "Just in
+for clearance papers. Be back in a jiffy. Climb aboard and make yourself
+comfy in the cabin." Then, as an apparent afterthought: "You're sailing
+with us, aren't you? Can't take off visitors at this hour. No way to get
+back. Getting under way at midnight." He had so little doubt that I was
+a belated passenger, perhaps delayed by the rain, that my nod was quite
+sufficient to reassure him. Five minutes later we were shoving off for
+the run back to the line of lights where the _Mambare_ tugged at her
+moorings.
+
+The sea was white with foam outside the jetties, but with waves and wind
+almost dead astern the sturdy little launch made very comfortable
+weather of it. It was by no means as bad as it had been coming in, said
+the young officer, who turned out to be a freight clerk. As the gangway
+was already raised and the launch had to come in anyway, we remained
+aboard her and were hoisted right up and swung in to the chocks on the
+_Mambare's_ boat-deck. My companion hurried at once to his office to go
+over his pouch of papers, while I, locating it without asking anyone for
+directions, went forward to the Captain's cabin under the bridge.
+
+The faint shadow of constraint on Captain Tancred's face as I entered
+disappeared the instant his ready mind divined I had come to him for
+help. "So they're after ye at last, lad," he said, sympathy and
+satisfaction queerly blended in his deep voice. "Weel, noo, tell me a'
+aboot it. I ken we'll be findin' a way oot for ye."
+
+I told him all that he needed to know as quickly as possible, making a
+point, however, of omitting to state that the man I wanted him to
+smuggle away to the Islands had confessed to committing the outrage upon
+Hartley Allen. "Slant" was an old friend of "Choppy's," and I felt sure
+that the latter, far from being a witting party to helping the man who
+had attacked him escape from justice, would undoubtedly lend every aid
+to placing him where he would receive his just deserts. Luckily, the
+quixotic old Scot was not a man to ask searching questions. He was
+plainly disappointed that it was not I who was fleeing the law, but
+there was ready consolation in the fact that a friend of mine, in very
+sore straits, might be saved from being torn to pieces by a pack of
+bloodhounds if he was picked up at a certain point on the north coast
+before morning.
+
+We located the cove of the old sugar mill on the chart without
+difficulty, and in his bulky volume of "Sailing Directions" found the
+comforting assurance that it afforded especially good shelter in a
+northerly blow. There was no surf, it was stated, and the shore was
+almost steep-to. This was all in our favour. He was sailing at midnight,
+the Captain said. The hurricane was central over the New Hebrides, so it
+was only the tail of it flirting across the Great Barrier--nothing he
+would dream of sticking in harbour for. Doubtless he would be able to
+find an excuse to heave-to off the cove, while I piloted the launch in
+to get our man. Then, if I didn't care to return and take a pleasure
+voyage with him to Insulinde and the Straits, I could drop off and make
+the best of my way home.
+
+The Captain had just finished telling me how he had made a point of
+bringing his old launch crew with him from the _Utupua_--"the lads I use
+for speshul wark, ye ken"--when the freight clerk who had brought me off
+entered the cabin with a number of papers and letters. On the top of the
+pile was a red envelope marked "Rush." "Choppy" tore the letter open at
+once. The up-flop of his grizzled side-burns at the sudden flexing of
+the jaw muscles at their roots gave me warning of the coming jolt.
+
+"We'll nae be gettin' under wa' the nicht, Ryerson," he said quietly to
+the freight clerk. "Will ye be sae guid as to bid the Chief an' the Mate
+to step this wa'. Mair carga the morrow," he added by way of
+explanation. To the Chief Engineer, when he came, the Captain merely
+countermanded an order for steam on the capstan at seven bells, and
+warned him to keep the pressure in the boilers high for fear the steamer
+might part a mooring cable if the wind increased. The Mate he ordered to
+be ready to handle a consignment of silver bullion and ingot copper that
+would come in a tug from the _Moresby_ as soon as she arrived from the
+south in the morning. He also told him to have the crew of the steam
+launch called away at once, so as to put "yon gentleman" ashore as
+quickly as possible. If the Mate was lively about it, "Choppy"
+suggested, he might find that the fires of the launch had not yet been
+drawn from her trip to the landing. If so, that would save time in
+getting up steam.
+
+Not until all of this was ordered did he turn to me with: "The de'il's
+ain luck, lad. Nae gettin' awa' afore eight bells, noon, the morrow.
+Shipment frae Broken Hill catchin' up wi' us in the _Moresby_."
+
+"That means that the game's up and you're sending me back because
+there's no hope of doing anything?" I asked in dismay.
+
+"Nae, nae, lad," he soothed. "No' so fast. Just a wee bit o' a shift o'
+program, that's a'. True I'm sendin' ye ashore in the launch, but when
+she comes back I'm hopin' tae find oor mon in yer place. Do ye ken noo
+wha' I'm drivin' at?"
+
+"Do you mean to send the launch all the way round from here?" I demanded
+in astonishment; "and then to keep him aboard here in the harbour for
+ten or twelve hours before you sail? Isn't that asking for trouble both
+ways? Even if the launch stands up against the gale outside, aren't you
+done for if they come off from town and make a search of the steamer?"
+
+Old "Choppy's" blue eyes twinkled merrily at the latter suggestion. The
+police never did seem to have any luck in searching his ships, he
+laughed. As for the launch--it was new, its engine was unusually
+powerful, and it would have "Pisco" at the wheel. "Pisco," he explained,
+was a Chilean who had been with him for years, and had never been known
+to fail at a pinch. He thought that combination ought to win out. I
+didn't mind a bit of slap-banging off the point, did I? That settled it.
+If he was willing to risk his own launch and his own career to save _my_
+friend, it was not for me to hang back. Fifteen minutes later we had
+been lowered over the side and were rounding under the _Mambare's_ fine
+clipper bows into the teeth of the gusty norther. It had been agreed
+that I should pilot "Pisco" to the rendezvous and deliver my man into
+his care. "Choppy" undertook to do the rest.
+
+What the hard-bit old sea-dog had characterized as a "bit o'
+slap-banging" off the point proved to be a frontal attack upon as
+ruffianly a bunch of headseas as it was ever my lot to face in anything
+smaller than a ninety-ton schooner. Stoutly built and over-engined as
+she was, the launch was quite equal to the task of driving her nose
+through the waves, but--not being built for submarine service--proved a
+dismal failure at getting rid of the solid green water that deluged her
+as a consequence. Knot by knot, cursing fluently in picturesque _roto_
+Spanish the while, "Pisco" rang down the engine, until finally the
+pugnacious little craft ceased tunnelling the bases of the seas and
+contented herself with boring neat round holes in their curling crests.
+By this method she shipped no more water than her scuppers could put
+back where it came from. The only fear now was that enough spray might
+splash down her squat funnel to quench the fires, and to minimize the
+chances of this, the resourceful "Pisco" made the lookout stand so that
+his broad chest would receive and deflect the heaviest rushes of the
+threatening flood. Fortunately, the distance to be run head-on to the
+seas was comparatively short. Once round the point the alteration of
+course brought the wind and the waves on the starboard beam, and though
+she now just about rolled her side-lights under, it was fairly quiet
+going compared to the buffeting outside.
+
+I gave "Pisco" his course for the first leg in by the lights of the big
+sugar central, and then, as we opened up the inner bay, gave him a
+bearing on the notch--barely guessable against the overcast west--where
+the old cartroad grade pierced the brow of the cliff. The clouds were
+racing overhead and the baffling cross-gusts on the surface would have
+made it bad business for a sailing craft. But for a launch the task was
+a comparatively simple one. The loom of the old mill was discernible
+against the darker opacity of the cliff at a couple of hundred yards,
+and the right-angling lines of the pier at half that distance. As the
+latter was sure to have been built of the eternally-lasting _jarra_, I
+knew that it would be as solid and serviceable as the day it was
+abandoned.
+
+I had not thought it best to risk dampening Captain Tancred's enthusiasm
+by confessing that I thought it was a good ten-to-one against my man's
+turning up at the rendezvous. Indeed, I could see no grounds whatever
+for hoping that Ranga had shaken the pursuit--already at his heels--and
+won through to the appointed place. Nothing short of a miracle could
+have compassed it, I told myself. It was on the off chance that the
+miracle had been wrought that I was keeping my promise.
+
+"'Bout half a point to sta'boa'd, Tuan. Way nuf now! Steady!" That deep
+rumbling voice from the darkness was a welcome surprise. "Pisco,"
+heeding the quiet directions, brought his launch alongside the broad
+solid flight of steps as neatly as he would have laid her up to the
+_Mambare's_ gangway in broad daylight.
+
+Ranga was coming down the steps--with a slowness which I attributed to
+the fact that they were probably very slippery--when I heard a thud on
+the deck behind me, such a sound as a heavy, soft bundle thrown down
+from above might have made in striking. A second or two later there was
+an ejaculation of astonishment somewhere aft, probably from "Pisco," I
+thought, as the words were Spanish. I did not try to puzzle out the
+purport of them at the moment, as my attention was occupied with Ranga,
+who seemed to be hesitating at the last moment about coming aboard.
+Twice or thrice he drew back his foot from the rail, as though uncertain
+of his balance. And when the great bulk of him finally did surge
+forward, it was with a lurch that took all my strength to check it and
+prevent his reeling on across the narrow bow and over the other side. He
+steadied himself slowly, with a great intake of breath. "Sorry--make
+trouble,--Tuan. Now--I go aft."
+
+"I am leaving you here, Ranga," I said quickly, for I was getting
+nervous about a movement of lights I had observed along the flume in the
+rear of the big sugar mill. "Captain Tancred will look after you on the
+steamer, and put you off wherever you want to go. He also has some money
+for you. Good luck!"
+
+The big fellow took a long shuddering breath, and when he spoke it was
+as though he had rallied himself from a spell of faintness by sheer
+force of will. "Some day, Tuan--I pay you back--for all you do. So
+long." He turned with painful deliberation and started to edge along
+aft. I was a bit surprised that he had not grasped my extended hand, but
+could not be sure that he had been aware of it in the dark. It did not
+occur to me until afterwards that he had not used his own hands on the
+rail of the stairway in descending, and that he had seemed to shoulder
+his way back to the cockpit rather than to grope. I waited until his
+swaying shoulders ceased to blot the blinking of the phosphorescent seas
+astern, and then swung off to the stairs.
+
+"All clear!" I called softly to "Pisco," as I felt the solid step
+underfoot. "Shove off when you're ready. _Buena fortuna!_"
+
+It was doubtless "Pisco's" ejaculation in Spanish a few moments before,
+lurking in the back of my mind, that prompted me to speed the spirited
+coxswain in his own tongue. On the heels of that "_Buena fortuna!_" the
+words he had spoken flashed up in my memory. "_Cristo! Porqué la
+muchacha?_" It could hardly have been a sarcastic dig at Ranga's
+hesitancy in stepping aboard, I reflected as I mounted the
+slippery--astonishingly slippery--steps. He would not have expressed it
+quite that way in that case. A sudden slip in a slimy patch at the head
+of the steps put an end to conjecture for the moment, and when I
+regained my feet the answer was written across the cabin doorway of the
+turning launch. The lamp inside had--purposely--been turned very low,
+and the blurred silhouette of the figure that came groping out to where
+Ranga had collapsed on a cockpit transom might easily have been that of
+any one of old "Choppy's" true and tried launch crew. But wet amber silk
+reflects a deal of light, and there was only one peacock shawl in the
+world--or in that neck of the world at least.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVII
+
+                             DOWN THE FLUME
+
+
+The lights had disappeared from the flume as I turned to go, and, rather
+than take the chance of another fall, I decided to use my small electric
+torch in finding a solid footing. The lacquered crimson reflection of
+the fluttering disc of light instantly revealed the cause of the
+slipperiness I had encountered. The whole end of the pier was
+criss-crossed with thick trails of blood, with great spreading pools
+here and there where, whoever shed it, had stood or sat. The blood on my
+hands and raincoat, where they had come in contact with Ranga's reeling
+frame, proved beyond a doubt that he was badly hurt. That explained his
+unsteadiness on his feet, and also the fact that he had avoided shaking
+hands with me. Very likely, indeed, his hands were unfit to use. Tired
+to the verge of exhaustion though I was, my blood leaped at the thought
+of the battle royal the splendid fellow must have fought--and won. I was
+expecting to come upon traces of the fight at any moment as I picked my
+way in past the ruined mill to the foot of the old grade leading to the
+top of the cliff.
+
+As I left the planking of the pier behind two sets of footprints
+appeared in the wet, firm earth of the path at the side of the road.
+Both were made by bare feet, but the larger ones--plainly Ranga's--were
+broken and irregular, and saturated with blood. There could be no doubt
+that his feet, like his hands, were frightfully torn. The small prints
+pressed very close to the side of the large, indicating that Rona was
+either supporting the wounded giant or being supported by him. From the
+fact that the smaller impressions were deeply indented, I figured that
+the former was the case--that she was helping him. The girl, evidently,
+was not badly hurt--perhaps not at all.
+
+Where the path I was following joined the bridle-road at the brink of
+the cliff, the trail of blood turned off down the foot of the flume
+toward the big sugar mill. The battle royal must have been fought
+somewhere in the depths of the dense tropical growth that filled the
+rocky fissure in the cliff followed by the flume. What grim secret the
+black hole held would have to wait for the coming day to reveal. My way
+home led in the opposite direction, and there was some question in my
+mind as to whether or not I had the strength for the full course.
+
+Fortunately for me the flume had been built along ridges and high
+ground, so that the trail following it had not been exposed to heavy
+flooding in the torrential rains of the early evening. I found it hard
+and firm underfoot for the most part, and by no means hard to follow
+without resorting to my electric torch. It would have been very easy
+going had I not been so nearly all in, but even as it was, by using my
+absinthe sparingly as I had done while painting, I managed to keep
+plugging steadily on toward home.
+
+At one time something very near a panic seized me for a while, when the
+thought flashed through my mind that the great quantity of Ranga's blood
+soaked up by my boots and my clothes would undoubtedly leave a trail
+that Rawdon's hounds, should they chance to nose into it, would be quite
+justified in mistaking for that of the Malay himself. Even if I
+succeeded in holding the beasts off with my revolver, my presence there,
+and in such a state, would call for a lot of explaining. If the Chief
+once became suspicious, I told myself, it would undoubtedly upset my
+plans to get Ranga away, to say nothing of involving both myself and
+Captain Tancred in a serious scrape. I was in a miserable state of funk
+until the cheering thought entered my head that Ranga had probably
+killed not only the dogs, but probably Rawdon and the Chief as well.
+That reflection reassured me immensely, and, buoyed in mind and body, I
+trudged on confidently to the foot of the waterfall.
+
+I had noticed from time to time along the way that the flume, in its
+less inclined stretches, was overflowing its sides. The reason for this
+became evident when I reached the intake, at the side of the pool under
+the falls, where I discovered that the gate, usually only partly raised,
+was wide open. A flow of more than double the normal was rushing out of
+the rain-swollen stream and into the flume.
+
+I was too tired to speculate upon how this might have happened. It was
+touch-and-go with my tottering knees all the way up the steep, slippery
+path to the top of the cliff; but, with three or four breathing spells
+and the last of my absinthe, I managed it, and came out at last upon the
+greensward rimming the bathing-pool under my bedroom window. It was
+comparatively quiet here, now that the roar of the falls was deadened by
+distance, which was doubtless the reason that I heard for the first time
+a racket from the other side of the plantation that must have been going
+on right along. It was rather a lucky thing that I _did_ hear that noise
+before I turned in. Had I not done so, it is hardly likely that it would
+have occurred to me that it might be a wise precaution to remove my
+boots before entering the house, and then to strip off and burn
+carefully in the kitchen range everything that I had been wearing. It
+was all I could do to keep awake until the irksome job was over, but,
+since it was evident from the ki-yi-ing and cursing that was floating
+down the wind that Ranga had not made a clean sweep of Rawdon and his
+pack, I reckoned that it well might be the means of preventing
+unpleasant complications.
+
+My arduous climb up from the old sugar mill had served a useful purpose
+in one respect. The hard physical exercise had sweated the poison of the
+absinthe out of my system and relaxed the near-to-breaking tension my
+nerves had been under for thirty-six hours. I fell into a good normal
+hard-workingman's sleep the moment the mosquito-net closed behind me.
+And the best of it was that, when a pandemonium outside awakened me a
+little after sun-up, I tumbled out upon my feet in full possession of
+all my faculties. This was a mighty fortunate circumstance, for the
+rather delicate situation with which I was confronted called for
+something better on my shoulders than the usual "absinthe-holdover"
+head.
+
+Harpool and Rawdon, it appeared, had experienced a beastly night. Losing
+a hot scent that had been picked up at the foot of the waterfall
+immediately after leaving the bungalow, they had been forced to take
+refuge in one of the labour villages during the deluge. Dragged out by
+the bloodthirsty Rawdon before the rain had ceased to fall, they had
+spent the night "working" the fringes of the bush in the hope of
+stumbling upon the trail of the elusive fugitive. The net result of this
+was the drowning of two more hounds and the driving of the baffled
+bushranger to the verge of distraction. Returning, dead beat, in the
+early dawn, they had encountered, at the intake of the flume, a scent so
+strong that even the paprika-dosed noses of Suey's victims followed it
+readily. Swarming up the cliff in full cry, the hunt came on to whirl in
+a mad war dance round the bungalow and put a period to my morning
+slumbers.
+
+The maniacal Rawdon was the worst difficulty, and I honestly believe
+that only the Chief's restraining presence saved me from the necessity
+of winging him with a revolver bullet to prevent his setting fire to the
+bungalow. That "bloody wombat" had dodged him once from that shack and
+he wasn't going to take chances on its happening again. The Chief and I
+finally induced him to leave his "ring of death" intact round the
+bungalow and come in and search for himself. That gave me a chance for a
+quiet word with Harpool, whom I did not want to have push on to town for
+fear he would start a search that might extend to the _Mambare_. Indeed,
+he admitted he was afraid that his man might have doubled back to
+Townsville and got off to the Singapore boat, which had doubtless sailed
+at midnight. He had lost a badly-wanted counterfeiter a fortnight ago
+that way. The skippers never seemed very keen to co-operate in a search
+of their ships. Too many little smuggling games of their own probably.
+
+I suggested to Harpool that he have a bath, a change of clothes--my togs
+were about his size--and a snack of early breakfast. Afterwards--since
+his horse was gone--I would drive him down in my trap. In the meantime
+he could ring up the Police Station and give any orders he thought
+desirable by 'phone. (This latter suggestion I made in full knowledge of
+the fact that the line must be down for over a mile. I had seen myself
+where uprooted trees were responsible for wide hiatuses.) If it was in
+any way possible without arousing his suspicions, it was my intention to
+detain Harpool until I was sure the _Mambare_ had sailed.
+
+The Chief fell in with my suggestion readily, and felt so much bucked up
+after a bath and a couple of whiskies-and-soda that he did not appear
+seriously upset when the telephone turned an irresponsive ear to him.
+Like the straightforward gentleman he was, he accepted at once my
+assurance that Ranga had not entered the house again, and took no hand
+in Rawdon's wild scrimmages, which carried him from cellar to garret
+with no other result than the brushing of a bit more of the bloom off
+"Honeymoon Bungalow" with the soles of his hobnailed boots. Madder than
+ever after his vain search, he surlily refused my invitation to remain
+for a cup of the coffee that his Chink friend of the night before was
+already preparing in the kitchen, and slogged off down the road,
+followed by three draggled hounds and two cursing helpers. I was a good
+deal cheered by the thought that it was unlikely that any of them would
+be getting through to town, without swimming, for another twelve hours
+at least.
+
+Before he left Rawdon turned over to the Chief the little piece of red
+rag he had been using to put the dogs on the scent with. It was at this
+time that Harpool told me of "Squid" Saunders' suggestion, and of the
+visit to the schooner in search of a clue. I did not tell him that I
+recognized the rag as one which Ranga had used to wrap his little Malay
+flute in, and that it had undoubtedly been left there the morning the
+big fellow helped carry Hartley Allen to the quarantine launch. It was
+interesting, however, to know that Ranga was absolutely guiltless of the
+outrage to which he had confessed. I thought I could just conceive how a
+well-guarded passion for the girl might have prompted that chivalrous
+attempt to shield her from suspicion; but why had Rona herself committed
+the ghastly crime?--and how? It was many months before I was to have an
+answer to those questions, and they came from the lips of the last
+person from whom I could have expected them.
+
+Direct and straightforward as ever, Harpool was visibly impressed by my
+suggestion that Ranga had probably remained hidden near the fall until
+the pursuit had passed, and after returning to the bungalow and finding
+it dark, had retraced his steps and adopted the desperate expedient of
+trying to escape the dogs by riding down the flume. That reminded him
+that they had found the gate of the intake closed when they first
+reached it, and that it had occurred to him at the time that the
+fugitive might have done this so that he could walk down the bottom of
+the flume without risk of being carried away by the water. This would
+account for the patch of scent the hounds found at that point. The Chief
+said that he was for pushing along the path by the flume, but that
+Rawdon scouted his theory, insisting that their man had jumped back into
+the water and gone on wading downstream. The hound-master had carried
+his point, but, to be on the safe side, they had ratcheted up the gate
+to its full aperture and turned a stream down the flume heavy enough, he
+was afraid, almost to carry the sugar mill into the sea. And that
+reminded me (though, obviously, I could not speak of it) that I had not
+heard the roar of the mill's machinery when I paused at the brow of the
+cliff. There was no doubt it was hung up for some reason. Was it
+possible that Ranga had made his escape after coasting right down into
+the crushing gear? But of course not. He would never have been able to
+get away unpursued, even if he had survived.
+
+I welcomed for two reasons Harpool's suggestion that we ride down the
+flume and investigate as soon as breakfast was over. It would keep him
+away from town until the _Mambare_ had sailed for one thing, and, for
+another, it would give me a chance to fathom the mystery that lay at the
+end of that trail of blood leading down into the rift in the cliff. It
+seemed probable to me that both Rona and Ranga, after the former had
+overtaken him--probably at the foot of the fall--had started down the
+flume on foot. Whether there would be any indications of what had
+befallen when the water overtook them remained to be seen.
+
+The gate was still wide open when we rode along beside the intake, but
+halfway down to the coast we met a man from the mill who said that he
+was going up to shut the flow off so that a break near the lower end
+could be repaired. The wires were down from the storm, he said, making
+it impossible to 'phone directions to the plantation office. The break
+was a bit of a mystery, he added. Flume opened right out. There were
+indications that some large animal--perhaps a bullock--had been carried
+down--probably washed in at the upper end while the stream was at flood.
+Funny part of it was, though, that there was no trace to be found of the
+bullock below the break. Must have been washed right on into the sea.
+
+Harpool pushed on eagerly after hearing that significant piece of news,
+and we reached the head of the first steep pitch at the top of the cliff
+some minutes before the water had ceased to flow. As I did not care to
+have the Chief discover the trail of blood leading down to the sea for a
+while yet, I proposed that we tie our horses here and walk down the top
+of the flume on a narrow board that evidently had been placed there for
+the use of workmen when repairs were necessary. It proved ticklish
+going--both on account of the incline and the elevation,--but nothing to
+trouble seriously a man with a sure foot and a steady head. Harpool, who
+was up first, led the way, I following closely.
+
+If the power of the flying bolt of water in the bottom of the flume had
+been impressive on the occasion of my first visit, it was a vast deal
+more so now, both on account of the greatly increased volume of flow and
+because of my certain knowledge that a human being--perhaps two of
+them--had gone down that chute, where I had been assured that a team of
+bullocks could not hold a man--and survived.
+
+The foot-wide board on which we were walking was nailed to the left side
+of the flume. The top of the right side was a rough line of unplaned
+two-inch pine planks. Harpool had only taken a step or two when he
+brought up short with an exclamation of surprise and horror. "Look at
+that top board on the other side!" he shouted; "raw, red meat all the
+way from here right out of sight round the bend at the bottom!"
+
+I looked, shuddered, shuffled my feet uncertainly, and brought my
+staring eyes back to the precarious footing. "Push on!" I implored
+quaveringly; "my head's beginning to swim as it is."
+
+The roar of violently falling water came to my ears as we rounded the
+bend at the lower end of the steep incline, and just ahead was the
+break. The whole right or seaward side of the flume had opened out and
+the flood was pouring to the rocks below in a spreading forty-feet-high
+cataract. The ghastly smear along the top ran on unbroken, right out to
+the end of a loose plank, which was kicking spasmodically under the
+impulse of the released stream of water shooting under it. The Chief,
+pointing to a ragged fragment of bloody cuticle, wedged in a joint of
+the line of boards on which we were standing, delivered himself of what
+I believe was his only approximately correct diagnosis of any feature of
+the whole affair.
+
+"The fact that piece of skin and toe-nail were torn off on this side of
+the flume directly opposite the bulge," he said, "would seem to indicate
+that the brake our man made of his right arm flung over the top plank of
+the other side must have finally brought him to a stop here. Then he
+must have doubled up crosswise of the flume, with his feet against the
+place where that skin is torn off and his back against the end of that
+plank that is sprung loose. When he straightened out that great rack of
+bone and muscle of his something had to give way, and it seems to have
+been the flume. Probably the force of the water, where his body
+deflected it against the side, was of some help; but it must have come
+jolly near to staving in his ribs where it drove into him at right
+angles."
+
+"Perhaps it did," I said. "We can't tell till we find him." I was not
+anxious to hurry up the search by any means; but I felt that it would be
+better to move on to a place where I could grow dizzy without the risk
+of plunging forty feet onto a pile of broken rocks. The Chief, with
+ready consideration, hastened forward, and my faintness passed quickly
+when I felt the solid floor of the crushing level of the mill beneath my
+feet.
+
+It appeared that they had knocked off early the previous evening for
+want of cane. At the time, the superintendent said, he thought the flume
+had been carried away by flood water. He had only evolved the bullock
+theory when he went out at daylight and found the blood and meat smeared
+along the planks. The bullock must have got wedged in finally, he
+thought, and the water had piled up behind it and sprung out the side.
+They had not found the carcass yet, but, as there was a very sharp slope
+down to an in-reaching neck of the cove, it was not impossible that the
+rush of water had rolled it right on into the sea. Neither Harpool nor
+myself thought it worth while to ask him if he had found any bullock's
+hair among the "meat."
+
+Going down through the silent mill to reach a lower level before
+doubling back to the foot of the flume, a weird sort of sputtery peeping
+caught my ear while we were traversing the boiling-room. Something
+vaguely familiar in the sound caused me to trace it to its source behind
+one of the big vats. The _virtuoso_ proved to be a lanky Australian
+sugar-boiler, whiling away the idle hour blowing across the holes in a
+queer little bamboo flute. One of the blacks had found it in the last
+run of the _bagasse_--the crushed cane--a while ago, he explained.
+Someone must have dropped it in the flume. Funny thing that it had been
+so slightly crushed in coming through the rollers. He gave it to me
+readily when I told him that I was a collector of primitive musical
+instruments. Said he had a much better one--made in Germany and all
+bound with brass--in his home in Maryborough. I took it on the off
+chance that I might some day be able to give it back to Ranga. I knew
+how greatly he was attached to it, and, since flutes like that were only
+made in one little pile-built village on the coast of Ambon, how hard a
+time he would have to replace it.
+
+I played up the superintendent's "washed-into-the-sea" theory for the
+Chief's benefit as long as I could, but finally he circled round and hit
+the double trail of footprints that led down to the end of the old pier.
+The idea that Ranga had ridden the flume alone was so firmly rooted in
+his mind however, that he agreed at once with my suggestion that the
+smaller prints must have been made by an idle boy from the hung-up mill,
+who had perhaps trailed the blood on his own account, in the hope of
+getting the bullock meat. As I myself had made a point of keeping on the
+grass to the side of the path, my trail of the night was not discovered.
+
+"The poor devil must have thrown himself over here and been finished by
+the sharks and 'gators," Harpool shouted up to me from where, at the
+foot of the steps of the old pier, he stood beside the black-filmed pool
+that had drained from Ranga's wounds as he steadied himself for a few
+moments before lurching over to the bow of the launch. The Chief also
+said something more about coming back with a boat next day and searching
+the beach for anything that might remain. I didn't follow him very
+closely, for, just at that moment, a trim clipper bow slid out past the
+end of the southern point. Knowing a certain old brass-cylindered
+spy-glass would be training landward from the bridge that followed, I
+opened and closed my arms swiftly in a surreptitious wave of farewell.
+Good old "Choppy" must have been standing very close to the
+whistle-cord, for his reply came instantly. The wind carried the toots
+that must have sprung from the heart of two woolly steam-puffs in the
+opposite direction, but I caught the message just the same. "All's
+well!" was what old "Choppy" signalled in answer to my wave. His
+"puff-puff" talk was a deal easier to understand than his English.
+
+I was no longer in Australia when the _Mambare_ returned from her maiden
+voyage to Singapore, so her skipper's report came to me in Paris by
+letter. He had put both of my friends ashore in Macassar, he said, safe,
+sound and comfortably heeled for "siller." He had become much attached
+to both of them in the course of the voyage, and couldn't thank me
+enough for putting him in the way of giving them a bit of a lift. He
+trusted I wouldn't fail to command him whenever another opportunity of
+the kind presented itself.
+
+The night that I sent Rona and Ranga off from the pier of the old sugar
+mill in the _Mambare's_ launch marked the beginning of one of the
+strangest and most picturesque friendships the Islands ever knew;
+picturesque in the striking background the strongest and most
+terribly-scarred man in the South Pacific made for the hauntingly
+appealing beauty of the most interesting woman, and strange--more than
+passing strange--in that there was none who could say that their
+relations were ever other than those of mistress and servant.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVIII
+
+                            THE MASTERPIECE
+
+
+The third day after the _Mambare_ sailed found me southbound for
+Sydney, with Paris as my ultimate objective. The thought that a
+striking--possibly a great--picture might be painted about the face I
+had already done came to me the first time I threw back the veiling rug
+and encountered poor Allen's terror-haunted eyes staring back into my
+own. In deciding to finish the work in Paris I missed whatever chance I
+might have had of doing something really worth while. That I did finally
+complete a picture that was striking, arresting--something to set the
+tongues of the art world wagging for many a day--was due to the effort I
+had already made--The Face.
+
+With small chance of being able to do anything for Hartley Allen--at
+that time believed to be permanently insane,--there was no reason for my
+remaining longer in Townsville. As nothing that the good Chief of Police
+had learned--or ever did learn, so far as I know--was calculated to
+connect me with his failure to run Ranga to earth, he, naturally made no
+objection to my leaving. The whole affair was a complete mystery to him.
+The disappearance of Rona was rated only as a minor mystery. The amusing
+part of it was that it never occurred to the dear man to connect the
+two. The last thing that I fixed my glass upon as my southbound boat
+steamed out of the harbour was a confused mass of wreckage, blurring
+darkly against the mangroves a few miles north of the town. It was all
+that the late storm had left of the grounded labour schooner, _Cora
+Andrews_.
+
+Missing the P. & O. boat by twenty-four hours at Melbourne--too late to
+overtake it by train to Adelaide,--I found the next sailing was a
+_Messageries Maritime_ steamer. Rather than wait a week for the next
+Orient liner, I booked for the French boat. This was all against my
+better judgment, especially in the light of the fact that I had work
+ahead. The one most effective influence I had known in keeping my use of
+absinthe at a point where it was not entirely beyond my control was the
+scathing if unspoken contempt of men of my own race for another of that
+race addicted to the insidious Latin habit. The nearest thing to a clean
+break-away I had ever made up to this time came after a stony-faced
+Cockney steward on a transatlantic Cunarder, who had put my
+whisky-drunken cabin-mate to bed one night as a matter of course,
+slammed the door with a snort when he surprised me pouring absinthe into
+cracked ice the following afternoon. In France, in French colonies, on
+French steamers--wherever the tri-colour flapped, in short--that
+restraining contempt was non-existent. There one found palliation,
+indulgence, even encouragement. That was the reason I had always become
+so abject a slave of the "Green Lady" during my sojourns in Paris, in
+Algiers, in Saigon, in Noumea. With no one to remind me of my shame, I
+forgot it, sinking ever lower and lower the while. This time, it had
+been my plan so to occupy myself with work on my picture in Paris that I
+should be able to keep my absinthe appetite just about where I had
+managed to hold it during the last six months in Kai and Australia. It
+is quite possible I might have kept to this program had I caught the P.
+& O. from Melbourne, or had the sense to wait for another British boat.
+As it was, five weeks of _dolce far niente_ were too much for me. By the
+time we reached Suez, I was seeing so green that the desert banks of the
+Canal looked like verdant lawns to me, and at Marseilles they took me
+straight from the ship to the hospital, pretty well all in mentally and
+physically. As my case presented some interesting complications of
+malaria and tropical anaemia, the doctors took a good deal of interest
+in it. Under the circumstances, I was dead lucky to get out of their
+hands at the end of a month.
+
+Thoroughly disgusted with the world in general and myself in particular
+on the day I was discharged from the hospital, it was a toss-up for a
+few hours as to whether I should jump out for the Islands by the first
+boat, or push on to Paris. That I finally plumped for the latter was due
+more to the fact that there was no east-bound sailing for a couple of
+days, than to any faith that remained in my ability to get on with the
+picture. Considering all this, it seems to me that the effort I finally
+did pull myself together for was fairly creditable in its results.
+
+It was The Face itself--after I had unpacked and set up the canvas in a
+studio that a former friend kindly placed at my disposal--that was
+responsible for finally jolting me into action. Even at the end of ten
+weeks, Hartley Allen's tortured features seemed as real to me as on the
+night I had finished transferring them from my burning brain to the
+canvas. It struck me then--as it seemed to strike the public later--as
+the nearest thing to flesh and blood ever flicked off the tip of an
+artist's brush; and I felt that I had only to daub in some kind of an
+_ensemble_ around it to have a work that would at least give Parisian
+art circles something to talk about for a while.
+
+It seemed to me that the most effective thing to do would be to make
+Allen, lashed to the schooner's wheel, the central and dominating figure
+on the canvas, and to have the other figures the creatures of his
+imagination--the phantoms conjured up by his reeling brain. These would
+include Bell, Rona, Ranga and a background of plague-stricken niggers.
+It was not to be--as we had planned the "Black-birder"--an attempt to
+portray some incident of the voyage. The "phantoms" were to be done in
+greys and blues, filmy and indistinct, to differentiate them from the
+solider flesh of the maniac tied to the wheel. It was not an uneffective
+conception, had I been up to carrying it out--which I wasn't.
+
+By a remarkable coincidence, as I have already mentioned, The Face was
+in exactly the right place to fit into the _ensemble_ I had planned.
+This was a good omen and I derived no little encouragement from it.
+Fearful of the effect that terror-stricken gaze might have upon my
+models, I stuck an opaque square of paper over the distorted features,
+with the intention of leaving it there until the rest of the picture was
+finished. This was a wise precaution, as the sequel proved.
+
+The model whom I chanced to secure to pose for Allen's figure was an
+especially fortunate choice. He had recently finished spending six or
+eight hours a day lashed to a hollow canvas cross in connection with a
+mural decoration at some cathedral--Sacré Coeur, I believe it was,--so
+he stood up rather well under the strain being triced to the property
+steering-gear I had contrived to borrow from the _Folies-Bergère_, where
+the "marine" _revue_ in which it had figured was just over. Considering
+the fact that I had never done anything but seascapes and was notably
+weak in anatomy, my work on this figure was far from being as bad as
+might have been expected. It was not seriously out of drawing, and, even
+with The Face covered up, one was conscious of an unmistakable
+suggestion of agony in the tensely-strained limbs and back-drawn torso.
+From the artistic side, I would undoubtedly have done better to have
+trimmed down my canvas and limited the picture to this single figure.
+This, however, never occurred to me until a long time afterwards. At the
+moment, my mind was quite incapable of running away from the track on
+which I had started it.
+
+Although I knew that one of the things that must have been in
+Hartley Allen's mind was Bell's face, as he had described it to
+me--pain-twisted, with the lower lip bitten clean through, and a bar of
+light from the cracked binnacle slashing across it,--I could not bring
+myself to attempt to dramatize the sufferings of my friend. (Indeed,
+even at that time I had a guilty feeling that I was not doing the decent
+thing in using that of Allen in a picture to be exhibited to the
+public.) All that I did in Bell's case, therefore, was a back view of a
+huddled figure, sitting on the rail of the cockpit, with a half-empty
+whisky bottle rolling on the deck behind. It was not destined to draw
+much attention or comment one way or the other, for which I was duly
+thankful.
+
+Ranga, as a consequence of being unable to find a model that would do
+him justice, I finally omitted. Rona came near to elimination for a
+similar reason, but in her case fortune, in the end, was more kind. It
+may be remembered that there was a so-called Hindu dancer leading the
+Oriental ballets at the _Comique_ about this time. She was really an
+Eurasian half-caste--the daughter of a British "Tommy" and a Mahratta
+girl, born in Poona. With little of Rona's beauty of face and
+winsomeness of manner, she was still possessed of the same flaming
+temperament and a figure that might have been poured from the same
+mould. It was the lithe, sinewy, serpentine shape of her that caught my
+eye when I chanced to drop in at the _Comique_ for a matinée of
+_Marouf_, and (as she was still a few strokes short of the crest of the
+wave of popularity on which she rode for the next season or two), I had
+little difficulty in persuading her to give me a few sittings. She
+insisted she was doing it for art's sake, but it was really vanity that
+brought her into line. Also, as transpired shortly, she had a very sharp
+weather eye for the main chance. In any event, the picture proved both
+her immediate making and her ultimate undoing. The advertising she got
+out of the fact that her living, breathing likeness had been painted
+into the most talked-about picture at the spring _Salon_ of the _Société
+Nationale des Beaux-Arts_ doubled and trebled her salary several times
+in the course of the next year. But it was also a reproduction of that
+same picture in a Vienna art journal that was directly responsible for
+luring to Paris the young Serbian ex-prince who chopped the girl to
+pieces with a curved Arabian scimitar--a part of her dancing toggery--as
+she was dressing to go on at a gala night of _Aïda_.
+
+It had been my original intention to paint Rona issuing from the
+companionway, just as Allen had seen her rush out on the morning Bell
+died. This, however, was far from meeting with the approval of Keeora
+(that was what she called herself at the time; it was only in her
+hey-day that she was known as Kismeta), who insisted upon breaking in
+full length or not at all. I was so sodden with absinthe by this time,
+so sick of the whole job, so anxious to get quit of it for good, that I
+raised no objections. The flighty thing proposed a sort of near-aerial
+posture on the deck-house that was something like a cross between the
+wing-footed Mercury and one of Puck's getaways in Midsummer Night's
+Dream. Rather than lose the girl outright, I let her have her own way.
+Steadied by two or three convenient guy-wires and puffing contentedly at
+one of my hemp-doped cigarettes, she held her painful pose with a
+fortitude truly Oriental. I can see yet the queer little heart-shaped
+pucker that dented the muscle-knotted calf of her leg when she swung up
+to the tips of her toes.
+
+I fancy it must have been a certain appeal the audacious minx made to my
+physical senses that prodded on my flagging energies. Everything that
+was left in me I devoted to making her absurd conception effective on
+its own account. To make it so as an integral part of the picture was,
+of course, out of the question. It is still a matter of a good deal of
+wonder to me that I succeeded as well as I did. The pirouetting figure
+on the _Cora's_ deck-house might just as well have symbolized _Peter
+Pan_, or _The Spirit of Spring_, as _Rona Rampant_; but the fact
+remained that it was exceedingly pleasing to the eye. In this connection
+I thought an American tourist--from somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon
+Line by his accent--expressed himself rather well. I overheard the
+remark on my first and only visit to the _Salon_. "If that little filly
+doan leave off kickin' up so neah them buck niggahs," he drawled,
+"things ah suah fixin' fo' a lynchin' pa'ty. By cracky, if she doan look
+good enuf to eat!"
+
+It was "them big buck niggahs" that were responsible for bringing my
+labours to a sudden end. I had managed to round up a half-dozen hulking
+Senegambians from the docks at Havre to pose for my plague-stricken
+Solomon Islanders, and for the first two or three days things went very
+well. I was striving for a sort of Doré-esque effect, by painting a
+tangled bunch of blacks writhing in the half-light of the shadowed waist
+of the schooner. The lazy brutes found lolling round on the studio floor
+a deal more congenial work than humping cotton bales, and I was getting
+on very encouragingly considering my wretched condition, when one of the
+prying rascals, taking advantage of a moment when my back was turned,
+turned down a corner of the patch that hid the face of the man lashed to
+the wheel. What damage was wrought was inflicted on such flimsy
+furniture as chanced to be in a direct line of flight from the "models'
+throne" to the door. Fortunately, the canvas was well to one side. The
+Senegalese, it seems, have a raw, red terror of the "Evil Eye."
+
+That little episode brought to an end my work with models. I simply
+blocked in my plague-stricken blacks in a rough sort of way and let it
+go at that. The effect was hardly as crude as one would think. The
+remark of the Southern gentleman I have quoted proved that a man not
+unfamiliar with niggers could at least distinguish of what the tangle in
+the waist was intended to be made up.
+
+I have definite recollection of only one further occasion on which I
+tried to work. The interval in which I had anything approximating
+command of my normal faculties had dwindled to a half-hour or so in the
+afternoon, and I quickly found that I was utterly unable to concentrate
+my mind sufficiently for connected effort even then. On the occasion I
+have mentioned, I knocked off dead after discovering that I was trying
+to decorate Keeora's brow with the wreath of maiden's hair fern that had
+crowned the aviating "Green Lady" in her flight of the night before. I
+chucked in my hand complete after that, and had the whole monkey-show
+packed off to the Selection Committee. As might have been expected, the
+picture nearly caused a riot in that temperamental bunch of "pickers,"
+but, in the end, The Face won the day with them, just as it did with the
+public.
+
+Of the furore created by "_Hell's Hatches_" in the _Salon_ it will
+hardly be necessary for me to write. Most of the excitement it stirred
+up was traceable to the haunting horror of the face of the wretch tied
+to the wheel; the rest was due to its name, which only suggested itself
+to me at the last moment. Perhaps the fact that everyone was baffled
+from the outset in trying to discover the _motif_ of the bizarre thing
+also contributed to the impulse of the whirlpool of morbid curiosity
+with which it was engulfed. And who could blame them for failing to
+discover any connection between a tied-up maniac, a hunched-up drunkard,
+a kicking-up dancer and a bunch of tangled-up niggers? The avalanche of
+surmises would have been highly diverting had not my sense of humour
+already fallen a victim to the apathy that was rapidly settling upon my
+mind and body.
+
+My outstanding recollection of the whole affair is of a highly effective
+by-play staged by that keen little publicist, Keeora, who had become a
+bit piqued over the slowness of the Press to broadcast the identity of
+the lady dancing on the deck-house. Utterly indifferent, I had avoided
+the _Grand Palais_ not only on the opening day of the _Salon_, but also
+during the week that followed, when it was reported that the _Avenue
+Alexander III_ was at times blocked with the throngs striving to get
+within sight of the most intriguing picture shown in years. My telephone
+was disconnected; telegrams and letters by the stacks lay unopened; a
+pile of newspapers were unread. Growing more sullen and sodden day by
+day, I had eyes for nothing but the green bottle at my elbow and the
+constantly replenished glass of cracked ice by its side. All the rest of
+the world was one soft, verdant tunnel--nothing else. I had been
+drinking steadily for days, afraid to face the reaction that must
+inevitably follow the first break in the continuity of the flow of the
+life-saving trickle of green.
+
+In a way, I suppose, it is Keeora I have to thank for the fact that,
+when I finally left my room in the _Continental_, it was to be headed
+for the _Grand Palais_ instead of to _La Morgue_. I am quite convinced
+that nothing short of the violent eruption of hysteria that soulful lady
+brought off outside my door would have induced me to open it, and
+probably no one else in Paris could have been equal to just that kind of
+an outburst. In passionate French-Cockney, Keeora told how, after
+failing for days to reach me by 'phone and telegraph, she had at last
+come in person to bear me to the _Salon_ to share with her our common
+triumph. That didn't move me greatly, but when she swore that she was
+going to stay until she "jolly well croaked, G'bly'me," unless I let her
+in, something inside of my head snapped and I gave way. (I always was
+like that with hysterical women.) When I opened the door I discovered
+that she was dressed in some Mogul princess sort of a rigout, and
+accompanied by an Italian _Marchesa_ and two or three lesser satellites.
+Between them and my valet they got me dressed and down to a waiting
+carriage.
+
+To get away from the mob at the main entrance, they took me around to
+the _Avenue d'Antin_ side of the _Grand Palais_, where Keeora pointed
+out with glee that the _Salon_ of the _Société des Artistes Français_,
+which had opened a week or two previous to that of the _Beaux-Arts_
+outfit, was almost deserted. "_Et tout, mon cher Monseer W'itney, por
+raison de--de la grand success de 'Aykootillys don fur.'_"
+
+"And what might they be?" I asked dully, rather fancying some new sort
+of epidemic had broken out.
+
+"Madame means to say '_Ecoutilles d'Enfer_,'" began the _Marchesa_
+politely; "eet--eet ees--"
+
+"Eat your bloomin' 'at!" cut in the lady impatiently, indignant that
+anyone could be so stupid as to have her Parisian interpreted to him.
+"Don't you twig me, old cock? That's wot them French Jo'nnys calls
+'Ell's 'Atches."
+
+The picture was extremely well hung, both for position and light; though
+whether this had come about as a consequence of a reshuffle after it had
+turned out to be the main drawing card, I did not learn. There was a
+roped-off area in front of it, and through this a number of perspiring
+attendants were feeding the crowd, working hard with tongue and hand to
+keep the chattering line in motion. Keeora called my attention to a
+woman who had fainted and was being carried out on a stretcher. "Bowls
+'em over just like that right along," she giggled. "Six of 'em squealed
+and keeled back just w'ile I was 'angin' on 'ere yustidy. But it ain't
+_me_ wot gets 'em," she hastened to explain; "it's that crazy bloke at
+the w'eel, wiv 'is bloomin' eyes borin' right through your chest an'
+raspin' up an' down your spine. Don't see wot you wanted to put _'im_ in
+for any'ow."
+
+At a word from Keeora's sedulous satellites, the attendants opened up a
+line through the mob and cleared a space in front of the picture. Then,
+assuring herself with a critically comprehensive glance that the setting
+was all correct, she rushed in, threw her arms around my neck, kissed me
+smackingly on both cheeks, French-fashion, and began declaiming in her
+best Parisio-Whitechapel how I had earned her undying gratitude and
+affection (_mon amours eternel_) in making her the central figure in the
+greatest work of art of modern times. It was all extremely well
+done--from Keeora's standpoint, that is. She had a solid phalanx of
+reporters massed in the background, as a consequence of which, after the
+next morning, there was no chance for anyone to remain longer in
+ignorance of the fact that the nymph hot-footing around the coamings of
+"Hell's Hatches" was Keeora of the _Comique_. The following Saturday the
+management came round voluntarily to her hotel with a new contract worth
+several thousand francs a week to their rising _danseuse orientale_.
+
+For myself, groggy in head and knees as I was, the experience was rather
+trying. Breaking away from her stranglehold at the first opportunity, I
+told Keeora to keep her "eternel amours" for those who wanted them, and
+bolted. There was some pretence at pursuit, but, with the real magnet
+drawing in the other direction, I finally managed to elbow clear.
+Hailing a cab in the _Champs-Elysées_, I returned to my hotel.
+
+But the interruption, as I have said, was a fortunate one. It checked my
+downward slide dangerously near the point where a crash was due. I was
+far from being out of the woods yet, but the interval of comparative
+lucidity had given me enough courage to try to pull up. Unloading all
+the firearms I had about my suite and giving them to my man, I told him
+to go away for the night and not to return until noon of the following
+day. Then, as restrainedly as I could, I drank during the first three or
+four hours of the evening, before allowing myself to go to sleep. The
+crisis--the dread reaction I had feared to face--I knew would come on
+awakening in the morning. It arrived on schedule--two hours of teetering
+on the edge of hell and cursing myself for putting the guns beyond my
+reach. Even with the _absintheteur's notorious_ dread of cold steel, I
+fingered Hartley Allen's Portuguese throwing-knife a long time before
+mustering up the courage to drop it out of the street window. That gave
+me a new idea, and I held lengthy debate with myself about following the
+knife to the pavement. If I had been on the fourth floor instead of the
+second, I might have tried it. As it was, fifteen feet to a glass
+marquee didn't look good enough. But at last I won through--just. It was
+a sorry looking figure that shivered back at me from the mirror after I
+had got up my nerve to ring for a pot of black coffee at seven; but I
+was off the toboggan, at any rate, with my face set unflinchingly toward
+the one place in the world where I felt there was at least a fighting
+chance for me to pull up again. I had arrived at the end of the day of
+which I had dreamed so long--"My Day," I had called it. Paris had come
+fawning to my feet--and brought me Dead Sea Fruit. I was going back to
+work out my own salvation in the Islands.
+
+I had a rather trying time of it, getting packed up and away on such
+short notice; but I simply did what I could and let the rest go. Putting
+Paris behind me was the thing. It took all that was in me to do it, but
+I caught the Brindisi Express from the P.L.M. station that night.
+
+My last act before leaving the hotel was to sign a paper brought there
+by a well-known art dealer, with whom I had talked by 'phone earlier in
+the day. It authorized him to sell to the highest bidder a painting in
+oil known by the name of "Hell's Hatches," delivery to be made
+immediately after the closing of the spring _Salon_ of the _Société
+Nationale des Beaux-Arts_. It also provided that he should receive a
+liberal commission for his services. It must have been something like a
+month later that he collected ten per cent. on three hundred thousand
+_francs_ less about five hundred paid some second-rate artist for
+executing a slight alteration in one of the figures. It was a petty
+Sultan from Morocco (high card with Keeora at the moment) to whom the
+picture was knocked down after a spirited run of bidding with an Irish
+distiller and a Chicago soap-maker. The buyer's only condition was that
+the man lashed to the wheel should be changed to a _burnoused_ Arab.
+That would tend to give the picture an atmosphere more in keeping with
+his desert palace, he said; also, he wanted the _efrangi's_ face covered
+up. The eyes made him jumpy.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIX
+
+                               AFTER ALL
+
+
+I had not planned by what route I should go to the South Seas, and it
+was only because an Orient-Pacific liner chanced to be the most
+convenient connection at Brindisi that I went by Australia instead of by
+India and Singapore. I was rather glad, on the whole, that I was going
+to have an opportunity to learn something at first-hand of Hartley
+Allen--or, Sir Hartley, as he had become since I left Australia. That
+much I had been able to gather from an item I had read in _The Times_
+shortly after my arrival in Paris. This stated that Sir James Allen,
+Bart., Agent in London for New South Wales, had just died of pneumonia.
+Being without male issue, it was understood that the title would pass to
+his younger brother, formerly a well-known racing man, and more recently
+in the public eye through his heroic action in navigating a labour
+schooner full of plague-stricken blacks through the Great Barrier Reef
+to Queensland.
+
+Nothing was said in the local item of the outrage aboard the _Cora
+Andrews_, but the day following a dispatch from Sydney stated that Sir
+Hartley Allen was recovering his health and strength at a sanitarium in
+the interior, from which, however, it was not expected that he would be
+in a condition to be discharged for several months. The shock to his
+nervous system from the mysterious attack upon him in Townsville three
+months previously had been so great that only time could obliterate the
+traces of it. He had not yet been allowed to see any of his old friends,
+but the correspondent affirmed on good authority that Sir Hartley's
+reason, so long despaired of, had been fully regained.
+
+From the fact that the attack was still spoken of as "mysterious," I
+took it that Allen, for some reason of his own, had refrained from
+revealing the identity of the person who had left him to die lashed to
+the wheel of the _Cora_. What that reason might be, was one of the
+things I hoped to learn when I should see him in Australia.
+
+Hartley Allen was still in a sanitarium in the Blue Mountains, I learned
+on my arrival in Sydney, but of late there had been little news of him.
+He was believed to be getting stronger, slowly but surely, though no
+hope was held out that he would appear in the saddle again for at least
+another season. It was unlikely that I would be permitted to see him,
+but there would be no harm in trying. I should, of course, communicate
+with his physicians, not with Allen himself.
+
+By a lucky chance, in wiring the head of the institution where Allen was
+under treatment, I stated that I was a former friend of his from the
+Islands. A reply arrived the same day, telling me to come on at my
+earliest convenience. The eminent nerve specialist in charge of the case
+drove down to meet me at the train. It was very fortunate indeed, he
+said, that I had mentioned in my telegram that I had known Sir Hartley
+during his residence in Melanesia. He had failed, very stupidly, to
+recognize my name as that of the famous artist who was about to paint
+Sir Hartley's picture when the attack upon him occurred. As a
+consequence, he was about to wire a refusal to my application, when he
+recalled that news from the Islands was the one thing in which his
+patient had shown any great interest. Accordingly, he had asked Sir
+Hartley himself if he cared to see a certain Roger Whitney, lately
+arrived in Sydney. The eager interest manifested by his patient was the
+most encouraging symptom the latter had shown since his mind had
+cleared. If I would carefully refrain from introducing any subject
+calculated to excite Sir Hartley nervously, he was confident that my
+visit would be productive of nothing but good. It was even possible,
+should it prove convenient to me, that he would want me to remain for
+several days. Sir Hartley was quite sound in brain and body. What he
+needed was increased vigour of both, and to this end he would have to
+develop a greater interest in living than he had yet shown. It was just
+possible there was something on his mind....
+
+After leaving my coat and bag in the reception-room, the doctor led me
+out across a bright solarium. We would find Sir Hartley out of doors, he
+said, probably playing polo. He seemed to hate the very thought of
+having a roof over him, even to sleep under. It was a strange sight that
+met my eyes as we came round the corner of the veranda. In the shade of
+a grove of blue-gums and stringy-barks a wooden horse had been erected,
+saddled with a light pigskin, and provided with snaffle and curb reins
+running back from the angling bit of board that served as "head."
+Astride the saddle, in the famous short-stirruped "Slant" Allen seat,
+booted, spurred, and in immaculate whites, slashing smartly at
+grass-stained and dented bamboo-root balls that were alternately tossed
+in and chivied by a pair of bare-footed youngsters, was a familiar
+figure. Save for the white hair (which I had already seen) and the
+absence of the former coat of tan, he did not, from a distance, appear
+greatly changed. It was not until his eyes met mine at close range that
+I was conscious of the weary listlessness which, like a bed of ashes,
+smothered the coals of his old fire.
+
+Allen had just poked away the first of two successively thrown balls in
+a sweet-running dribble, and sliced off the other in a sharp-angling
+"belly cross," when he raised his eyes and caught sight of the doctor
+and me coming down the steps. Swinging a bit uncertainly out of the
+saddle, he came toddling in a swaying childlike trot across the grass.
+His grip was firmer than I had expected, and the thought flashed through
+my mind that this was the very first time I had ever shaken hands with
+him.
+
+"I've been wondering when you were going to turn up, Whitney," he
+exclaimed eagerly. "There's something I've been waiting to talk to you
+about." He spoke in generalities while the doctor lingered, saying that
+he had given up his old idea of returning to the Islands, and that,
+instead, he was hoping to get away before long to a back-blocks station
+he owned and ride the boundaries for a year or two. But when the
+specialist, evidently assured that his experiment was getting under way
+properly, quietly excused himself, Allen led me over to the wooden horse
+and launched at once into a subject which had doubtless occupied his
+mind for many days. From ancient habit he leaned, as he spoke, now on
+the hollow pigskin of his "pony," now on the flexible Malacca handle of
+his polo mallet.
+
+"You're the only man in the world I can talk to about this now,
+Whitney," he said with a queer new quaver of weakness in his voice. "I
+suppose that's because you're the only person I ever talked to about
+it--before. I take it, Whitney, that you had no great difficulty in
+making up your mind as to who was responsible for--for my night of
+contemplation on the _Cora_?"
+
+"Well," I began evasively, "I had such grave doubts about Ranga's guilt
+that I went to some little trouble to get him away. Mostly old 'Choppy'
+Tancred's work, though."
+
+"Good old 'Choppy'!" said Allen with an appreciative grin; "on hand at
+the right time as usual." Then, with serious interest: "But the
+girl--how did she manage to get clear?"
+
+"Just turned up and helped herself to a place in the launch I was
+sending Ranga off in," I replied, a bit worried at my failure to lead
+the conversation away from subjects "calculated to excite Sir Hartley
+nervously."
+
+"And you were also convinced of _her_ innocence, I suppose," he said,
+eyeing me with a strange smile across the leather-bound handle of his
+mallet.
+
+"On the contrary," I answered; "I knew that she was guilty. I had taken
+your throwing-knife away from her the same night. I knew that Ranga was
+quite innocent, even though the police, through a silly ball-up, tracked
+him down with their dogs."
+
+"Then why did you let the girl go?" he pressed.
+
+"Because I thought I knew Rona well enough," I replied evenly, "to feel
+sure that she wouldn't have done--what she did, unless she was convinced
+in her own mind that she had a good reason for it." It was a stiff jolt
+for a sick man, that; yet, for the life of me, I couldn't have made an
+evasive answer.
+
+But there was a smile of untold relief on Allen's face as he leaned over
+and laid his hand on my arm. "You were right, Whitney," he said in a
+voice that trembled with the depth of its fervour. "You were right. She
+_did_ have good reason. I ought to have seen it all along."
+
+"I don't quite understand," I said, greatly puzzled. "Do you mean that
+all you told me about your--your having nothing to do with Bell's death
+was not true?"
+
+"Not at all," he replied, with unexpected vigour. "Everything that I
+told you that afternoon at the _Australia_ was true--according to my
+understanding of the moment, I mean. But later my understanding
+broadened a bit, you must know. A chap doesn't spend a night tied up
+alone with the spirits of three or four white men, and Gawd knows how
+many blacks, without coming to comprehend some things that have eluded
+him before. I didn't go all the way off my chump till well along toward
+morning, you see; and I was broadening my understanding all the time."
+
+"I was never able to make out," I remarked somewhat irrelevantly, "how
+the girl managed to get the best of you the way she did."
+
+"Oh, that," he said lightly, in a voice that indicated he rated it as a
+negligible incidental to the "broader understanding" that had come to
+him as a consequence. "Well, I suppose you have a right to know if you
+are interested in that phase of the affair. I simply got tired of
+holding out against the girl, that was all. Her relentlessness wore me
+down. It was not long after our return to Townsville that I realized
+that her picture stunt was only a blind. She counted on it to get me
+away to the schooner, where she could finish me off on the scene of--of
+my offence. I won't need to tell you that hit me jolly hard. Training
+out Yusuf and making a clean-up for Doc Oakes' mission with him helped
+while it lasted; but I gave up as soon as that was over and there was
+nothing to do but wait and brood. Since I knew she'd have her way in the
+end, I told myself that the sooner it was over the better. That was the
+reason I finally consented to go off to the schooner with her when she
+waylaid me on the north road, the day after I paid you my last visit.
+
+"She must have planned the whole thing in advance for the place at which
+she intercepted me was at the point where the road ran nearest to the
+wreck of the _Cora_. As it was low tide, we were able to walk on the
+sand to within fifty yards of the heeling hulk. Careless of consequences
+as I was, I readily enough consented to her suggestion that I wade the
+remainder of the way, carrying her in my arms. For the rest, it was more
+or less of repetition of her little coup at Kai. She pinched the knife
+from my belt while I was wading out with her, keeping it carefully out
+of sight while we were walking round the deck of the schooner. I missed
+it presently, but thought it had fallen from its sheath while I was
+clambering over the side. Leaning over to look for the knife in the
+water, I felt the point of it on my neck. Same old place--just over the
+jugular. Trick she learned from the Malays.
+
+"I told her to hurry up and get the job over. She coolly replied that
+this wasn't the place she had had in mind for it, and would I mind
+coming aft to the cockpit? Confident that she knew how to do the thing
+with decency and dispatch, and heartily glad to get life's fitful dream
+over anyhow, I went. Just like a lamb to the slaughter, Whitney. It
+sounds foolish, but I assure you that's just the way it happened. The
+idea was so fixed in my mind that a plain every-day throat-cutting was
+all she was figuring on, that I let her get three or four hitches of the
+log-line around my shoulders before it occurred to me that she might
+have a few refinements in pickle. I started to put up a fight at that,
+trying to force her to use the knife straightaway. Do you think she
+would do it? No fear. She wouldn't deviate from her set program by a
+hair. Rather than risk having the joint jolted into my jugular so that I
+would bleed to death quickly and painlessly, she dropped the knife and
+used both hands on the log-line. We had a hell of a tussle, Whitney, but
+she wore me down. Those three or four well-thrown hitches she had to
+start with were too much of a handicap.
+
+"When she finally had me bound fast, she sat down on the rail of the
+cockpit to recover her breath. I tried to argue with her, pointing out
+the certainty that I would be seen and rescued in the morning if she
+left me as I was; whereas, if she would cut my throat then and there, it
+would finish things for good and all. I also reminded her that dead men
+tell no tales; that she would be much less likely to get into trouble
+herself if there was no one to bear witness against her. (Fancy a man
+having to rack his brain for arguments like that, just to get his throat
+cut, Whitney.) The girl admitted the soundness of my contentions, but
+declared she was willing to run all the extra risk for the sake of
+cleaning up the job 'good an' propa.' (One of Bell's expressions, that,
+wasn't it?)
+
+"Then--I must have begun losing my nerve a bit, I think--I told her I
+had never yet been able to twig why she had a grudge against me at all;
+said I'd only done for Bell what I'd be jolly glad to have another man
+do for me under similar circumstances, and probably a lot more twaddle
+along the same line. She listened for a while, as though she rather
+enjoyed hearing me rattle on in that vein. Then she got up and
+disappeared down the half-open companionway. When she came back on deck
+she had an empty whisky bottle in her hand, probably one of a stack left
+in my cabin. This, with some effort on her part and much to my further
+discomfort, she wriggled under the lashings about my chest until she
+seemed satisfied it was held securely. Then, binding a filthy gag of
+oakum in my mouth, she stood off and looked me over critically. 'I
+the-enk you will twe-ig ver-ee much pu-retty soon, Mista "Slan',"' she
+finally chirruped with a knowing nod of her head. Without once looking
+back, she stepped to the side, jumped over, and waded ashore. I never
+saw her again--in the flesh, I mean. It took a deal of squirming to
+shake that bottle out. The satisfaction of hearing it break when it hit
+the deck was the only comforting thing that happened in the whole
+night."
+
+"And you say that you understand why she did it?--that you believe she
+was justified?" I exclaimed incredulously, shuddering at the horror of a
+cold-blooded cruelty that even Allen's deliberately matter-of-fact
+recital could not obscure.
+
+"Most assuredly," he replied with an enigmatic smile. "I'm just a bit
+surprised that you don't see it yourself, Whitney. It seems to me that a
+chap like you ought not to miss a point like that. But then, you haven't
+had a night alone on the _Cora Andrews_ to broaden your understanding
+like I have."
+
+"What was it?" I asked bluntly, completely mystified and not a little
+awed.
+
+"Just this," he answered, growing suddenly serious. "That bottle I
+shoved along to Bell the night he died had been partly emptied--by me,
+of course. Well, the first thought that entered the girl's head, when
+she came across it on the deck near his body, was that he had been
+drinking from it. In spite of all my assurances to the contrary, it
+seems that she was never able to rid her mind of that idea. That was--"
+
+"But couldn't she see _why_ you offered him the whisky?" I interrupted.
+"What if he did drink some of it? She must have known it was the one
+thing that would have saved his life."
+
+"Ah, that is just where you miss the point, Whitney," he cried. "And
+that was just where I always missed it until--she showed me the way to a
+broader understanding. Don't you see that Rona realized that keeping
+away from whisky, as he had sworn he would, had come to mean more to
+Bell than even a new lease on life? Well, she did. But, even so, one
+would hardly have expected her to fall in with the idea. And yet, don't
+her actions prove that she even did that? Whitney, I've never come
+across anything comparable to the straight physical passion of those two
+for each other. And, if anything, hers was the hotter flame of the two.
+There must have been something of the impetuousness of her rages in her
+loving,--for.... Well, the most maddening of all the thoughts I tried so
+long to stifle in Kai was the one that those frequent welts and
+abrasions appearing on Bell's neck and cheeks and arms were not from the
+bites of no-nos or mosquitoes. And yet, loving his body like that, she
+loved his soul enough more to be willing to give up the body that the
+soul might pass in peace. It was because she thought I had intervened to
+destroy that peace of soul, Whitney, that she--well, the effect of it
+was to pave the way to my broader understanding."
+
+
+                                THE END
+
+
+              WOODS & SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, LONDON, N. 1.
+
+
+
+
+                           Transcriber Notes:
+
+Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_.
+
+Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.
+
+Throughout the document, the [oe] ligature was replaced with "oe".
+
+Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of
+the speakers. Those words were retained as-is.
+
+Errors in punctuation and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected
+unless otherwise noted.
+
+On page 34, "dispayed" was replaced with "displayed".
+
+On page 67, "skin-kicking" was replaced with "shin-kicking".
+
+On page 74, an apostrophe was added in 'Slan'.
+
+On page 102, "Ulupua" was replaced with "Utupua".
+
+On page 159, a period was added after "he was going through".
+
+On page 176, "its" was replaced with "it's".
+
+On page 188, a quotation mark was added before "On the off chance".
+
+On page 203, "at the botton" was replaced with "at the bottom".
+
+On page 205, "twentyfive" was replaced with "twenty-five".
+
+On page 233, "back of the easel" was replaced with "back off the easel".
+
+On page 238, "in no may" was replaced with "in no way".
+
+On page 241, "ejaculted" was replaced with "ejaculated".
+
+On page 246, "Marbare" was replaced with "Mambare".
+
+On page 282, "firsthand" was replaced with "first-hand".
+
+On page 285, "listnessness" was replaced with "listlessness".
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Hell's Hatches, by Lewis Ransome Freeman
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hell's Hatches, by Lewis Ransome Freeman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Hell's Hatches
+
+Author: Lewis Ransome Freeman
+
+Release Date: January 9, 2014 [EBook #44632]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HELL'S HATCHES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Bergquist, Ernest Schaal, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>HELL&#39;S HATCHES</h1>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="center">NEW FICTION</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">THE CURTAIN</span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>By Alexander Macfarlan</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="i0">THE SYRENS</span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>By Dot Allan</i></span>
+<br />
+<span class="i0">OLD MAN&#39;S YOUTH</span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>By William de Morgan</i></span>
+<br />
+<span class="i0">THE PURPLE HEIGHTS</span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>By M. C. Oemler</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="i0">HAGAR&#39;S HOARD</span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>By George Kibbe Turner</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="i0">THE VILLA OF THE PEACOCK</span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>By Richard Dehan</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="i0">IN CHANCERY</span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>By John Galsworthy</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="i0">SNOW OVER ELDEN</span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>By Thomas Moult</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="i0">EUDOCIA</span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>By Eden Phillpotts</i></span>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="cnobmargin">LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN</p>
+<p class="cnotmargin">21, Bedford Street, W.C. 2</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<div class="image-center">
+<img src="images/illo_003.jpg" width="423" height="700"
+alt="HELL'S HATCHES
+
+BY
+LEWIS R. FREEMAN
+Author of &quot;In the Tracks of the Trades,&quot; etc.
+
+[Illustration: 1921]
+
+LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN"
+title="HELL'S HATCHES
+
+BY
+LEWIS R. FREEMAN
+Author of &quot;In the Tracks of the Trades,&quot; etc.
+
+[Illustration: 1921]
+
+LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN"/>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="center">CONTENTS</p>
+
+<p>CHAPTER <span class="ralign">PAGE</span></p>
+
+<p>I <span class="smcap">A Reputation Questioned</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page1">1</a></span></p>
+
+<p>II <span class="smcap">Hard-Bit Derelicts</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page10">10</a></span></p>
+
+<p>III <span class="smcap">The Girl Herself</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page25">25</a></span></p>
+
+<p>IV <span class="smcap">&quot;Slant&quot; Allen Retires Again</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page38">38</a></span></p>
+
+<p>V <span class="smcap">A Ship of Death</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page50">50</a></span></p>
+
+<p>VI <span class="smcap">Compulsory Volunteering</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page65">65</a></span></p>
+
+<p>VII <span class="smcap">Rona Comes Aboard</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page80">80</a></span></p>
+
+<p>VIII <span class="smcap">I Leave the Island</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page93">93</a></span></p>
+
+<p>IX <span class="smcap">A Grim Tale of the Sea</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page106">106</a></span></p>
+
+<p>X <span class="smcap">Art and Suspense</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page124">124</a></span></p>
+
+<p>XI <span class="smcap">A Hero&#39;s Homecoming</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page142">142</a></span></p>
+
+<p>XII <span class="smcap">A Bad Man&#39;s Plea</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page180">180</a></span></p>
+
+<p>XIII <span class="smcap">The Scene of the Final Drama</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page193">193</a></span></p>
+
+<p>XIV <span class="smcap">Hell&#39;s Hatches Off</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page206">206</a></span></p>
+
+<p>XV <span class="smcap">The Face</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page220">220</a></span></p>
+
+<p>XVI <span class="smcap">A Sudden Visitor</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page231">231</a></span></p>
+
+<p>XVII <span class="smcap">Down the Flume</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page255">255</a></span></p>
+
+<p>XVIII <span class="smcap">The Masterpiece</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page268">268</a></span></p>
+
+<p>XIX <span class="smcap">After All</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#page282">282</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1" id="page1"></a>[pg&nbsp;1]</span></p>
+
+<h1>HELL&#39;S HATCHES</h1>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I<br />
+<small>A REPUTATION QUESTIONED</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">&quot;Slant&quot; Allen</span> and I, between us, had been
+monopolizing a good share of the feature space
+in the Queensland and New South Wales papers
+for a week or more&mdash;he as &quot;the Hero-Ticket-of-Leave-Man&quot;
+and I as &quot;the gifted Franco-American painter
+whose brilliant South Sea marines have taken the Australian
+art world by storm&quot;&mdash;and now that it was definitely
+reported that he had left Brisbane on his way
+to connect with the reception the boyhood home from
+which he had been shipped in disgrace five years before
+had prepared for him, I knew it was but a matter of
+hours before he would be doing me the honour of a call.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">He simply <i>had</i> to see me, I figured; that was all there
+was to it: for with Bell and the girl dead (that much
+seemed certain, both from the newspaper accounts of
+the affair and from what I had been able to pick up
+in the few minutes I had been ashore during the stop
+of my southbound packet at Townsville) I was the only
+living person who knew <i>he</i> was not the hero of the
+astonishing <i>Cora Andrews</i> affair, the audacious daring
+and almost sublime courage characterizing which had
+touched the imagination of the whole world; that, far
+from having <i>volunteered</i> to navigate a shipload of
+plague-stricken blacks through some hundreds of miles
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page2" id="page2"></a>[pg&nbsp;2]</span>
+of the worst reef-beset&mdash;and likewise the most ill-charted&mdash;waters
+of the Seven Seas on the off chance of saving
+the lives of perhaps one in ten of them, he had been
+brought off and forced to mount the gangway of that
+ill-fated schooner at the point of a knife in the hands
+of a slender slip of a Kanaka girl.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">To be sure, two or three of the blacks who were hanging
+over the rail at the end of that accursed afternoon
+may have been among the survivors (for it could have
+been only the strongest of them that had been able to
+fight their way up to the air when Bell chopped open
+the hatches they had been battened under ever since the
+<i>Cora&#39;s</i> officers had succumbed who knows how many
+hours before); but, even so, their rolling, bloodshot eyes
+could have fixed on nothing to have led them to believe
+that the greasy shawl of Chinese embroidery the girl
+appeared to have thrown affectionately over the shoulder
+of the belated passenger in the leaking outrigger concealed
+the diminutive Malay <i>kris</i> whose point she was
+pressing into the fleshy part of his neck above the
+jugular.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">No, there could be no doubt that I was all that stood
+between &quot;Slant&quot; Allen, &quot;Ticket-of-Leavester,&quot; beachcomber,
+black-birder, pearl-pirate and (more or less incidentally
+to all of the foregoing) murderer, and the
+Hon. Hartley Allen, second son of the late James Allen,
+Bart., racing man, polo player and once the greatest
+gentleman jockey on the Australian turf. Pardon for
+the comparative peccadilloes&mdash;a &quot;pulled&quot; horse or two,
+a money fraud in connection with a &quot;sweep,&quot; and the
+rather rough treatment of a chorus girl, who had foolishly
+asked for &quot;time to consider&quot; his proposal that she come
+to him <i>at once</i> from the Queensland stockman who was
+only just finishing refurnishing her George Street flat&mdash;which,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page3" id="page3"></a>[pg&nbsp;3]</span>
+cumulatively, had been responsible for his being
+packed off to &quot;The Islands,&quot; was already assured, and
+it looked as though more was to come&mdash;that his &quot;spectacular
+and self-sacrificing heroism&quot; was going to wipe
+out the unpleasant memories that had barred him from
+sporting and social circles even before the law stepped
+in. A sporting writer in that morning&#39;s <i>Herald</i> had
+speculated as to whether or not he would be seen again
+riding &quot;Number 1&quot; for the unbeaten &quot;Boomerang&quot;
+Four, with whom he had qualified for his handicap of
+&quot;8,&quot; still standing as the highest ever given an Australian
+polo player; and the racing column of the latest
+<i>Bulletin</i> had devoted a good part of its restricted space
+to a discussion of the possibility that the weight he had
+put on in his years of &quot;easy life in &#39;The Islands&#39;&quot;
+might force him to confine his riding to steeplechases.
+Of the record which had made the name of &quot;Slant&quot;
+Allen a byword for all that was desperate and devilish
+from Port Moresby to Papeete, from Yap to Suva, little
+seemed to be known and nothing at all was said. But
+then, that old beach-combers&#39; maxim to the effect that
+&quot;What a man does in &#39;The Islands&#39; don&#39;t figure in St.
+Peter&#39;s &#39;dope sheet,&#39;&quot; was one from which even I myself
+had been wont to extract no little solace.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">With nothing but my fever-wracked and absinthe-soaked
+(I may as well confess at the outset that I was
+&quot;in the grip of the green&quot; at this time) anatomy standing
+between, on the one hand, and Allen more despicable
+than even I, who was fairly familiar with the lurid
+swath he had cut across Polynesia, had ever dreamed
+he could be, and, on the other hand, an Allen who might
+easily become more the idol of sporting (which is, of
+course, the real) Australia than he had ever been at
+the zenith of his meteoric career as a turfman and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page4" id="page4"></a>[pg&nbsp;4]</span>
+athlete, it was plain enough that he would not&mdash;nay,
+could not&mdash;ignore for long my presence in a city that
+was standing on tiptoe to acclaim him as a native son
+whose deed had done it honour in the eyes of the world.
+It was something like that the <i>Telegraph</i> had it, I
+believe.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Where a word from me (and Allen would know that
+my friendship for Bell, to say nothing of the girl, would
+impel me to speak it in my own good time) would dash
+him from the heights to depths which even he had not
+yet sounded&mdash;there were degrees of treachery which
+&quot;The Islands&quot; themselves would not stand for&mdash;it was
+only to be expected that a man of his stamp would make
+some well-thought-out move calculated to impose both
+immediate and eventual silence upon me. If we were
+still &quot;north of twenty-two&quot; I would have had no doubt
+what form that &quot;move&quot; would take, and even here in
+the heart of the Antipodean metropolis&mdash;well, that I was
+leaving no unnecessary loop-holes of attack open was
+attested by the fact that I was awaiting his coming wearing
+a roomy old shooting jacket, in the wide pockets of
+which a man&#39;s fingers could work both freely and unobtrusively.
+I had shot away a good half-dozen patch
+pockets from that old jacket in practising &quot;unostentatious
+self-defence,&quot; and when a man gets to a point
+where he can spatter a sea-slug at five paces from his
+hip he really hasn&#39;t a great deal to fear from the frontal
+attack of anyone&mdash;or anything&mdash;that hunts by daylight.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Yes, though I hardly expected to have to shoot Allen,
+at least on this first showdown, I was quite prepared to
+do so if he gave me any excuse at all for it; indeed, I
+may as well admit that I was going to be disappointed
+if he did not furnish me such an excuse. There need
+be nothing on my conscience, that was sure, for, if the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page5" id="page5"></a>[pg&nbsp;5]</span>
+fellow had had his deserts according to civilized law,
+he would have been put out of the way something like
+twenty times already. I had heard him make that boast
+himself one night in Kai, just before he went under
+Jackson&#39;s table as a consequence of trying to toss off
+three-fingers of &quot;Three Star&quot; for every man he claimed
+to have killed. Moreover, I had a sort of a feeling that
+old Bell would have liked to have seen his score evened
+up that way, for he, more than almost anyone I could
+recall, had marvelled at what he called the tricks I had
+tucked away in my &quot;starboard trigger pocket.&quot; But&mdash;I
+may as well own it&mdash;my principal reason for hoping
+for a decisive showdown straightaway was that I felt
+sure I could see my way through an affair of that kind,
+even with so cool and resourceful a hand as I knew
+Allen to be. As an absinthe drinker, what I dreaded
+was to have the crisis postponed, knowing all the while
+that during only about from four to six hours of the
+twenty-four would I be fit in mind or body to oppose
+a child, let alone a man who, for five years and among
+as desperate a lot of cut-throats as the South Pacific had
+ever known, had lived up to his boast that he drew the
+line at no act under heaven to gain his end.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It had struck me as just a bit providential that Allen
+almost certainly would be coming to see me in the early
+afternoon&mdash;the very time at which, physically and mentally,
+I would be best prepared for him. It varies somewhat
+with different addicts of the drug, but with me
+the &quot;hour of strength&quot;&mdash;the interval of the swinging
+back of the pendulum, when all the faculties are as much
+above normal as they have been below it during the preceding
+interval of depression&mdash;was mid-afternoon. From
+about ten in the morning I was just about my natural
+self&mdash;just about at the turn of the tide between weakness
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page6" id="page6"></a>[pg&nbsp;6]</span>
+and strength&mdash;for three or four hours; but from
+about three to five, when the renewed cravings began to
+stir and it had long been my custom to pour my first
+thin trickle of green into the cracked ice, I was preternaturally
+alive in hand and brain. The rigorous restriction
+of my painting to these brief hours of physical
+and spiritual exaltation must share with my colours
+the credit for the fact that I had already done work that
+was to win me a niche distinctively my own as a painter
+of tropical marines. How much absinthe&mdash;or the reaction
+from absinthe&mdash;had to do with my earlier successes
+was conclusively proven by the way my work at
+first fell off when those colourful years I was later to
+spend with the incomparable Huntley Rivers in the
+Samoas and Marquesas began to bring me back manhood
+of mind and body and to rid me&mdash;I trust for good and
+all&mdash;of the curse saddled upon me in my student days
+in Paris. But that is neither here nor there as regards
+the present story.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had ascertained that Allen&#39;s train was to arrive
+from Brisbane at ten in the morning, and that he was
+to be taken directly from the station to the Town Hall
+to receive the &quot;Freedom of the City.&quot; Then, out of
+consideration for the fact &quot;that the hero&quot; (as the
+<i>Herald</i> had it) was &quot;still far from recovered from the
+terrible hardships he had endured as a consequence of
+his unparalleled self-sacrifice,&quot; the remainder of the day
+was to be left at his disposal to rest in. The further
+program&mdash;in which His Excellency the Governor-General
+himself was to take part&mdash;would be arranged only after
+the personal desires of the &quot;modest hero&quot; had been
+consulted.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A &#39;phone to the gallery where my Exhibition was
+on&mdash;or an inquiry of almost anyone connected with the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page7" id="page7"></a>[pg&nbsp;7]</span>
+show at the Town Hall, for that matter&mdash;would apprise
+Allen that I was staying at the <i>Australia</i>, and there I
+knew he would come direct the moment he could shake
+himself free from his entertainers. Someone was to
+take him off to lunch, to be sure, but&mdash;especially as it
+was reported that he was already dieting to get back
+to riding weight&mdash;I felt sure this would not detain him
+long. &quot;It will be about three,&quot; I told myself, and left
+word at the office that any man asking for me around
+that hour should be brought straight to my rooms without
+further question. I also &#39;phoned Lady X&mdash;&mdash; and
+begged off from showing her and a party of friends from
+Government House my pictures at four, as I had promised
+a couple of days previously. Being borne off to the
+inevitable and interminable Australian afternoon teas&mdash;or
+to anything else I could not easily shake myself
+free from very shortly after five&mdash;was one of the worst
+ordeals incident to the spell of lionizing that had set in
+for me from the day of my arrival in Sydney. What
+did I care for Sydney, anyhow? Paris was my goal&mdash;gay,
+cynical, heartless Paris, who took or rejected what
+her lovers laid at her feet only as it stirred, or failed to
+stir, her jaded pulses, asking not how it was made or
+what it had cost. Paris! To bring that languid beauty
+fawning to my own feet for a day&mdash;even for an hour,
+my hour&mdash;<i>that</i> would be something worth living&mdash;or
+dying&mdash;for. For many years I had been telling myself
+that (between three and five in the afternoon, of course)
+and now&mdash;quite aside from my nocturnal flights there
+on the wings of the &quot;Green Lady&quot;&mdash;it seemed that the
+end so long striven for was almost in sight.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I lunched lightly&mdash;a planked red snapper and a couple
+of alligator pears&mdash;in my room, and toward two o&#39;clock
+(to be well on the safe side) slipped into the old hunting
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page8" id="page8"></a>[pg&nbsp;8]</span>
+jacket I have mentioned, and was ready; just that&mdash;ready.
+My nerves were absolutely steady. The hand
+holding the palette knife with which (to kill the passing
+minutes) I began daubing pigments upon a rough
+rectangle of blotched canvas on an easel in the embrasure
+of the windows, might have adjusted the hair-spring
+of my wrist-watch, and the beat of my heart was
+slow and strong and steady like the throb of the engines
+of a liner in mid-ocean. If either hand or nerve inclined
+more one way than the other, it was toward relaxation
+rather than tenseness. Tenseness&mdash;with a man who has
+himself in hand&mdash;is for the moment of action, not for
+the interval of waiting which precedes it. My whole
+feeling was that of complete <i>adequacy;</i> but then, the
+sensation was no new one to me&mdash;at that time of day.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Exhausting the gobs of variegated colour on my
+palette, I went to a table in the bathroom and started
+chipping the delicately tinted linings from the contents
+of a packing case of assorted sea shells, confining my
+attentions for the moment to a species of bivalve whose
+refulgent inner surface had caught and held the lambent
+liquid gold of sunshine that had filtered through five
+fathoms of limpid sea-water to reach the coral caverns
+where it had grown. Powdering the coruscant scalings
+in a mortar, I screened them from time to time, carefully
+noting the gradations of colour&mdash;ranging from
+soft fawn to scintillant saffron&mdash;as the more indurated
+particles stood out the longer against the friction of
+the pestle. At this time, I might explain, I was in the
+tentative stage of my experimentation to evolve and
+perfect a greater variety of media than had hitherto
+been available with which to express in colour the interminable
+moods of sea and sky and sunshine. The value
+of my contribution to art&mdash;not yet complete after five
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page9" id="page9"></a>[pg&nbsp;9]</span>
+years&mdash;will have to be judged when I pass it on to my
+contemporaries and posterity. Of the part these colours
+played in my later and more permanent success (to
+differentiate it from the spectacular but transient spell
+of fame upon the threshold of which I stood at the moment
+of which I write), I can only say that had I been
+confined to the pigments with which my predecessors
+had been forced to express themselves, I should never
+have risen above the rating of a second or third class
+dauber of sea-scapes.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page10" id="page10"></a>[pg&nbsp;10]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER II<br />
+<small>HARD-BIT DERELICTS</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">With</span> Allen and his coming in the back of my
+brain, it was only natural that my thoughts,
+as I ground and sifted and sorted the golden
+powders, should turn to Kai and the train of events
+leading up to the ghastly tragedy of the <i>Cora Andrews</i>,
+so distorted a version of which had gone abroad as a
+consequence of the fact that Allen was alive and Bell
+was dead, and that I, so far, had not told what I knew
+of the circumstances under which the one and the other
+had been induced to board the stricken &quot;black-birder.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It must have been, I reflected, its comparative remoteness
+from all of even the least-sailed of the South Pacific
+trade routes that was responsible for making Kai Atoll,
+a barely perceptible smudge on the chart of the
+Louisiades, the unofficial rendezvous for the most picturesque
+lot of cut-throats, blackguards and beachcombers
+that &quot;The Islands&quot; had known since the days
+of &quot;Bully&quot; Hayes and his care-free contemporaries.
+Like had attracted like after the original nucleus gathered,
+safety had come with numbers, and at the time
+of my arrival no man whose misdeeds had not made
+him important enough to send a gunboat after needed
+to depart from that secure haven except of his own
+free will.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Among a score of hard-bit derelicts whose grinning
+or scowling phizzes flashed up in memory at the thought
+of that sun-baked loop of coral, with its rag-tag of wind-whipped
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page11" id="page11"></a>[pg&nbsp;11]</span>
+coco palms and its crescent of zinc and thatch-roofed
+shacks, only three&mdash;or four including myself&mdash;occupied
+my mind for the moment. Allen&mdash;reckless
+daredevil that he was&mdash;had come to Kai from somewhere
+in the Solomons for the very good and sufficient reason
+that it was the only island south of the Line at the time
+where his welcome would not have been either too hot
+or too cold to suit his fastidious taste. Bell had come,
+in a stove-in whaleboat, because Kai was the nearest
+settlement to the point where he put the <i>Flying Scud</i>&mdash;the
+trading schooner that was his last command, if we
+except the <i>Cora Andrews</i>&mdash;aground on Tuka-tuva Reef.
+The girl, who arrived with Bell in the whaleboat, came
+because he brought her. The tide-rips of Kai passage
+and the Devil&#39;s own toboggan were all the same to Rona&mdash;at
+this stage of the game, at least&mdash;so long as the
+big, quiet, masterful Yankee was bumping-the-bumps
+with her. And even afterwards&mdash;but let that transpire.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I, Roger Whitney, artist, formerly of New York and
+Paris, and, latterly, man-about-the French-colonies, with
+no fixed abode, had been landed at Kai by a French gunboat
+from the Noumea station. I packed myself off
+from that accursed hole because the suicide of a couple
+of officers in whose company I had been drinking
+absinthe at the <i>Cercle Militaire</i> for some weeks had reminded
+me altogether too poignantly of what I might,
+in the ordinary course of things, expect to be doing
+myself before long. A change of scene and, if possible,
+a modification of habits was the only hope. I would
+never have had the initiative to tackle even the first had
+not the feeling persisted that I was on the verge of
+doing something worth while with my painting. I went
+to Kai because the archipelago thereabouts was reputed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page12" id="page12"></a>[pg&nbsp;12]</span>
+to have the most gorgeous sky and water colouring in
+Polynesia.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Neither the promised beauties nor the reputed badness
+of Kai stirred me greatly in anticipation. With a bitter
+smile I told myself that every night I was seeing sights
+more lovely than anything my eyes were likely to rest
+on short of Paradise, while the Chamber of Horrors in
+which I awoke every morning was a veritable annex to
+the Inferno itself. No, it was out of the question that
+Kai could unfold in realities, whether to delight or
+shock, things to outdo those that were already mine in
+dreams that had themselves become more real than
+realities. Well, it turned out that I was only half right,
+or wrong, whichever way you want to put it. While, on
+the one hand, I found the bluff, open badness of Kai
+rather more refreshing than shocking; on the other
+hand, it was hardly more than a week before I was ready
+to swear that not the most ethereal houri that ever laid
+her cool green hand upon my fevered brow was of a class
+to run one-two-three with a flame-quivering slip of a
+nymph whom I had surprised at her bath in a beryline
+pool inside the windward reef. I began to pull myself
+together from that hour. Rona, the very sight of whom
+threw most men out of hand, had quite the opposite
+effect upon me. I knew she was not for me, and the
+thought that the world actually held such loveliness in
+the form of flesh and blood had a sort of reassurance
+about it, like the knowledge that one has an ample
+income from government bonds.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Because I had landed from the <i>Zelee</i>, and also,
+perhaps on account of my rig-out (especially the brimless
+Algerian sun-helmet), the &quot;beach&quot; of Kai put me
+down at once as a &quot;We-we,&quot; and, therefore, a creature
+quite apart. The only Frenchmen on the island were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page13" id="page13"></a>[pg&nbsp;13]</span>
+a couple of escapes from the convict settlement of New
+Caledonia, and because neither of them could ride or
+shoot or fight with their fists, they had no standing with
+the predominant Australian &quot;push,&quot; most of whom were
+more or less handy at all three. It was, indeed, the fact
+that, in spite of all my years in Paris and the French
+colonies had done to make a physical wreck of me, I
+still retained something of the quickness of eye and
+hand and foot which had conspired to make my Harvard
+record as an all-round-athlete one that only two or three
+men have equalled even down to the present day, that
+gave me such easy sledding in making my way with the
+&quot;best people&quot; of Kai.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It took just three minutes&mdash;the length of the first
+round of the &quot;friendly bout&quot; I fought with &quot;Heifer&quot;
+Halligan, ex-welter-weight champion of Victoria, at
+Jackson&#39;s pub one afternoon&mdash;to change Kai&#39;s openly
+expressed contempt for me to something very near respect.
+I thoroughly appreciated the attitude of that
+breezy lot of sport-loving rascals toward a Frenchified
+Yankee artist, especially one that did not appear to be
+a fugitive from justice, and so took the first opportunity
+to win a standing with them which would at
+least incline them to let me go my own way when I
+wanted to. Notwithstanding my wretched condition, I
+outpointed my chunky opponent a good three to one in
+that opening round; indeed, the &quot;Heifer&#39;s&quot; excuse for
+the foul which put me to sleep in the Second was that
+both his &quot;bloomin&#39; peepers&quot; were so nearly swelled shut
+he couldn&#39;t see &quot;stryght.&quot; But it was my swelling
+groin and battered hands, rather than &quot;Heifer&#39;s&quot;
+bruised optics, that came in for first attention from
+deft-fingered Doc Wyndham&mdash;once of Guy&#39;s, on his own
+admission. The next day I was waited upon by a delegation
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page14" id="page14"></a>[pg&nbsp;14]</span>
+sent from &quot;Jackson&#39;s Sporting Club&quot; to urge
+me to put myself in training for a go-to-the-finish with
+&quot;Shark-mouth&quot; Kelly of Suva, the Fiji open champ.
+My speed would dazzle a cow-footed dolt like &quot;Shark-mouth&quot;
+was, they said, and he would be easy picking
+for me. They further urged that we could clean up all
+the loose money west of the &quot;Hundred and Eightieth&quot;&mdash;what
+odds would Fiji not give in backing a fourteen-stone
+stoker against an artist that only weighed ten
+stone and looked half dished with the &quot;green&quot; besides?
+Moreover, I could keep the whole purse for myself; all
+they wanted out of it was the sport. God bless the
+scalawags, it was more than half true, that last.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The funny thing about it was that the project actually
+tempted me at the time, principally, I think, because
+there seemed a chance that the hard exercise of training&mdash;the
+very thing, indeed, that helped work the miracle
+a few years later&mdash;might effect me at least a temporary
+separation, if not a permanent divorce, from the &quot;Green
+Lady.&quot; I was still temporizing with &quot;delegations&quot;
+when the <i>Cora Andrews</i> dropped her hook in Kai
+Lagoon and gave us something else to think about.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">If the little cunning I had left with my fists won me
+the respect of the &quot;beach,&quot; it remained for my proficiency
+with the revolver&mdash;something which I had never
+allowed myself to grow rusty in&mdash;to give me real prestige.
+My father had been only less famous as a pistol
+shot than as a builder of steel bridges, and from my
+birth it had been his dream that I should carry on the
+tradition in both lines. If it had broken the old boy&#39;s
+heart when I turned my back on engineering for art&mdash;insisting
+on going from Harvard to Beaux Arts instead
+of to Boston &quot;Tec&quot; as he had planned&mdash;he at least had
+nothing to complain of on the score of my aptitude for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page15" id="page15"></a>[pg&nbsp;15]</span>
+the revolver. He admitted that I had bred true in hand
+and eye, even on the day that he called my &quot;art tomfoolery&quot;
+a throwback from my French grandmother.
+I have always thought that the one circumstance which
+prevented the Governor from cutting me off in his will
+when he finally had definite proofs of the depths to
+which I had sunk in Paris, was the fact that, on my
+last visit to the old home on the Hudson, I had beaten
+him, shot for shot, with his own pistols, and at his
+favourite distance.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">They were rather free with their gun play during
+my first fortnight at Kai, each little affair having been
+followed by one or two more or less ceremonious burials
+in the coral-walled cemetery on the south lip of the
+windward passage. It was merely as a precautionary
+measure&mdash;on the off chance that they should be tempted
+to draw me into something of the kind at a time when
+I might not be quite on edge for it&mdash;that I took early
+opportunity to uncover a trifle of what I had crooked
+in my trigger-finger. A casually winged gull or two,
+and a few plugged pennies (not a miss at the latter,
+luckily, even when they tried to spin them edge on
+to my line of fire) effected all that was necessary. After
+that, though they were continually sending for me to
+come down to Jackson&#39;s and shoot the wire off champagne
+corks (fizz, loot of some kind, was the freest flowing
+drink on the island at the time), or perform some
+other equally useful and spectacular gun stunt, not the
+roughest of the gang but took the most meticulous care
+not to press his invitation the instant it sank home
+to him that my mood of the moment wasn&#39;t of a kind
+calculated to blend smoothly with the free and easy
+spirit of a beach-combers&#39; carousal.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was hardly to be expected that they would ever
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page16" id="page16"></a>[pg&nbsp;16]</span>
+quite understand why a man who could &quot;blot out a
+cove&#39;s blinker as easy wiv his fist as wiv his gun&quot; (as
+I was told that &quot;Reefer&quot; Ogiston, penal absentee and
+pearler, put it one day) and who &quot;&#39;peared mo&#39; than
+comfitabl&#39; heeled fo&#39; coin,&quot; should be &quot;light an&#39; looney
+enuf tu go roun&#39; smearin&#39; smashed barnculs on sail
+cloth&quot;; and yet it was on that very score&mdash;or at least
+to their quick comprehension of what I was driving at
+in my pictures&mdash;that the &quot;beach&quot; of Kai rendered me
+a priceless service. Almost from the outset they began
+to &quot;twig&quot; my marines, to feel the living atmosphere I
+was striving to paint into them. They were all men
+who had lived by the sea, on the sea; yes, and not a
+few of them had worked under the sea. Well, when I
+began to see those deep-set, wrinkle-clutched eyes squint
+to a focus of concentration, and, presently, the quick
+heave of a hairy chest as the message of the canvas
+flashed home, I knew that I was on the right track.
+Nothing less than that would have given me the courage
+to go on working, as I had set myself to do, on a steadily
+decreasing allowance of absinthe, a certain supply of
+which, of course, I had brought with me from Noumea.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">So much for me and my relations to Kai at the time
+of which I am writing. Now as to Bell....</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Who is that tall, square-jawed chap who looks as
+though he was not quite sober?&quot; I had asked a day or
+two after I landed.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Yank&mdash;calls himself Bell,&quot; Jackson replied laconically;
+adding that he was &quot;not quite sober&quot; when he
+tried to take a cross-cut over Tuka-tuva Reef with the
+<i>Flying Scud</i>, that he was &quot;not quite sober&quot; when he
+hit the beach in a busted whaleboat, that he had been
+&quot;not quite sober&quot; all the time since, and that there was
+no doubt that he would still be &quot;not quite sober&quot; when
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page17" id="page17"></a>[pg&nbsp;17]</span>
+the time came for him to leave the island, whether he went
+out with the tide in an outrigger canoe or shuffled off up
+the Golden Stairs. &quot;Allus been pickled and allus goin&#39;
+to be pickled,&quot; Jackson continued; then, qualifyingly:
+&quot;Course I don&#39;t know he was pickled when he kum int&#39;
+the world, but I&#39;m willin&#39; to lay any odds that he&#39;ll be
+pickled when he shuffles out of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Just about all of which was, or proved to be,
+&quot;stryght dope.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">After quoting this terse summing of Jackson&#39;s, it may
+sound a little strange when I say that Bell was a gentleman&mdash;not
+<i>had been</i>, understand (that could have been
+said with some truth about a dozen or more of us at
+Kai), but <i>was</i> a gentleman. Though undeniably never
+&quot;quite sober,&quot; the fact remained that no one on the
+island had ever seen him &quot;quite drunk.&quot; And no matter
+how much liquor he had stowed &quot;under hatches,&quot;
+no one could say that it interfered either with his trim
+or his navigation. His even rolling gait was always the
+same, whether it was the glow of his eye-opening plunge
+at dawn that lighted his face, or the flush of twelve
+hours of steady tippling that darkened it at twilight.
+Nor was he ever known to omit that gravely courteous,
+almost &quot;old-fashioned,&quot; bow which, with the flicker of
+smile that was more of his eyes than his mouth, was
+the invariable greeting he bestowed upon friend and
+stranger alike. The mellow drawl of his &quot;It&#39;s suah goin&#39;
+to be a fine mawnin&#39;,&quot; had made it easier for me to
+weather dawns that&mdash;in my inflamed imagination&mdash;menaced
+monstrously in jagged lines like a cubist&#39;s nightmare.
+If drink had any effect on his speech, it was
+to incline him to reserve rather than garrulity. His
+temper appeared to be under quite as perfect control
+as his legs. Even when he broke &quot;Red&quot; Logan&#39;s jaw
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page18" id="page18"></a>[pg&nbsp;18]</span>
+with a swift short-arm jolt the time that sanguine
+Lochinvar tried to nip Rona off his arm as they passed
+on the beach in the twilight, they said that Bell hardly
+raised his voice as he &quot;guessed that&#39;d hold the varmit
+fo&#39; a while.&quot; And when, a few days later, Doc
+Wyndham told him with a grin that &quot;Red&quot; wouldn&#39;t
+be screwing a diving helmet on his block for some weeks
+to come, it was said there was real regret in the Yankee&#39;s
+voice as he hoped that the injury wouldn&#39;t be
+&quot;pumanant.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Yes, before I had been a week at Kai I felt that there
+was a little addition I could safely make to Jackson&#39;s
+comprehensive estimate. I knew that Bell had been born
+a gentleman, and&mdash;whatever lapses there may have
+been, or might be&mdash;I knew he was going to die a gentleman.
+And that also (had I put it on record) would
+have proved pretty nearly &quot;stryght dope.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">What stumped me at first was trying to reconcile the
+remarkable control Bell maintained over all his faculties
+in spite of his hard drinking with the fact (apparently
+fully authenticated) that he had run aground&mdash;through
+drunkenness&mdash;every ship he had ever commanded,
+beginning with a U. S. gunboat. He cleared
+up that matter for me himself one afternoon, however,
+by casually observing&mdash;at the moment he chanced to be
+watching me trying to transfer to canvas the riot of
+opalescence between the <i>lapis lazuli</i> of the barely submerged
+reef and the deep indigo where a hundred
+fathoms of brine threw back the reflection of the
+sinister core of cumulo-nimbus in the heart of a menacing
+squall&mdash;that the sea had always acted as a tremendous
+stimulant to him, especially when he trod a
+deck.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;If I could just have managed to cut out the whisky
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page19" id="page19"></a>[pg&nbsp;19]</span>
+at sea, all would have been smooth sailin&#39;,&quot; he said in
+his deep rich Southern drawl. &quot;On land&mdash;heah ...
+anywheah&mdash;kawn jooce is lak food to me; mah body
+convuts it into ene&#39;gy just lak an engine does coal. But
+with a schoonah kickin&#39; undah me&mdash;we&#39;ell, I guess
+theah&#39;s just one kick too many, something lak mixin&#39;
+drinks p&#39;raps. It suah elevates me good an&#39; plenty
+... and when I come down theah&#39;s natchaly some
+crash. My ship an&#39; I gen&#39;aly strike bottom at about
+the same time. But, s&#39;elp me Gawd&quot; (a tensing
+<i>timbre</i> in his voice) &quot;on mah next command&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was the one sure sign that Bell was beginning to
+feel the kick of his &quot;kawn jooce&quot; when he spoke of his
+&quot;next command.&quot; Unless that kick was beginning to
+carry a pretty weighty jolt behind it he knew just as
+well as everyone else on the beach did that he would
+never get his Master&#39;s Certificate back again, and that
+even if he did there was no house from Honolulu to
+Hobart that would trust a ship to a man who had
+already beached a half-dozen.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Kai was glib to the last detail&mdash;rig, tonnage, cargo,
+insurance, owner and the like&mdash;respecting the several
+merchant craft Bell had piled up in the course of his
+downward career; but the extent of local &quot;dope&quot; in
+the matter of the gunboat episode was to the effect that
+it happened &quot;up Manila-way,&quot; and that &quot;that was the
+bally smash that started him goin&#39;.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Personally, I took little stock in the naval part of the
+yarn&mdash;that is, at first. Then, one morning&mdash;it was the
+day after the tail of a typhoon had sucked up the end
+of Ah Yung&#39;s laundry shack and left everyone on the
+beach short of clothes&mdash;Bell came out in a suit of immaculate
+<i>starched</i> whites. It was the cut of the jacket
+and the way he wore it that drew and held my puzzled
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page20" id="page20"></a>[pg&nbsp;20]</span>
+gaze; that its shoulders were &quot;drilled&quot; for epaulettes
+and that its thin pearl buttons barely held in buttonholes
+that had been worked for something thicker and
+wider I did not notice till later. Steady-eyed, lean-jawed,
+square-shouldered, ready-poised&mdash;not even a flapping
+Payta <i>sombrero</i> could quite disguise, nor five years
+of heavy tippling quite obliterate, the marks of type.
+Then I understood why it was that Bell, all but down
+and out though he might be, was, and would remain
+to the last, a gentleman. There are things the Navy
+puts into a man that not even a court-martial can take
+away.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The only allusion Bell ever made to his remoter past
+was drawn from him a few days later, when&mdash;he was
+watching me paint again&mdash;I chanced to mention that I
+had spent a fortnight in the Philippines on my way south
+from Saigon to Australia. Glancing up at the sound
+of his sharp intake of breath, I saw his jaw set over the
+questions that leapt to the tip of his tongue, to relax
+gradually as a faraway look came into his wide-set grey
+eyes and a wistful smile of reminiscence parted his lips.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Did you heah the band play on the Luneta in the
+evenin&#39;?&quot; he asked eagerly, &quot;while the <i>spiggoties</i> in their
+<i>calesas</i> wuh racin&#39; round the circle, an&#39; the kiddies an&#39;
+theyah nusses wuh rompin&#39; on the grass, an&#39; the big
+red sun was goin&#39; down behind Mariveles beyond the
+bay? An&#39; did you know the Ahmy an&#39; Navy Club&mdash;not
+the new one ... the ol&#39; one ovah cross the moat
+inside the wall?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Put up there all my time in Manila,&quot; I replied.
+&quot;A very comfy old hangout, especially considering what
+the hotels were.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;An&#39;&mdash;did you&mdash;&quot; (he gulped once or twice as though
+the question came hard) &quot;did you evah heah them speak
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page21" id="page21"></a>[pg&nbsp;21]</span>
+at the Club of a chap called Blake ... Lootenant-Commandah
+Blake? He was a son of Captain Blake,
+who helped Sampson polish off Cervera, an&#39; a gran&#39;son
+of Adm&#39;al Blake. Ol&#39; naval fam&#39;ly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;You mean the man who pulled off that coup when
+Wood was cleaning up the crater of Bud Dajo? Some
+kind of a bluff on his own with one of the little old
+gunboats Dewey captured after the Battle of Manila
+Bay, wasn&#39;t it? Scared some Jolo Dato into giving up
+a bunch of our men he already had lined up against a
+wall to <i>bolo</i>, didn&#39;t he? Of course, I remember perfectly
+now. General X&mdash;&mdash;&quot; (mentioning the Military
+Governor of Mindanao by name) &quot;told me the yarn
+himself the night I dined with him in Zamboanga. He
+said no one but an old poker shark would ever have
+thought of the stunt, much less had the nerve to bluff
+it out. Incidentally he mentioned that the chap was
+the best poker player in the Navy, as he was also the
+speediest baseball pitcher ever graduated from Annapolis;
+that he had been missed almost as much for
+the one as the other since he dropped out of sight several
+years before. Some difficulty about&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Tryin&#39; to push Corregidor out of the entrance to
+Manila Bay with the nose of his gunboat,&quot; Bell cut in
+harshly, the hell in his soul glowing through his eyes
+as the glare of the coal-bed welters beyond a stoker&#39;s
+lifted furnace flap. That, and a single sob sucked
+through his contracted throat as the vacuum in his chest
+called for air, were the only outward signs of the intensest
+spasm of throttled emotion I ever saw assail a
+human being. Then the square jaw tightened, the cords
+of the muscular neck drew taut, and what would have
+been another body and soul racking sob was noiselessly
+absorbed in the buffer of a flexed diaphragm. The fires
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page22" id="page22"></a>[pg&nbsp;22]</span>
+of agony behind the eyes paled and died down like an
+expiring coal. The corrugations of the brow smoothed
+out as a smile&mdash;half amused, half wistful&mdash;relaxed the
+set lips. The old controlled Bell (I shall continue to
+call him so) was in the saddle again.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;So they still remembah mah ball-playin&#39;,&quot; he
+drawled musingly, his left hand digits gently massaging
+the bulbous swelling remaining after some red-hot
+drive had telescoped the middle finger of his right.
+&quot;Ye&#39;es, of co&#39;se they&#39;d miss mah wing in the Ahmy-Navy
+game at Ca&#39;nival time. But mah pokah&mdash;we&#39;ell
+I reckon a few of &#39;em did find mah pokah hand about
+as bafflin&#39; as mah baseball ahm. But it was straight
+deliv&#39;ry, tho&#39;&mdash;both of &#39;em. An&#39; they wouldn&#39;t be
+callin&#39; me a fo&#39;-flushah, etha. No, you didn&#39;t heah any
+of &#39;em say that, I&#39;m right suah.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A smile more whimsical than bitter twitched his lips
+twice or thrice in the minute or two he stood alone with
+his thoughts. &quot;So I&#39;ve sort o&#39; dropped out o&#39; sight
+to &#39;em?&quot; he said finally. &quot;We&#39;ell, I guess that was
+about the best thing to happen for all consuned. But,
+just the same, if you evah go back Manila-way I won&#39;t
+be mindin&#39; it if you tell &#39;em that, tho&#39; the ol&#39; wing&#39;s
+tuhn&#39;d to glass from long lack o&#39; limberin&#39;, an&#39; tho&#39;
+I don&#39;t play pokah down heah fo&#39; feah o&#39; bein&#39; knifed
+fo&#39; mah luck, I&#39;m still hittin&#39; true to fohm in mah own
+lil&#39; game of alterin&#39; the sea map with the noses of ships.
+I reckon they&#39;ll know the reason why.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There was another interval of silence, but, unlike the
+other, not charged, electric. Bell&#39;s blow-off through the
+safety-valve of frank speech had taken the peak off
+the pent-up pressure within, and when he spoke again
+it was merely to quote what the Governor of North
+Carolina had said about its having been a long time
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page23" id="page23"></a>[pg&nbsp;23]</span>
+between drinks. &quot;Great thust aggravateh, the Sou&#39;east
+Trade.&quot; Would I mind&mdash;ahem&mdash;hiking home with him
+and lubricating my tonsils with a drop of &quot;J. Walkah&quot;?
+That was simply his delicate way of pretending to ignore
+my slavery to absinthe, a habit which not even the most
+whisky-saturated sot of an Anglo-Saxon can ever quite
+forgive one of his race for falling a victim to. I
+wouldn&#39;t? &quot;We&#39;ell, <i>hasta manyanah</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">With a crunch of coral clinkers under his feet and a
+stave of &quot;Carry Me Back to Ol&#39; Virginny&quot; on his lips,
+Bell, disdaining the smooth path by the beach, swung
+off through the pandanus scrub on what he called a
+&quot;bee-line for home&quot;! He had a weakness for taking
+&quot;short-cuts&quot; on land as well as at sea. Never again&mdash;not
+even in the moment of his great decision&mdash;did he
+lift for me or any other man the &quot;furnace flap&quot; of iron
+reserve that masked the fires of his innermost soul.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Their saving &quot;sense of sport,&quot; which was the golden
+vein in the rough iron of the &quot;beach push&quot; of Kai,
+made it inevitable that they should have a substantial
+sense of respect for a man of Bell&#39;s stamp, and this
+might easily have ripened to an active popularity had
+not the American&#39;s quiet but inflexible reserve prevented
+their knowing him better. They suspected that he was
+no novice in handling the big Colt&#39;s that was flopping
+on his hip when he landed, they knew that there was
+a weighty punch behind his long arm, and they were
+frankly outspoken in their admiration of the manner
+in which he stowed and carried his booze. But what
+had impressed them more than anything else was the
+way in which he had taken the devil out of a vicious imp
+of a Solomon Island pony on the beach one morning.
+&quot;Hellish hard-handed,&quot; &quot;Slant&quot; Allen had said, as his
+steel-blue eyes narrowed down to slits in the intensity
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page24" id="page24"></a>[pg&nbsp;24]</span>
+of his interest and admiration; &quot;but a seat like he was
+screwed to the brute&#39;s backbone. Old cross-country
+rider&mdash;hundred to one on it. Man in a million in a
+steeplechase on a horse strong enough to carry the
+weight. Gawd, what a seat!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">All in all, indeed, there was only one thing the
+&quot;beach&quot; held against Bell, and that was Rona, or
+rather his possession of her. There was nothing personal
+in this, of course. They merely regarded the big
+American in the same light they had always regarded
+a man with a chest of pearls or anything else of value
+that their simple, direct natures made them yearn for
+the possession of. There was this difference, however.
+Where the &quot;push&quot; of Kai would have combined to a
+man to get away with a box of pearls or a cargo of
+shell, the annexing of a woman was essentially a lone-hand
+game, and&mdash;well, Bell was hardly the kind of a
+&quot;one-man job&quot; any of them cared to tackle. I feel
+practically certain that, but for the disturbance of the
+even tenor of Kai&#39;s way incident to the <i>Cora Andrews</i>
+affair, his &quot;rights&quot; in Rona would never have been
+challenged.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page25" id="page25"></a>[pg&nbsp;25]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER III<br />
+<small>THE GIRL HERSELF</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">As</span> for the girl herself, words fail me in trying to picture
+her, just as my brush and pencil (save perhaps
+for that one rough memory sketch, done at
+white heat while still gripped in the exaltation that first
+glimpse of her splashing inside the reef had thrown me
+into) have always failed. This is, I fancy, because, unbelievably
+beautiful though she was, there was still so
+much of her appeal that was of the spirit rather than
+the flesh&mdash;something intangible which had to be sensed
+rather than seen. She was compact of contradictions,
+physical as well as mental. So slender as almost to
+suggest fragility at a first glance, there was still not
+a straight line, nor an angle, nor a hint of boniness,
+from the arch of her instep to the tips of her ears.
+Again, pixie-like as she was in the dainty perfection of
+her modelling, there was yet a fairly feral suggestion
+of suppleness and strength underrunning the soft fluency
+of contour. The strength was there, too, held in reserve
+in the flexible frame like the power of a coiled spring.
+I saw her unleash it one morning when, impatient of
+the slowness of a clumsy Fijian who was launching a
+very sizable dugout for her, she yanked him aside by
+the hair of his fuzzy head and did the job herself. I
+can still see the run of muscles under the olive-silk skin
+of arm and ankle, and the bent-bow arch of her slender
+back, as she gave a last push to the cranky outrigger.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page26" id="page26"></a>[pg&nbsp;26]</span>
+Indeed, my mind is full of pictures like that&mdash;paddling,
+swimming, leaning hard against the buffets of a passing
+squall, with a lock of wet hair streaking across her glowing
+face and her drenched garments clinging to her lithe
+limbs; and yet, as I have said, the buoyant, flaming
+spirit of her always escaped my brush and pencil as it
+now eludes portrayal by my pen.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But the most baffling, as it was also the most fascinating,
+of Rona&#39;s contradictions was the combination she
+presented of inward intensity and outward calm. The
+fire of her was, perhaps, the first thing one was conscious
+of. Even I, with my blood thinned and cooled with the
+ice of absinthe, could never watch her movements without
+a quickening of my jaded pulses; to the sanguine
+combers of Kai the sight of her (whether the rippling
+undulations of arms and shoulders as she drove a canoe
+through the water, or the hawk-like immobility of her
+as she poised on a pinnacle of reef waiting for a chance
+to cast her little Dyak purse-net) was palpably maddening.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">So much for the flaming appeal of the girl in action,
+or suspended action, which was, of course, about the
+only way in which she was ever revealed to the &quot;beach.&quot;
+Now picture the same creature (as Bell&mdash;and occasionally
+myself, his only intimate friend on the island&mdash;so
+often saw her) seated cross-legged on a mat, her sloe-eyes,
+set slightly slant, fixed dreamily on nothingness,
+like a sort of reincarnated girl-Buddha. The sight of
+her thus never failed to awaken in my nostrils the smell
+of smouldering <i>yakka</i> sticks, and to set my ears ringing
+with the throb of temple bells.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">To my hyper-sophisticated (I will not say degenerate)
+senses this Oriental side of the girl made a subtle
+appeal that was like an enchantment. The passion to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page27" id="page27"></a>[pg&nbsp;27]</span>
+paint her&mdash;always burning within me when I saw her
+in action&mdash;never assailed me when she fell into one of
+those contemplative calms. Rather the peace of her
+soothed me like an opiate and made me content to sit
+and dream myself. It was the one thing (until I got
+the habit by the throat years afterward) that ever held
+my nerves steady when the &quot;absinthe hour&quot; drew near
+at the end of the afternoon. As long as Rona would
+continue to &quot;sit Buddha&quot; I had myself completely in
+hand, even till well on after sunset. But if she moved,
+or spoke, or even showed by her eyes that she was following
+Bell&#39;s words (it was he&mdash;less sensitive to this
+phase of her than I&mdash;who did most of the talking at
+these times), the spell was broken. The haste of my
+bolt for home was almost indecent. I have sometimes
+thought that a few months alone with Rona at this time
+might have effected very near to a complete cure in me&mdash;by
+a sort of involuntary mental therapeutic treatment
+on her part, I mean. But perhaps the other side of
+her&mdash;the &quot;unreposeful&quot; one&mdash;might have complicated
+the case.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Both the fire and the repose of Rona&mdash;the passion and
+the peace of her&mdash;were reflected in the olive oval of
+her face, the one by the full, sensuous lips and the sensitive
+nostrils, and the other by the smooth, low brow.
+The low-lidded blue-black eyes were &quot;debatable territory,&quot;
+now in the hands of one, now the other. So, too,
+that infallible &quot;gauge of temperament,&quot; whose dial is
+the pucker between the eyebrows. With Rona, this
+&quot;passion-pressure index&quot; was a corrugated knot of intensity
+or an olive blank according as to whether her
+inner fires were flaming or banked.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Bell knew little of the girl&#39;s origin and said less.
+&quot;Rona&#39;s <i>trousseau</i> consisted of huh peacock sca&#39;f an&#39; this
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page28" id="page28"></a>[pg&nbsp;28]</span>
+heah baby <i>bolo</i>,&quot; he said in his slow drawl one afternoon
+when he had borrowed the exquisite little dagger
+to show me how the Jolo <i>juramentado</i> executed his
+favourite belly-ripping stroke; &quot;an&#39; I reckon they&#39;ll
+comprise &#39;bout the sum total of huh mo&#39;nin&#39; at mah
+fun&#39;ral.&quot; That, and &quot;I guess Rona knows no mo&#39; &#39;bout
+mah past reco&#39;d than I do &#39;bout huhs,&quot; was all I recollect
+his ever having said on the subject. He was content
+to let it rest at that.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was old Jackson who told me that he had seen the
+girl at Ponape, where she had been brought by an &quot;owl-eyed&quot;
+(referring to horn-spectacles rather than to the
+almond orbs themselves, I took it) &quot;chink&quot; when he
+came back to the Carolines after buying bird-of-paradise
+skins down New Guinea-way. She was dressed &quot;Java-style&quot;
+at the time, and was said to have been picked
+up at Ternate or Ambon in the Moluccas. Although the
+wily old Celestial kept the girl practically under lock
+and key from the first, customers of his shop occasionally
+glimpsed her, and she them, it would seem. Among
+these was the Yankee skipper of the trading schooner,
+<i>Flying Scud</i>. The coming together of those two must
+have been like the touching off of a <i>ku-kui</i>-nut torch,
+Jackson opined, adding that he supposed I &quot;twigged
+that thar was no snuffin&#39; uv <i>ku-kui</i>, onst aflar.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Just how the sequel eventuated no one in Ponape save
+the old Chinaman knew, and he never told. With only
+half her copra discharged, the <i>Scud</i> was heard getting
+under way at midnight, shortly after which the silhouette
+of her, close-reefed, was observed to blot out the moon
+three or four times as she beat out of that &quot;hell&#39;s craw&quot;
+of a passage in the teeth of a rising sou&#39;wester. The
+girl was never seen in the Carolines again. Neither was
+Bell nor the <i>Scud</i>, for that matter, as it was but a few
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page29" id="page29"></a>[pg&nbsp;29]</span>
+days later that he attempted his disastrous short-cut
+across Tuka-tuva Reef.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The next morning the Chinaman waited on his customers
+with his neck heavily, obscuringly swathed in
+bandages. He kept these on for a fortnight or more,
+and when they were finally dispensed with replaced his
+loose shirt with a close-buttoned jacket having an unusually
+high-cut neck. Even the latter, however, could
+not entirely conceal a number of parallel red cicatrices
+which, beginning on his fat jowls, ran down, slightly
+converging, onto his puffy yellow throat. Jackson felt
+sure that the point where those red furrows came to a
+focus must have been &quot;fairish messed up.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On the beach of Ponape opinion was fairly divided
+as to whether the big, close-mouthed Yank had &quot;strong-armed&quot;
+the Chinaman and carried off the girl bodily,
+perhaps against her will, or whether she had made the
+get-away unaided, going off to the <i>Scud</i> on her own.
+In Jackson&#39;s mind there were no doubts.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I see them welts wi&#39; my own peepers,&quot; he said,
+&quot;an&#39; they wan&#39;t the marks uv a man. They wuz
+<i>scratches</i>. That lanky Yank don&#39;t scratch ... &#39;e
+<i>wallops</i>. But that gal&mdash;s&#39;y, did y&#39;u ever tyke a squint
+at &#39;er taloons? Them&#39;s the ans&#39;er. She kum to &#39;im;
+an&#39; she&#39;s stickin&#39; lika oktypus.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Again I must credit old &quot;Jack&quot; with handing me
+pretty near to the &quot;stryght dope.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Yes, I had indeed noticed Rona&#39;s wonderful fingernails;
+likewise the astonishing amount of care she lavished
+on them. One could not have helped noticing
+them. A quarter to half an inch long, meticulously
+manicured, and stained a maroon-brown (rather darker
+than the rich <i>sang du b&oelig;uf</i> of <i>henna</i>), she was always
+polishing them&mdash;those of one hand on the palm of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page30" id="page30"></a>[pg&nbsp;30]</span>
+other&mdash;even when &quot;sitting Buddha&quot; with dreaming half-closed
+eyes. I inferred the habit of letting them grow
+was acquired in the course of her association with the
+Chinese. She cut them just short of where they would
+begin to curl and be a nuisance. A fraction of an inch
+longer, and they would have been as useless as the tusks
+of an old boar that had curved back more than a half
+circle. As they were....</p>
+
+<p class="indent">One man&#39;s guess was as good as another&#39;s in the matter
+of Rona&#39;s racial origin. Kai, though agreeing that
+she came from &quot;somewhere Java-side,&quot; always spoke of
+her as a Kanaka, just as they did of all the rest of the
+&quot;beach&quot; women who were not palpably Jap, Chinese
+or white. I doubt very much, however, that she had a
+drop of real Polynesian blood in her veins. Flaring with
+temperament though she was, there was still nothing
+about her of the happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care sensuousness
+of the Caroline or Samoan, the only women of
+the Islands to whom she bore even the faintest resemblance
+in face or figure. If she had come from Marquesas-way&mdash;but
+no, not even an admixture of old
+Spanish pirate blood would have accounted for either
+the spirit or the body of Rona.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The girl&#39;s practice of wearing her <i>sulu</i> (Kai used the
+Fijian name for the inevitable South Sea waist-cloth
+which the Samoans call <i>lava-lava</i> and the Tahitians
+<i>pareo</i>) Malay-fashion&mdash;looped over the breasts and secured
+by a hitch under the left arm&mdash;indicated that her
+outdoor life at least had been spent somewhere in the
+Insulinde Archipelago. Her very considerable English
+vocabulary, however, and especially her fluency in
+&quot;pidgin,&quot; could hardly have been acquired save through
+some years of residence in the Straits Settlements or the
+Federated Malay States. I was inclined to favour Singapore,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page31" id="page31"></a>[pg&nbsp;31]</span>
+especially as she had once let slip something about
+a fling at <i>fan-tan</i> at Johore. But even had she been
+born in that amazing island melting pot, her unmistakably
+Hindu cast of features and mould of figure were
+hardly accounted for. The Madrassi Tamils of the
+Straits were coolies, and Rona radiated <i>caste</i> from her
+slender pink-tipped toes to her crown of indigo-black
+hair coils.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In my own mind I harboured the theory that the girl
+was a &quot;by-product&quot; of the harem of one of the innumerable
+petty Sultanates of Malaysia, among which
+I knew were to be found girls of all the tribes and races
+of the Moslem world. In no other way could I account
+for the flaming spirit and the physical perfection of
+her. Not even descent from that strange Hindu remnant
+of the lovely island of Lombok, just east of Java
+(a theory which I had also turned over in my mind),
+quite satisfied on both these scores. As to what sort
+of a centrifugal impulse might have operated to spin
+her forth to the clutches of the currents of the outside
+world, I had not speculated very deeply. But&mdash;well, I
+knew something of the strange currencies in which
+Malaysian potentates paid their debts to Singapore rug
+and jewel merchants!</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In spite of the increasing warmth of Bell&#39;s friendship
+for me, my way to Rona&#39;s confidence proved far
+from easy sledding. This was partly because I had
+got in bad at the outset by starting to sketch that
+capricious lady at her reef-side bath in the face of her
+very outspoken disapproval of anything so unseemly,
+and partly because she was slow in making up her
+mind that I did not necessarily classify with the predatory
+males against whom her whole life had unquestionably
+been an unrelieved defence. Obsessed by the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page32" id="page32"></a>[pg&nbsp;32]</span>
+desire to paint her, I had not improved my standing
+with the girl by asking Bell (after she had refused me
+pointblank) to intercede to get her to sit for me. Indeed,
+that <i>faux pas</i> on my part seemed to have put
+an end for good to any chance I might have had of getting
+her to pose. Rona was openly indignant that I
+should have presumed to regard her own decision as
+other than final in the matter, while Bell, though perfectly
+good-natured about it, was no less decided in his
+disapproval.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;No, sah, I&#39;m not fo&#39; it in the least, ol&#39; man,&quot; he
+drawled decisively. &quot;Lil&#39; Rona&#39;s &#39;bout the neahest
+thing to a true, lovin&#39; an&#39; lawful wife I evah had, awh
+evah will have, fo&#39; that mattah. So you must see that
+it doan quite jibe with mah sense o&#39; what is right an&#39;
+propah unda the ci&#39;cumstances fo&#39; me to aid an&#39; abet
+a proceduah that might culminate in huh appeahin&#39; on
+the wall o&#39; somun&#39;s bathroom as a spo&#39;tin nymph awh
+a wallowin&#39; mumaid. Nothin&#39; doin&#39;, ol&#39; man; not with
+mah blessin&#39;.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That ended it, of course. From then on I had to
+content myself with the hopeless &quot;sketches from
+memory,&quot; in not the best of which was I able to catch
+more than a suggestion of what I sought. I could not
+have failed more utterly had I set myself to do a &quot;character
+portrait&quot; of the &quot;Green Lady&quot; herself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But on the personal side it was not long before I began
+to make an appreciable gain of ground with Rona. First
+she ceased avoiding me when I dropped in for a mid-afternoon
+yarn with Bell; then she began to assume a
+sort of &quot;benevolent tolerance&quot; by coming and sitting
+on the mat as we talked; finally she started taking an
+active interest in the conversation, coming out of her
+Buddha-like trances every now and then to cut in with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page33" id="page33"></a>[pg&nbsp;33]</span>
+some trenchant comment in fluent <i>bêche-de-mer</i> jargon,
+or perhaps a shrewd question phrased in carefully chosen
+and enunciated English.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At last, one memorable afternoon, she came (quite on
+her own initiative, he assured me) with Bell to call at
+the little thatch-roofed, woven-walled hut I was calling
+home at the time, wearing in honour of the occasion her
+most treasured possession, the &quot;peacock&quot; shawl. It was
+this astonishingly fine piece of Cantonese embroidery
+which Bell had mentioned as having made up, with the
+little Malay <i>kris</i>, the sum total of the dower Rona had
+brought him. It was the first time I had had a chance
+to examine it at close quarters and I saw at a glance
+that, however it had come into her possession, it had
+once been a priceless thing, a real work of art, a treasure
+fit for the <i>trousseau</i> of a princess.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The body of the shawl was amber-coloured silk of so
+close a weave that it would have shed water as it stopped
+light. A rubber blanket would not have thrown a
+blacker shadow when held against the sun. Yet so sheer
+and fine was the fabric that a twist of it streamed from
+one hand to the other as brandy pours out of a flask.
+The peacock itself, done in a thousand tints and shades
+of delicate floss, was all of life-size in body and something
+more than that in tail. Stitching and matching,
+stitching and matching&mdash;you could almost <i>see</i> the artist
+growing old before your eyes as you thought of the years
+he must have bent above his glacially-growing masterpiece.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">With this rainbow-bright rectangle of shimmering
+silks worn folded over the shoulders in the ordinary
+way the peacock must have been considerably telescoped
+and distorted. It was doubtless for this reason that Rona
+always wore it Malay-fashion, as the Javanese women
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page34" id="page34"></a>[pg&nbsp;34]</span>
+wear their <i>sarongs</i>. This displayed the jewel-gay bird in
+all his pride, the bright breast swelling over Rona&#39;s own
+and the coruscant cascade of tail (you could almost hear
+the rustle of it) falling about her limbs like the feather
+mantle of an early Hawaiian queen.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I have said that this shawl <i>had been</i> a priceless thing.
+As a matter of fact it still was such. So lovingly had it
+been cared for, not only by Rona but by the many owners
+it may well have had before her (for Canton had done
+no such work as this for half a century at least), that
+not a corner was frayed, not a one of its countless thousands
+of stitches started. In texture it was scarcely less
+perfect than the day it was finished. The only thing
+wrong with it was that the colours were a good deal
+dulled, not by age (for the old Cantonese dyes are as
+deathless of hue as ancient Ph&oelig;nician glass), but by
+grease. This had happened, I suspected, largely during
+Rona&#39;s stewardship, for the <i>tiare</i>-scented coco oil she
+used so freely as a hair-perfume often found its way to
+her arms and shoulders&mdash;and so to the shawl. All the
+latter needed to restore it to its pristine freshness and
+refulgency was a good &quot;dry-cleaning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Even Rona does not dream of the brilliance of colour
+under that grease,&quot; I said to myself. &quot;Oh, for a can
+of naphtha!&quot; Then the fact that my benzine would do
+the same trick flashed into my mind. I was all but out
+of it, I reflected, with replenishment uncertain; but I
+could at least contrive to spare enough to make a start
+with. Pouring a teacupful of the pungent solvent out of
+the scant pint I found still on hand, I saturated a clean
+rag with it and, without a word of explanation to the
+girl, walked up to her and started washing the bird&#39;s
+face and hackle. For an instant she stiffened angrily,
+evidently under the impression that my solicitude for the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page35" id="page35"></a>[pg&nbsp;35]</span>
+embroidery was only a thinly veiled excuse for chucking
+her under the chin. (Indeed, she confessed to me later
+that &quot;gentlemen&quot; could always be counted on to employ
+such indirect methods of approach, and that she found
+them rather more difficult to combat than the straight
+cave-man stuff of the less sophisticated beach-comber).
+But as the first glad flash of brightening colour caught
+the corner of a suspiciously-lowered eye, the innocence&mdash;even
+the laudability&mdash;of my purpose shot home to her
+quick mind. With a twirl of thumbs and a twist of
+shoulders, she came out of the shawl as a golden moth
+spurns its cocoon, and, leaving it in my hand, darted
+over to a peg and purloined an old smoking-jacket to
+take its place.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Bath heem good, Whitnee,&quot; she chirruped, giving
+her slipping <i>sulu</i> a hitch with one hand as she thrust
+the other into an arm of the jacket. &quot;Makee heem first-chop
+clean. He too much dirtee long time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That she lapsed thus into &quot;pidgin&quot; was a sure sign of
+the girl&#39;s ecstatic excitement. Usually her English&mdash;especially
+when she had time to ponder and polish it in
+advance, as when she put questions&mdash;was much better
+than that.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Sopping gently to avoid pulling the delicate stitches,
+I managed to &quot;bath heem good&quot; from his saucy crest,
+down over the royal purple hackle, and well out upon
+his comparatively sober-coloured breast before my benzine
+came to an end. A slightly more vigorous dabbing
+beyond the embroidery line &quot;alchemized&quot; a patch of
+clouded amber to a halo of lucent gold, against which
+the bird&#39;s haughtily-held head stood out like the profile
+of a martyred saint on an old stained-glass window.
+Thus far would the precious contents of that teacup go,
+and no farther.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page36" id="page36"></a>[pg&nbsp;36]</span>
+Rona was in raptures. What though there was a
+blotchy high- (or rather low-) water mark where the dabbing
+had ceased near the base of the erupting splash of
+tail-feathers, what though the magic liquid had come off
+second best in its bout with an indurated gob of egg-yolk
+drooling across one wing, what though the worst of our
+Augean labours&mdash;the cleansing of the mighty green tail&mdash;had
+yet to be tackled&mdash;just look at the glory already
+wrought!</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Crooning with pleasure, the girl stroked and petted
+the renovated iridescence of the lordly neck&mdash;until I
+called her attention to the fact that the still unevaporated
+benzine was dissolving her finger-nail stain. It was an
+ill-advised remark on my part, for it turned her attention
+to the still unreclaimed tail and set her begging for
+&quot;just nuff fo&#39; one-piecee featha, Whitnee; he need it
+vehry ba-ad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">She had her way, of course, and would have finished
+my benzine then and there had not Bell come to my
+rescue. Laughing and muttering something about
+&quot;thustiness&quot; (not drinking whisky myself, I had none
+in stock), he took Rona by the arm and started off on
+the homeward path. Strutting and preening she went,
+the very reincarnation of the royal bird upon her bosom,
+the very living, breathing spirit of &quot;peacock-iness.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">She might just as well have finished the job&mdash;or rather
+the benzine&mdash;at once, though, for she got it all in the
+end. Every day or two&mdash;sometimes with Bell, sometimes
+alone&mdash;she began paying calls. Always she was in
+gala dress and always, after more or less &quot;finessive&quot;
+preliminaries, she made the same plea.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Just one mo&#39; featha, Whitnee,&quot; she would coo ingratiatingly,
+putting a long-nailed finger-tip on the
+&quot;eye&quot; of the particular quill next in line for renovation.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page37" id="page37"></a>[pg&nbsp;37]</span>
+&quot;Ple-ese, Whitnee.... &#39;Peakie&#39; has been one
+veh-ry good fella bird too-dayee. Pu-retty ple&#39;ese,
+Whitnee.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Of course that always got me, and incidentally the
+benzine&mdash;as long as it lasted. I had remarked to Bell
+once or twice how his soft Southern drawl was beginning
+to creep into Rona&#39;s English, and how fetching a
+combination it made with her &quot;pidgin-<i>bêche-de-mer</i>&quot;
+blend. Getting wind of this, the sly minx played the
+card to the limit. That &quot;one mo&#39; fetha, Whitnee,&quot; had
+me fated, and she knew it. I was completely out of
+benzine for three weeks, and at a time when I was in
+especial need of it in connection with my experiments in
+colour-mixing; but Rona&#39;s friendship was cheap at the
+price. When I finally got hold of a five-gallon can of
+naphtha from Suva (sent up to Bougainville by Burns,
+Phillip packet, where one of Jackson&#39;s cutters picked it
+up), the dry-cleaning the two of us gave old &quot;Peakie&quot;
+was the best fun I&#39;d had since I used to scrub my Newfoundland
+pup as a kid.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page38" id="page38"></a>[pg&nbsp;38]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IV<br />
+<small>&quot;SLANT&quot; ALLEN RETIRES AGAIN</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Although</span> &quot;Slant&quot; Allen had &quot;retired&quot; to Kai
+on three or four occasions previous to my arrival,
+his latest sojourn&mdash;the one which ended with his
+enforced departure on the <i>Cora Andrews</i>&mdash;began about
+a month after I took up my residence there. Two questions
+which Jackson asked of the man who told him
+&quot;Slant&quot; had landed on the beach the night before have
+always struck me as especially illuminative. One was:
+&quot;Did &#39;e fetch a &#39;awse?&quot; and the other&mdash;even more
+laconic&mdash;was: &quot;Gin, Kanak, Jap or Chinee this
+croose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">And equally illuminative was his comment when told
+that Allen had come across in a catamaran, bringing
+neither girl nor horse. &quot;Then &#39;e musta sloped in a &#39;ell
+uv a rush,&quot; said the old trader with finality.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Kai was frankly disappointed that &quot;Slant&quot; had come
+without his &quot;stable,&quot; for the &quot;beach race meets&quot; which
+had made his name a byword throughout the Islands
+were always productive (it was universally agreed) of
+no end of sport and excitement. Allen, it was claimed,
+had transported ponies about the South Seas by every
+known craft that plied their waters, from a steam packet
+to a Papuan head-hunting canoe. Once, in Fiji, he had
+even swum a horse across the flooded Rewa in order to
+get it to Suva in time to run for the &quot;Roku&#39;s Cup.&quot;
+Of course he won out. &quot;Slant&quot; always did that&mdash;by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page39" id="page39"></a>[pg&nbsp;39]</span>
+hook or by crook&mdash;whether with a horse or a woman.
+Thus Kai, in discussing Allen&#39;s advent.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was characteristic of that hard-hit bunch of &quot;gentlemen
+and sportsmen&quot; (a phrase often on the lips of
+the post-prandial speakers at their &quot;race-banquets&quot;)
+that they should hasten to tell me that Allen had once
+owned a Melbourne Cup winner&mdash;&quot;came jolly near riding
+the gelding himself, too&quot;&mdash;while the fact that he
+had killed more of his fellow-creatures than any man of
+twice his age in the South Seas was only a matter of
+casual mention. You had to credit the frank minded
+and mouthed rascals for running true to form in that
+touch of naïveté, though. To them the Melbourne Cup
+was the greatest thing in the world beyond any possible
+comparison: a human life was just about the least. But
+they were quite as careless about their own lives as of
+those of others, and that alone always raised them in my
+eyes far above the pettiness of lesser if more conventionally
+moral men.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Although there was not a horse on the island at the
+time of Allen&#39;s arrival, within a week he had wangled
+it somehow to have a bunch of Solomon ponies brought
+over from Malaite, and at the end of a fortnight had
+pulled off the first Kai &quot;Grand National.&quot; &quot;Slant&quot;
+called it that, he said, because, like the great Liverpool
+classic from which he borrowed the name, it was to be a
+steeplechase. The half-wild little beasts were brought
+over on the deck of a trading schooner, travelling in such
+restricted quarters in the waist that they had to be
+thrown and held down to let the foreboom go over every
+time she was put about.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A bit stiff in the knees but uncurbed of spirit, the
+vicious quartette clambered out on the beach, shook off
+the water soaked up during their swim from the schooner,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page40" id="page40"></a>[pg&nbsp;40]</span>
+laid back their ears and stood ready to fight all-comers
+with tooth and hoof. As a consequence, naturally, the
+preliminaries of the &quot;Grand National&quot; were more in
+the character of broncho-busting contests than speed
+trials, and it was in one of these that the mighty Bell
+had won the plaudits and the respect of the &quot;beach&quot;
+by breaking the spirit of a wild-eyed lump of a cayuse
+which had just managed to give the momentarily overconfident
+&quot;Slant&quot; a nasty spill.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The &quot;Grand National&quot; was run round the curve of
+the beach, with two &quot;water-jumps,&quot; the &quot;stonewall&quot; of
+the quay, and three hurdles in the form of old dugout
+canoes to be negotiated. Bell declined to accept a mount,
+and, in any event, his weight would have told prohibitively
+against him in competition with any one of at
+least a dozen lighter men, all of whom had had more
+or less actual racing experience.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen was the only one to go the full route at the first
+running of the &quot;National,&quot; all three of his rivals falling
+out at the water-jumps. When one of the defeated
+riders limped in and started to attribute &quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; win
+to the fact that he had picked the best-broken if not the
+speediest mount, that imperturbable sportsman cheerfully
+agreed to ride the race over mounted on any one of
+the ponies the judges cared to designate. Again he had
+a walkaway. It was all a matter of sheer horse-mastership;
+the speed of the beast had little to do with it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Finally, just to prove that the running was all on the
+square, &quot;Slant&quot; rode the race on each of the two remaining
+ponies, one of which had strained a tendon
+and rasped most of the hide off one side of him in trying
+to jump <i>through</i> the coral blocks of the quay instead of
+over them. We gave the laughing centaur a great ovation
+when he brought even the cripple&mdash;dripping blood
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page41" id="page41"></a>[pg&nbsp;41]</span>
+and sweat it was, but still responsive to the magic of the
+hand that imposed its will at the pressure of a bridle
+rein&mdash;under the wire a half-breach-length winner.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">And still more wildly we cheered him when &quot;Quill&quot;
+Partington&mdash;a broken-down and broken-out (from jail,
+I mean) newspaper writer, late of Melbourne and formerly
+of Calcutta and London&mdash;chivvied up an ancient
+tortoise that Jackson used to keep around his shop as a
+pet, and, mounting &quot;Slant&quot; on the ridge of its shell,
+offered to back the pair at catch-weights against anything
+on the island. &quot;Quill,&quot; a most engaging character,
+was the poet and minstrel of Kai. He did not,
+however, figure in the <i>Cora Andrews</i> affair, save that he
+later wrote some rather spirited verses in celebration of
+it, or rather of what little he knew of it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">If the feeling in Kai had been one of disappointment
+when it was first reported Allen had landed without a
+horse, that awakened by the still more astonishing intelligence
+that he did not have a girl with him was somewhat
+different&mdash;rather more akin to apprehension, it
+seemed to me. &quot;Slant&quot; was no more of a laggard on
+the love-path than the race-track, and the gay gossip of
+his amazing <i>amours</i> was sipped with the tea of effete
+Apia and Papeete with scarcely less gusto than when it
+sauced the salt-horse of the pearling fleets of Port Darwin
+and Thursday Island. The lightning of his love
+was likely to strike anywhere, you were told, sometimes
+in the most unexpected places. There was that vixen of
+a <i>gin</i>&mdash;a straight Australian aboriginal black&mdash;whom he
+had risked his life for in cutting across a corner of the
+&quot;Never-Never&quot; when he ran away with her, only to
+have her turn and knife him later in Deli out of jealousy
+of a half-caste Portugee Timorese who had caught his
+fickle fancy. And&mdash;to take the other extreme&mdash;there
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page42" id="page42"></a>[pg&nbsp;42]</span>
+was that little golden-haired doll of a niece of the Governor
+of Fiji, who fell heels over head in love with
+&quot;Slant&quot; after seeing him play polo in Suva, and who,
+when they packed her off for home to break up the disgraceful
+affair, made what was described as a really sincere
+attempt to go over the rail of the Auckland-bound
+Union packet. Then there was &quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; affair with
+that notorious pearl-pirate &quot;Squid&quot; Saunders&#39; girl&mdash;the
+one the missionaries adopted and tried to reclaim,
+and who promised for a while to be such a credit to their
+teaching&mdash;with its ghastly sequel. And so it went.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was said that &quot;Slant&quot; boasted of having a son
+(he never kept track of girls, he said) and a saddle in
+every group west of the &quot;hundred and eightieth.&quot; I
+daresay this was true, though those who put it <i>island</i>
+instead of group doubtless exaggerated. I had landed at
+several islands myself where I had been unable to borrow
+a saddle.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Most of the little unpleasantnesses that disturbed the
+<i>dolce far niente</i> atmosphere of Kai had their roots in
+the fact that the male population of the island was always
+a good jump ahead of the female, that there were
+not, in short, enough girls to go round. Under these conditions
+the advent of so notorious a &quot;feminist&quot; as Allen
+could not but be provocative of a certain anxiety, especially
+on the part of those who were (to use Jackson&#39;s
+terse if inelegant expression) &quot;&#39;arborin&#39; &#39;igh-class &#39;ens.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Don&#39;t you coves make no mistake,&quot; Jackson was
+quoted as saying; &quot;&#39;Slant&#39; &#39;ll be tykin&#39; a myte stryght
+aw&#39;y. Only question is &#39;oo&#39;s myte &#39;e&#39;s goin&#39; to tyke. If
+it was any bloke but that squar&#39;-jawed Yank w&#39;at &#39;ad
+&#39;is grapplin&#39; &#39;ooks slung into the plumage uv that perky
+peacock pullet, I&#39;d &#39;ave no doubt w&#39;at bird &#39;Slant&#39; ud
+be baggin&#39; an&#39; draggin&#39; &#39;ome to broil. But&mdash;layin&#39; low
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page43" id="page43"></a>[pg&nbsp;43]</span>
+as &#39;e is fer a bit&mdash;I&#39;m thinkin&#39; it ain&#39;t <i>that</i> presarve
+&#39;e&#39;ll be gunnin&#39; in just yet aw&#39;ile.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Stryght dope&quot; again from old &quot;Jack.&quot; Allen had
+his own reasons for not wishing his presence in Kai to be
+called too forcibly to the attention of the authorities in
+the British Solomons, where his latest escapade (something
+to do with the forcible recruiting of blacks) came
+pretty near the line where they were likely to ask for
+a gunboat from the Sydney station to aid in bringing
+him to book. Allen was by no means inadept of his
+fellow men, and he must have known that a showdown
+with a man of Bell&#39;s stamp&mdash;even though he had the
+best of it and copped the most desirable thing he ever
+set eyes on for his very own&mdash;could hardly fail to prove
+a clash that men would like to talk about, the inspiration
+of a tale that would shudder itself from Yap to
+Tasmania in delirious beach-comber jargon, setting
+tongues wagging about him at a time when publicity was
+quite the last thing that he wanted.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Pipped as he was by the pullet&#39;s pulchritude (his own
+expression&mdash;he admitted as much to Jackson offhand)
+the cool-headed if hot-blooded Allen evidently decided
+to ride a waiting race for at least the first half or three-quarters,
+and so have something to draw on for the
+straightaway. &quot;Easy starter but a hell of a finisher,&quot;
+was the popular appraisal of &quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; way of winning
+with a horse, and it was but natural that he should pin
+his faith to similar tactics where a woman was in the
+running. There&#39;s a lot in common between the two,
+and it is rarely indeed that a man who has a way with
+the one comes a cropper with the other.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It has occurred to me, too, that a very wholesome respect
+for Bell as a man may have had a good deal to
+do with Allen&#39;s failure to force the running at the start
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page44" id="page44"></a>[pg&nbsp;44]</span>
+in the matter of Rona. The steel of his own hard purposefulness
+could not have but struck sparks on the
+flint beneath the American&#39;s mask of suave reserve at
+their first meeting, and the Australian was far too intelligent
+not to sense that in Bell&#39;s Jovian spirit there was
+a force more compelling than anything in his own.
+Moreover, at riding, fighting and shooting&mdash;all that carried
+much weight when they judged a man in the
+Islands&mdash;Allen must have known that if the balance
+inclined either way, it was in the American&#39;s favour.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It may well have been the sheer rugged, manly forcefulness
+of Bell that gave Allen pause, at least in those
+early weeks before the Australian&#39;s infatuation for the
+girl became an obsession in which his reason had no part.
+For years he had been taking life and property out of
+downright contempt for his victims. &quot;I&#39;m the better
+man, and therefore the more deserving,&quot; was sufficient
+excuse in his own mind for his most high-handed outrages.
+But in Bell&mdash;for almost the first time perhaps&mdash;he
+had met a man who had an &quot;edge&quot; on him&mdash;even his
+soaring ego could not prevent his recognizing that. This
+must have been plain to him even when he measured
+the Yankee with the yardstick of his own primitive code.
+Yes, I really think that Allen, in his innermost mind,
+rated Bell as a man who, like himself, had a &quot;right&quot; to
+the best of everything. I am even convinced that, for
+a while at least, he even tried to respect Bell&#39;s right to
+Rona.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But do not let me leave the impression that there was
+one iota of physical fear of Bell in this attitude of
+Allen&#39;s. From what I had seen, and was to see, of the
+cool-eyed Antipodean that was unthinkable, even though
+he knew that the powerful ex-athlete could come pretty
+near to staving in his ribs with a single punch, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page45" id="page45"></a>[pg&nbsp;45]</span>
+though he may have suspected that the Yankee was the
+deadlier man on the draw. I honestly believe that
+&quot;Slant&quot; Allen had no fear in his heart of anyone or
+anything under heaven. At that time, I mean; what
+came to him later is another matter.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Slant&quot; ran true to Jackson&#39;s &quot;dope sheet&quot; in the
+matter of &quot;tykin&#39; a myte,&quot; though, but it was done
+quite decently and in order&mdash;that is, as such things go
+in the Islands. He put up with &quot;Quill&quot; Partington (an
+old pal) for a fortnight, and then, when &quot;Quill&#39;s&quot; lyric
+spirit led him to run over to Malaite in search of a queer
+native banjo that someone had told him the bush niggers
+of the interior of that island made, strings and all, from
+the wild boar, &quot;Slant&quot; simply stayed on to &quot;look after
+the pigs and chickens&quot; (as he told them at Jackson&#39;s)
+and, incidentally, Mary Regan. Mary came from Norfolk
+Island, and claimed lineal descent from the mutineers
+of the &quot;Bounty.&quot; Certainly she looked the part&mdash;of
+a descendant of mutineers, I mean. She had specialized
+in unhappy love affairs, and showed it. She
+had a thin, bony, angular frame, a voice like the wail of
+a cracked fog-horn, and a temper &quot;calid enough for
+cooking purposes,&quot; as &quot;Quill&quot; described it. &quot;Quill,&quot;
+who had developed a taste for curries and hot seasonings
+while living in India, claimed that the reason he had put
+up with Mary for so long was because of the saving she
+enabled him to effect in <i>paprika</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">How &quot;Slant&quot;&mdash;straight meat-eating and unpampered
+of palate as he was&mdash;hit it off with the mercurial Mary
+no one seemed to know. At any rate, I feel sure that he
+found her &quot;condimental&quot; disposition useful as a counter-irritant
+against the rising fever of his passion for Rona,
+something which, though he kept it under astonishingly
+good outward control, had been burning with increasing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page46" id="page46"></a>[pg&nbsp;46]</span>
+heat from the very first time he saw her. He confessed
+that to me later. Curbed passion, like wounded pride,
+if it cannot find outward expression, bites inward.
+With all his despicable record well in mind, I still cannot
+help thinking with a certain admiration of the game
+bluff the rascal put up during those six or eight weeks
+that the enchantment of Rona worked within him, of
+the gay, devil-may-care smile that so successfully masked
+the writhings of his racked spirit. First and last, there
+was something about the fellow&mdash;I think it must have
+been his flaming courage&mdash;that attracted me strongly in
+spite of all that I knew, and all that I came to hold,
+against him.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Since Kai held no regular intercourse with any of
+the surrounding islands, the news that the plague&mdash;a
+pernicious form of bubonic&mdash;had broken out and was
+making terrible ravages among both the bush and saltwater
+niggers of the Solomons was received with no
+especial interest on the beach, save perhaps by those who
+were wont now and then to take a flyer in &quot;black ivory.&quot;
+The labour-recruiting trade&mdash;itself almost the only
+medium through which the pest had been spread&mdash;was
+hard hit of course; indeed, had there been anything like
+adequate control of the pernicious traffic at this time, it
+would have been suspended entirely until all of the
+islands from which blacks were being taken, or to which
+they were being returned, were able to present something
+approximating clean bills of health.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Since this was not done, however, the only check on
+the movement of blacks&mdash;infected or otherwise&mdash;was the
+possible reluctance of the masters of ships engaged in
+the trade to take the risk of carrying them. And since
+the average black-birding skipper lived as a matter of
+course with a gun in one hand, his life in the other, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page47" id="page47"></a>[pg&nbsp;47]</span>
+the devil&#39;s tow-line between his teeth, it was hardly to
+be expected that a little thing like the spectre of the
+&quot;Black Death&quot; looming up on the windward horizon
+was going to make him reef much canvas. The &quot;Black
+Death&quot; in another form would ambush him sooner or
+later anyhow. With niggers waiting to settle accounts
+with him in every bay it was only a matter of time at
+the best. Why worry about a few cases of a disease that
+might not kill him even if he did get it? Heave in and
+get under way! That was about the way the black-birder
+looked at it, and he went right on scattering infected
+niggers around the South Seas like a cook stirring
+raisins into a pudding.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But in the secluded and peaceful haven of Kai lagoon
+they reckoned that they had little to fear from the
+epidemic whatever happened elsewhere. Let the plague
+and the heathen rage for all they cared. They were their
+own quarantine officers, and, until the &quot;Black Death&quot;
+ceased to stalk in the neighbouring islands, &quot;No
+Visitors&quot; was the order of the day. All very simple and
+efficient&mdash;in theory. Covered every possible contingency&mdash;just
+about.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had spent several colourful days once&mdash;getting about
+from island to island in the New Hebrides&mdash;with red-haired
+old Mike Grogan on the <i>Cora Andrews</i>, and had
+heard from that hard-fisted giant&#39;s own lips something
+of the grim balances checked against his life in practically
+every black-birding island of Melanesia. A black&#39;s
+home bay holds a labour-recruiting skipper responsible
+for the man&#39;s safe return at the end of his contract time,
+and if he does not come back they figure that the only
+fair way to even up the score is by killing the captain
+of the ship which took him away. Grogan calculated
+that he would have to be killed something like one hundred
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page48" id="page48"></a>[pg&nbsp;48]</span>
+and forty times to make a clean sheet of all the
+accounts thus reckoned against him. He took a sort of
+grim pleasure in running over the items of the various
+tallies, but always ended with: &quot;B&#39;gorra, the devils&#39;ll
+be gittin&#39; me yit!&quot; He was convinced that it would be
+a &quot;cutting-out&quot; party that would do for him in the end,
+and I have no doubt that he fought over in his mind
+that final bloody showdown every night he stood the
+&quot;graveyard&quot; watch alone. A sudden volley from the
+bush, his whaleboat caught in a swarming rush of blacks,
+his crew disabled or deserting, and himself alone battling
+it out single-handed with the niggers at the last.... It
+was something like that he expected for a grand finale,
+and all the &quot;fighting Irish&quot; in him yearned for it as a
+sunflower turns to the setting sun.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;An&#39; it ain&#39;t as if I won&#39;t be givin&#39; the spalpeens a
+run for their money, me bhoy,&quot; he had cried one afternoon,
+clapping me on the shoulder where I swayed with
+him to the plungings of the <i>Cora</i> in a nasty cross-swell.
+&quot;An&#39;, b&#39;gorra, it&#39;s a way to die after a man&#39;s own heart&mdash;shootin&#39;
+an&#39; clubbin&#39; into a mob o&#39; niggers out under
+God&#39;s own sky!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Full as my mind was of other things on that accursed
+day of which I am about to write, I could not
+help but think of these words when they told me at
+Jackson&#39;s that old Mike&#39;s fighting spirit had passed on
+a windless midnight, and while Mike himself was jack-knifed
+over the <i>Cora&#39;s</i> wheel, spitting blood and curses,
+and imploring the devil to quit tying knots in his tortured
+guts with a red-hot pitchfork.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">What little we heard of how things came to go wrong
+with the <i>Cora</i> in the first place fell from the blackening
+lips of her &quot;Agent&quot; (as the recruiter is called), who
+managed to reach the beach of Kai in a whaleboat, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page49" id="page49"></a>[pg&nbsp;49]</span>
+who did not go into a delirium until a half-hour before
+he died that evening. She was packed to the hatches with
+&quot;return&quot; boys from Samoa. Although the plague had
+been claiming a very heavy toll among the Melanesian
+blacks of the coco plantations of Upolou, Grogan decided
+to take a chance at making the Solomons with a
+load which, on account of the risk, was offered him at
+double rates. They would have made it all right, the
+Agent thought, had not the southerly gale which blew
+them a long way out of their course been followed by
+many days of calms and alternating winds. Grogan&#39;s
+softness in trying to doctor the first case of plague&mdash;instead
+of following the customary practice, cruel but
+effective, of shooting the infected black (doomed anyhow)
+and throwing the body to the sharks&mdash;was probably
+responsible for the ghastly sequel. The blacks fell
+sick by dozens, until at last the Skipper&mdash;doubtless already
+in the first throes of the disease himself&mdash;ordered
+every living man except the surviving members of the
+crew driven below and battened under hatch. Grogan
+died that night and the mate the following morning.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The only white man remaining was the Agent, and he,
+obsessed with a life-long horror of being buried at sea,
+steered the best course he could for the nearest island.
+The <i>Cora</i>, luckily heading into the treacherous reef-beset
+passage at the turn of the tide, dropped her hook in Kai
+lagoon in the first flush of the dawning of the next day.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page50" id="page50"></a>[pg&nbsp;50]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER V<br />
+<small>A SHIP OF DEATH</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">With</span> a good many days of my life to which
+I cannot look back without a blush of shame,
+I write deliberately when I say that the
+one ushered in by the raucous grind of the <i>Cora
+Andrews&#39;</i> chain running through its hawse-pipe as
+she let go anchor a couple of cables&#39; lengths off Kai
+beach, stands alone in the horror and the painfulness
+of its memories. It is characteristic of all but the most
+degraded of beach-combers&mdash;doubtless their general contempt
+of life has much to do with it&mdash;that &quot;once in a
+while&quot; they &quot;can finish in style&quot;; that, on a showdown,
+they are usually there with the goods. I had
+always felt sure that, in a pinch, I could force myself
+to come through in the same way&mdash;the thought had
+gilded many a slough of despond for me. Well, this day,
+I had my chance and funked it&mdash;funked it clean, as a
+yellow dog slinks from a fight with its tail between its
+legs, as an underbred hunter refuses a jump. Oh yes,
+I had an excuse. &quot;Seeing green&quot; is next thing to &quot;seeing
+yellow.&quot; Almost anyone knows that. But I had
+thought that there was enough red blood left in me to
+make it possible for me to take the bit in my teeth and
+finish like a thoroughbred at the last. But there was
+not. That was the thought which had made the ghastly
+tragedy even more tragical to me, which made a mockery
+of the triumph which I might otherwise have felt when,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page51" id="page51"></a>[pg&nbsp;51]</span>
+first Australia and then Europe, acclaimed me as the
+greatest marine painter of the decade.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">For several days previous to the coming of the <i>Cora
+Andrews</i> I had been slipping up pretty badly on my
+&quot;absinthe reform&quot; program. It was largely the fault, I
+think, of a positively infernal spell of weather. The
+ozone-laden trade winds, falling light after a spell of low
+barometer, had finally failed altogether. Kai was lapped
+in sluggish moisture-saturated airs that clung like a wet
+blanket. The Gargantuan popcorn-like piles of the trade
+clouds were replaced by strata of miasmic mists which
+awakened all the latent fevers in a man&#39;s body and
+mind. The sea, slatily slick of surface, heaved in oily,
+indolent smoothness, sliding over the reef without sound
+or foam. The brooding, ominous sullenness was all-pervading,
+oppressive with sinister suggestion.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Everyone on the island was drinking heavily, and
+mostly alone. No tipsy choruses boomed out from under
+the sounding-board of Jackson&#39;s sheet-iron roof. Even
+&quot;Slant&quot; Allen failed to appear for his wild end-of-the-afternoon
+dashes up and down the beach. Rona dropped
+in languidly one afternoon to say that Bell was tilting
+the bottle more frequently than she had ever known him
+to do before, and that for three days he had missed his
+early morning plunge from the reef.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Too much walkee with Jo&#39;nnee Walkah, Whitnee,&quot;
+she punned in a feeble flicker of pleasantry. &quot;I veh-ry
+much worree along Bel-la.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">She needn&#39;t have worried, though. <i>He</i>, at least, had
+the stuff in him for a proper finish.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was only to be expected that I should seek solace
+in a time like this by snuggling closer than ever into the
+enfolding arms of the &quot;Green Lady.&quot; That fickle jade
+was at her best&mdash;and her worst. Never had she winged
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page52" id="page52"></a>[pg&nbsp;52]</span>
+me to loftier pinnacles of sensuous delight; never had
+she dropped me to profounder depths of horror and
+despond. The night before the <i>Cora</i> came marked a new
+&quot;high&quot;; also a new &quot;low.&quot; I dropped like a plummet
+straight from a pea-green grotto full of lilies of the
+valley, maiden&#39;s hair ferns and ambrosia-breathed houri
+to the fire-scorched cliffs ringing the mouth of the Bottomless
+Pit. I knew that Pit of old. Most of the early
+hours of my mornings for the last five years had been
+spent in trying to keep from being pushed into it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But this time, though, it looked as if they were going
+to get away with it. Failing to break my grip (I always
+managed to hang on somehow), they had tried new
+tactics. They were pushing in the side of the Pit itself
+so as to carry me with it. I felt the relentless creeping
+of the ledge on which I struggled to maintain precarious
+footing. If I could only push back into the rock ...
+through it ... out to the air! Nothing could stand
+against the mighty heave I gave with my shoulders.
+The cliff parted with a great rip-roar of rending, and I
+reeled back, back, straight through&mdash;the pandanus siding
+of my hut. An instant before a nigger had knocked off
+the shackle of the <i>Cora&#39;s</i> anchor chain. The unchecked
+run of forty-odd fathoms of rusty iron links through
+a hawse-pipe is very like in sound to the rending of a
+rocky cliff&mdash;that is, to a man in an absinthe nightmare.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That violent awakening did not bring me straight back
+to normal by any means. You never come out of the
+&quot;green horrors&quot; that way, unless, of course, you fall into
+water, or set fire to the house, or do something else that
+calls for instant action. You usually come out by gradual
+stages, each successive one marked by a shade more
+of the earth-earthy than the last.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In this instance my fall only changed the spirit of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page53" id="page53"></a>[pg&nbsp;53]</span>
+my nightmare. I was by no means out of the woods,
+either. I had backed away from the Mouth of the Pit
+all right, but what brought that Ship of Death&mdash;black
+and sinister she was against the bloody redness of the
+infernal sunrise&mdash;unless it was to take me there again?
+I <i>knew</i> that it was a real ship. I <i>knew</i> those black
+things festooned along its rails were real dead men. I
+<i>knew</i> that the horrible reek which presently came pouring
+in over the oily water to penetrate my contracted
+nostrils was the real smell of rotting flesh. I <i>knew</i> that
+I was looking out at Kai lagoon, and from the door of
+my own hut. I <i>knew</i> these things, just as I <i>knew</i> it was
+real blood I saw and tasted when I bit my finger to prove
+that I knew them.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But it was still as in a dream that I became aware of
+an erratically rowed whaleboat pulling away from the
+Death Ship and making for the beach. It was with an
+agreeable sense of relief that I noted that it was apparently
+heading for the quay rather than in my direction.
+Drawing near, it sheered away from the weed-slippery
+landing and went full-tilt for the beach. A man&mdash;a big
+man, bare of legs and of chest, wearing only a red <i>sulu</i>&mdash;ran
+down to meet it. It seemed no more than a perfectly
+natural development of the ghastly pantomime
+that the big man should raise a revolver and shoot one
+of the black rowers when the latter jumped over the
+gunwale of the whaleboat and started to bolt up the
+beach. I saw the flash from the revolver, saw the fugitive
+crumple and fall, and the sharp report, impacting
+on the side of my sheet-iron rain-water tank, slammed
+against my ear-drums with a shattering &quot;whang.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That close-at-hand shot had the effect of shocking me
+back a notch or two more nearer normal; but, nerve-shattered
+as I always was at the end of a night, it was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page54" id="page54"></a>[pg&nbsp;54]</span>
+something very akin to the abject terror that gripped me
+as I backed away from the Brink of the Pit which now
+impelled me to &quot;back away&quot; from the new menace.
+Seizing my painting things from sheer force of habit, I
+slunk off through the long early morning shadows of
+the coco palm boles, not to stop until I came out upon
+the broken coral of the steep-shelving leeward beach of
+the island. It was as far as I could go without swimming.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Here Laku, my Tonga boy, found me toward noon.
+The coffee from the flask he brought was the first thing
+to pass my lips since I had poured my last drink the
+night before. It steadied me somewhat, but my nerves
+still refused to react. The shock of the morning had
+been too much for them. I realized that Kai had a
+mighty knotty problem on its hands with that shipload
+of dead and dying niggers in the lagoon (Laku had told
+me it was the <i>Cora</i>, and something of what the trouble
+was), and it took a lot of screwing before I got my
+courage up to a point where I could force my reluctant
+feet to carry me back to shoulder my share of the responsibilities.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was still streaking and dabbing at my canvas at
+three o&#39;clock, and it must have been nearly an hour later
+before I packed up and started back toward the village.
+I burned that bizarre rectangle of colour-slashed canvas
+on the very first occasion (which was not until a day or
+two later) that I had a chance to stand off and look at
+it objectively. There was revealed in it too much of the
+utter unmanliness which marked my conduct on this
+most shameful day of my life to make it a pleasant thing
+to have around. For me to have kept it would have
+been like a man&#39;s framing and hanging the excoriation
+of the judge who had sentenced him for some despicable
+crime.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page55" id="page55"></a>[pg&nbsp;55]</span>
+What had transpired in the village up to the moment
+of my return at the end of the afternoon I must set down
+as I learned of it later. Everything considered, it seems
+to me that Kai&mdash;with one or two notable exceptions&mdash;behaved
+very creditably in an extremely trying emergency.
+Awakened when the <i>Cora&#39;s</i> anchor was let go, a
+number of men had run out to the beach, from where
+their glasses quickly gave them a pretty good idea of the
+state of affairs aboard the luckless black-birder. Then
+they got together at Jackson&#39;s&mdash;the lot of them in their
+pajamas or <i>sulus</i>, just as they had tumbled out of their
+sleeping mats&mdash;to decide what was to be done. The majority
+at first seemed inclined to stand by their predetermined
+plan of shooting the first, and every man
+from a plague-infested ship that tried to land on the
+beach. But at this juncture Doc Wyndham, calling their
+attention to the fact that a whaleboat had already put
+away from the <i>Cora</i>, suggested that they wait and learn
+just how things stood before starting off gunning.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I&#39;m with you as far as shooting any nigger that
+tries to break quarantine goes,&quot; he said, &quot;but I&#39;m dam&#39;d
+if I&#39;ll stand by and see anyone take a pot shot at Mike
+Grogan, or any other sick white man, for that matter.
+Old Mike nursed me through a spell of &#39;black-water&#39; once
+at Port Darwin, and if he is in that boat I dope it it&#39;s
+up to me to tote him home to my shack and do what I
+can for him. If he can&#39;t clamber out I&#39;m going to wade
+in and carry him back to the beach, so you&#39;ll have to
+shoot the two of us if you shoot at all. But I don&#39;t think
+you will. I&#39;m not asking any of you chaps to have anything
+to do with the stunt. You needn&#39;t touch him.
+I&#39;ll take him home and swear not to budge from there
+till the thing&#39;s over one way or the other. After that
+I&#39;ll put myself in a ten-day quarantine. Moreover, I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page56" id="page56"></a>[pg&nbsp;56]</span>
+won&#39;t be expecting attention from any white man or
+nigger on the island in case the luck goes against me
+and I catch the pest myself. It&#39;s my own little game
+and I won&#39;t stand for any interfering in it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That was the gist of Doc Wyndham&#39;s remarks as
+Jackson outlined them to me the next day. They met
+with hearty assent from all of the dozen or more present,
+except on the score of letting the Doc have the job all
+to himself. He turned down every one of the volunteer
+nurses, however, saying it was his own kettle of fish and
+that he&#39;d have to stew it in his own way. He even insisted
+on meeting the boat alone, urging that there was
+no use in multiplying the points of possible &quot;plague
+contact.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">So it must have been the distinguished surgeon from
+Guy&#39;s that I saw shoot the bolting black that morning.
+Had I continued to watch, instead of bolting myself
+at that juncture, I would have seen him wade out, lift
+a man tenderly from the stern-sheets of the whaleboat,
+and start carrying the limp body up the beach to where
+a spreading bread-fruit tree shaded the door of the
+sheet-iron shack which he was wont humorously to refer
+to as his &quot;professional, social and domestic headquarters
+for Melanesia.&quot; Following that, I would have seen a
+bunch of motley-clad figures prance down and start menacing
+the irresolute boat-pullers with flourished revolvers,
+forcing the frightened blacks to back off and
+begin splashing their wobbly way out to the <i>Cora</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Wyndham&#39;s conduct all through struck me as rather
+fine, especially for a man who was a convict of three
+continents and two hemispheres. Disappointed in finding
+his friend Grogan in the whaleboat, on learning that
+the latter and his mate were already dead, Doc just as
+cheerfully set about paying to the Agent the debt he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page57" id="page57"></a>[pg&nbsp;57]</span>
+felt he owed to old Mike. Before entering his house,
+he called to his girl&mdash;a saucy little Samoan named Melita,
+who had gone right on sleeping through all the racket&mdash;ordering
+her to make a hurried departure by the back
+door and not to return until he sent for her. The Doc
+was never a man to let sentiment interfere with business,
+Jackson opined.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Making the doomed man as comfortable as possible in
+his own canvas folding bed, Wyndham deferred giving
+an opiate until he had gained such information as he
+could of how things were on the <i>Cora</i>. Then, after communicating
+(from a safe distance) what he had learned
+to a delegation from executive headquarters at Jackson&#39;s,
+he nailed a red <i>sulu</i> to his front door as a danger
+signal and disappeared behind the bars of his self-imposed
+quarantine.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I may as well state here that Wyndham&mdash;thanks,
+doubtless, to the precautions which he, as a medical man,
+would have known how to take&mdash;side-stepped the plague
+completely, quite as completely, indeed, as he sidestepped
+the Thursday Island customs authorities a year
+or so later, when a half season&#39;s shipment of pearls from
+Makua Reef, Limited, disappeared as into thin air.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Of the information Wyndham gleaned from the Agent
+before giving the latter a shot of morphine to relieve his
+agony and mercifully hasten the inevitable end, the most
+important as affecting Kai&#39;s action was that something
+over a hundred blacks had been battened down in the
+schooner&#39;s forecastle and &#39;midships hold for seventy-two
+hours, with nothing but a couple of stubby wind-sails
+feeding them air. The dead had all been cleared out
+before this was done, but there were a lot of bad cases
+among the living who were driven or thrown down the
+hatches. By the stench, the Agent knew that some of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page58" id="page58"></a>[pg&nbsp;58]</span>
+these had already died; but that many still had life in
+their bodies he judged by the unabated vigour of the
+howling.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The most reassuring news passed on by the dying
+man was that Ranga-Ro, Grogan&#39;s gigantic Malay
+Bo&#39;sun, had remained in charge of the <i>Cora</i>, and that he
+appeared to have the black crew (only three or four of
+them, luckily, had succumbed to the plague so far) well
+in hand. That brightened the outlook a good deal, for
+what Kai had feared above all else was a general breakout
+and stampede, which might inundate the island with
+plague-infected niggers, crazy beyond all possibility of
+control.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Ranga, who claimed to have had at one time or another
+every tropical disease on record, was&mdash;or believed
+himself to be&mdash;a plague immune. He was not in the least
+worried over the responsibilities that had fallen on him,
+and could be counted upon, the Agent thought, to see
+the game through. The only trouble was that he couldn&#39;t
+navigate, so that if the <i>Cora</i> was going to be taken to a
+port where any real relief could be obtained, she would
+have to have at least one competent white officer. Would
+Kai furnish that officer? was the question up before the
+meeting called at Jackson&#39;s to decide what should be
+done with the ill-fated black-birder.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">This was rather a larger assemblage than the one which
+had gathered at dawn, called up by the rattle of the
+<i>Cora&#39;s</i> anchor-chain. The latter was mostly made up of
+the &quot;inside push,&quot; &quot;Jackson&#39;s Own,&quot; as they were
+sometimes alluded to, and that they were a dead game
+bunch of sports was attested by the way in which they
+had volunteered in a body to nurse for Doc Wyndham.
+The later and more representative meeting was hardly
+up to the earlier one on the score of quality. There were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page59" id="page59"></a>[pg&nbsp;59]</span>
+a few out-and-out rotters on the island, and about the
+worst of these was a typical Wooloofooloo larrikin from
+Sydney, whose name I have forgotten. As foul of
+tongue as of face, he was as sneaking and cowardly as
+a wild Malaite pup reared in a black-birder&#39;s galley.
+He it was who, with a smirk on his tattoo-defiled face,
+got up and suggested that the simplest way out of the
+difficulty was to &quot;blow up an&#39; burn the bloomin&#39; &#39;ooker
+w&#39;ere she lies. Cook the bloody niggers to a frizzle, pleg
+an&#39; all.&quot; Give him a few sticks of dynamite and he&#39;d
+pull off the bally job himself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The leering wretch, in his eagerness, pushed right out
+in front of gaunt-framed old Jackson, who was &quot;presiding.&quot;
+&quot;Wi&#39;out battin&#39; a blinker,&quot; as he told me
+later, that old Kalgoorlie outlaw took the proper and
+necessary action. His straight-from-the-hip kick doubled
+the miscreant up, breathless, speechless, upon the floor&mdash;the
+only floor of sawed boards in all Kai. He rather
+favoured that method when he had to throw a man out,
+Jackson explained, on account of the convenient parcel
+it made of him when lifted by the back of his belt.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">When Jackson called the meeting to order again and
+explained what word Wyndham had sent as to the lay
+of things on the <i>Cora</i>, &quot;Froggy&quot; Frontein, one of the
+escapes from Noumea, his Gallic soul aflame, popped up
+and volunteered to sail her to any non-French port in
+the Pacific. That brought a cheer for &quot;Froggy,&quot; but
+the enthusiasm died down a bit when it transpired that
+the only ships the gallant ex-counterfeiter had ever
+boarded in his life were the steamer which deported him
+from Marseilles and the cutter in which he&mdash;buried under
+copra in its hold&mdash;had escaped from New Caledonia.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">More competent volunteers were not lacking, however,
+and several of these were trying to urge their respective
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page60" id="page60"></a>[pg&nbsp;60]</span>
+claims at once when &quot;Slant&quot; Allen&#39;s magnetic glance
+drew the eye of the chairman and he was given the floor.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Calling several of the more insistent of the volunteers
+by name, &quot;Slant&quot; asked if it had occurred to them that
+the nearest port which had quarantine facilities equal to
+handling more than a dozen cases of infectious disease
+was in Australia&mdash;probably Townsville, but possibly
+Brisbane. They admitted that they hadn&#39;t thought that
+far ahead.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;In that case,&quot; Allen cut in with, &quot;it may be in order
+for me to point out that there&#39;s not a one of the whole
+mob of you young hopefuls that wouldn&#39;t be pinched
+and clapped in the brig just as soon as they saw your face
+and recollected what it was you sloped for in the first
+place.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That shot made some impression, though &quot;Crimp&quot;
+Hanley seemed to think he had countered not uneffectively
+when he asked: &quot;Who in hell thinks he&#39;s going to
+last long enough to get her there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">What &quot;Slant&quot; had got up to say, he went on without
+deigning to engage the logical &quot;Crimp&quot; in argument,
+was that there was one first-class sailor in Kai against
+whom nothing was booked in Australia, a man, moreover,
+who had been known to be looking for a command for
+a number of months. He referred to Captain Bell, who,
+he regretted to say, had not been summoned to their
+meeting. If it was agreeable to those present, he would
+be glad to wait upon Captain Bell and acquaint him with
+the facts in connection with the emergency which confronted
+them all. In the event that Captain Bell should
+see fit to assert his claim to this place of honour, as he
+had no doubt would be the case, he&mdash;&quot;Slant&quot;&mdash;was in
+favour of giving that claim precedence over all others,
+both because of Captain Bell&#39;s well-known ability as a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page61" id="page61"></a>[pg&nbsp;61]</span>
+navigator (his late slip, they would all admit, was due to
+circumstances quite beyond his control), and because he
+was the only competent man available who would not
+have to step out of the frying pan into the fire on making
+port in Australia. What was more, in case Captain Bell
+felt that he needed a mate for a voyage which could
+not but be beset with much danger and many difficulties,
+he&mdash;&quot;Slant&quot;&mdash;wished to take the occasion to put in his
+claim for that berth. He had been in bad in Sydney, he
+had to admit, but it was nothing very serious, and he
+felt assured that, in a pinch, there were certain influences
+which could be counted upon to get him clear. No
+fear that he would not be seen in the Islands again in
+due course.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Considering what &quot;Slant&quot; was really driving at,
+you&#39;ll have to admit that this was put with consummate
+adroitness. The meeting voted by acclamation to allow
+him to carry out his suggestion, adjourning in the meantime
+to await developments. It was significant, in the
+light of what transpired later, that Allen flatly refused
+the offer of Jackson and two or three others to
+go along to Bell&#39;s with him and &quot;make a delegation
+of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">No suspicion was aroused by the fact that Allen, on
+the way to Bell&#39;s shack, stopped in at his own for five
+or ten minutes. Indeed, nothing that he did at any time
+awakened anybody&#39;s suspicions&mdash;among the beach push,
+I mean.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">When &quot;Slant&quot; came out of Bell&#39;s at the end of half
+an hour, he was accompanied by the American, the latter
+apparently leaning heavily on the Australian&#39;s shoulder.
+This occasioned little surprise, as Bell, who had hardly
+been seen for the last three days, was believed to have
+been drinking heavily. Instead of returning round the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page62" id="page62"></a>[pg&nbsp;62]</span>
+curve of the beach to report at Jackson&#39;s, as it had been
+assumed he would, &quot;Slant&quot; led the way to a little
+dugout canoe lying in the shade of the coco palms in
+front of Bell&#39;s and started pulling it down to the water&#39;s
+edge. When it was seen that the slender Australian
+was doing most of the tugging, while the big American
+seemed to be blundering about to small purpose, it was
+remarked at Jackson&#39;s that Bell, for the first time since
+he hit the beach of Kai, appeared to have stowed enough
+booze to submerge his &quot;Plimsol&quot; and affect his trim.
+At the same time it was admitted that the Yankee was
+a wonderful &quot;weight-carrier&quot;&mdash;nothing like him ever
+seen in the Islands. It was thus that they mixed nautical
+and racing idiom at Jackson&#39;s Sporting Club.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">When the little canoe was finally launched, Bell,
+helped by Allen, stumbled forward and slithered down
+in the bow. The Australian plied his paddle from the
+stern. It was remarked that the dugout&#39;s progress was
+very slow, but &quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; leisurely paddling was attributed
+to the care he had to take on account of the
+trim Bell&#39;s lopsided sprawl gave the cranky craft.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">By the time the canoe slid in alongside the <i>Cora</i>, Bell
+appeared to have collapsed completely. Lifting carefully
+by the shoulders, Allen was seen to raise the inert body
+in the bow enough for a hulking yellow giant&mdash;easily
+recognizable as the lusty Ranga-Ro&mdash;to throw a mighty
+arm around its waist. Then, with his other arm looped
+round a stanchion, he swung his burden high above the
+rail and into the arms of two of the black crew. Thereafter
+nothing was seen of the <i>Cora&#39;s</i> new skipper for an
+hour or more.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Doosed smart loadin&#39;,&quot; was Jackson&#39;s laconic comment
+on the teamwork Allen and Ranga had displayed
+in hoisting Bell&#39;s husky frame out of a wobbling canoe
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page63" id="page63"></a>[pg&nbsp;63]</span>
+and up over the <i>Cora&#39;s</i> four feet of freeboard topped by
+five strands of &quot;nigger wire.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen did not go aboard, but continued to lie alongside
+for ten or fifteen minutes, evidently giving extended
+orders to the Malay bos&#39;n. Immediately the
+canoe pushed off, great activity was observable among the
+crew, who were evidently rushing preparations for getting
+under way before the ebb began to race through the
+passage.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The rate at which Allen paddled back to the beach
+was in marked contrast to his leisurely progress on the
+way out. Grounding the canoe on the beach near where
+it had been launched, he made directly for the door of
+Bell&#39;s house and bolted inside. Reappearing almost immediately,
+he came on along the beach at a more deliberate
+gait.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At Jackson&#39;s he told them that Bell had jumped at
+the chance of taking the <i>Cora</i> to Townsville.... Said
+it might be the means of getting his master&#39;s certificate
+back in case he pulled it off all right. But he&mdash;&quot;Slant&quot;&mdash;couldn&#39;t
+allow a white man to tackle a job like that
+alone. He had only landed to pick up his kit and a few
+things Bell wanted. He was going to get back aboard the
+<i>Cora</i> before they began to shorten in. It was going to
+be a ticklish job, fetching the passage from where she
+lay in those fluky airs.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Leaving Jackson&#39;s, Allen went to his own (or rather
+&quot;Quill&quot; Partington&#39;s) house, where, according to what
+I heard from Mary Regan a couple of days later, he took
+several drinks but did not do anything toward throwing
+his things together. A half-hour later he was seen hurrying
+along the beach to Bell&#39;s again, and when he came
+out from there it was in the company of a girl&mdash;plainly
+the &quot;Peacock.&quot; Paddled by a third party, who came
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page64" id="page64"></a>[pg&nbsp;64]</span>
+upon the scene at this juncture, these two went off to
+the schooner, boarding her just as she filled away on the
+first tack of the almost dead beat to the entrance of the
+narrow seaward passage. For all they knew on the
+beach, Allen was carrying out his program (with the
+little incidental of Rona&mdash;doubtless taken along at the
+last moment by way of a surprise for Bell&mdash;thrown in),
+just as he had outlined it to them. They were not hurt
+by his failure to say good-bye. They were not strong
+for the gentler amenities in the Islands, anyhow.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page65" id="page65"></a>[pg&nbsp;65]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VI<br />
+<small>COMPULSORY VOLUNTEERING</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">As</span> a matter of fact, however, there had been a very
+considerable slip-up in &quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; carefully doped
+slate. That was plain from a number of little
+things which sunk into even my absinthe-addled brain in
+the few minutes I spent in his and Rona&#39;s company while
+paddling them off to the <i>Cora</i>. How staggering a slip-up
+it must have been for him I was not able to figure until
+I got my nerves under control the following day.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was still far from pulled together when I came back
+to the village after my day of hiding (for that&#39;s what it
+amounted to) on the other side of the island. With
+my head twanging like an overstrung banjo, I was
+feverishly anxious to get home and seek relief in the
+only thing I knew would relax the tension of my breaking
+nerves. I had told Laku to &quot;putem littl&#39; fella pickaninny
+in rock-a-bye belonga him&quot; just as soon as he got
+back to the shack. This was a long-standing joke between
+us, and I knew that he would interpret aright this
+<i>bêche-de-mer</i> order to &quot;put the baby in its cradle&quot; as
+a strict injunction to lay a certain long green bottle in
+a little basket of porous coco husk, which, dampened
+and hung in a draught, answered the purpose of a crude
+refrigerator. The vision of the slender green trickle I
+should shortly pour from the dewy fresh lip of that bottle
+was drawing me on as the thought of the oasis with its
+fountain draws the thirsting desert traveller.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page66" id="page66"></a>[pg&nbsp;66]</span>
+Between horrors fancied and real&mdash;from my struggle
+at the mouth of the Bottomless Pit to the coming of the
+Ship of Death&mdash;my nerves had suffered a number of
+trying shocks since the dawning of that accursed day;
+but the one that came nearest to bowling me over I had
+still to receive. I had <i>known</i> there was a Bottomless Pit;
+I had <i>known</i> there was a Death Ship; I had <i>known</i> they
+were shooting niggers on the beach. As each of these
+horrors was projected upon my vision in turn I had accepted
+their reality as a matter of course. Didn&#39;t I see
+them with my own eyes? Didn&#39;t I continue to see them
+after I had bitten my finger? But <i>Rona, with her arm
+and her peacock shawl thrown over &quot;Slant&quot; Allen&#39;s
+shoulder, coming out of Bell&#39;s house</i>.... No, that
+wouldn&#39;t do.... That was one thing they couldn&#39;t
+put over on me. My eyes must be playing tricks on my
+brain. I must be in even worse shape than I thought.
+Never before had my fancy conjured up a thing so utterly,
+impossibly absurd. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed,
+I pulled up and started kicking the shin of one foot with
+the toe of the other. That was another little trick I had
+of proving whether or not I saw what I &quot;saw.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At the clink of the broken coral under my shuffling
+feet the girl turned her head in my direction, but, far
+from releasing &quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; neck from her embrace, she
+only drew the lanky Australian closer with her right
+arm, while with her left she beckoned me imperiously.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Whitnee, come alonga this side, washy-washy!&quot;
+Her thin clear voice cut the air like the swish of a
+rapier.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was, strangely enough, the fact that she lapsed into
+the vulgarest of <i>bêche-de-mer</i>, rather than the eagerness
+of her gesture, that drove home to my wandering wits
+the fact that Rona was confronted with difficulties, that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page67" id="page67"></a>[pg&nbsp;67]</span>
+she needed help. Verging on nervous and physical collapse
+as I was (and as I knew I would continue to be
+until I had gulped my first steadying draught from the
+cool green bottle), the realization that something concrete
+was demanded brought me instantly out of the
+half-trance in which I had walked since dawn. Still a
+sorry enough specimen, I was at least sufficiently in hand
+not to need any more finger-bitings or shin-kickings to
+know the difference between what seemed real and what
+was really real. Letting my easel go one way and my
+paint box the other, I hastened forward in answer to
+Rona&#39;s summons.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Katchem washy-washy one piecee boat,&quot; Rona began
+as I came up, her heaving breast, flushed face and flashing
+eyes revealing the emotion that held her in its
+grip.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Man-man; my word, what name this fella thing you
+do?&quot; I interrupted between breaths, blurting mixed
+<i>pidgin</i> and <i>bêche-de-mer</i> English of a brand to match
+the vile blend the girl had discharged at me.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I too much cross this fella &#39;Slan&#39;,&#39;&quot; she started to
+explain. &quot;Him too much&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;You&#39;d think she was cross with me, Whitney, if you
+could see the way she&#39;s sticking me in the neck with her
+hat pin,&quot; Allen cut in, the half-sheepish, half-amused
+grin he had worn from the first broadening as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That was the first &quot;straight&quot; English to be spoken,
+and the words had the effect of reminding Rona that
+she had been speaking nothing but low jargon from the
+outset. For weeks she had been taking the greatest pains
+to avoid both of the weird volapuks in all her chats with
+me. Pulling herself together with an effort, she strove
+again to be a purist.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;&#39;Scuse me, Whit-nee,&quot; she chirruped, paying
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page68" id="page68"></a>[pg&nbsp;68]</span>
+&quot;Slant&quot; for his sally with a prod that made him duck
+like a prize-fighter avoiding a straight-arm punch;
+&quot;&#39;scuse me, but I&#39;m veh-ry mad. This bloody boundah
+he put <i>kor-klee</i> in Bel-la&#39;s drink. He take Bel-la to
+schoonah. Now we all go off to schoonah. If Bel-la he
+dead, then I keel this boundah, &#39;Slan&#39;.&#39; You will do us
+the paddl&#39;?&mdash;ple-ese, Whit-nee.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There was a deal more that I would fain have been
+enlightened about, but my brain was clear enough now
+to understand the urgent necessity of getting off to the
+<i>Cora</i> without delay. A drugged man (or a poisoned
+one&mdash;it was not until later that I learned how that
+strange essence of the wild Papuan fig might be expected
+to act) on a plague-infested black-birder looked like just
+about the last word in hopelessness; but (I told myself)
+if there was anything I could do for my friend, it was
+up to me to try to do it. Rona seemed to have some sort
+of plan in her head, though just what she was taking
+Allen along for I didn&#39;t quite twig at the moment.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The funny part of it was that the Australian didn&#39;t
+seem particularly averse from going off to the schooner.
+Indeed, it was he who cut in to call Rona&#39;s attention to
+the fact that they were rushing preparations on the
+<i>Cora</i> for getting under way, adding: &quot;If you don&#39;t want
+to be left at the post I might suggest you whip up a
+bit.&quot; Even as he spoke the throbbing wail of a chantey
+came to our ears across the water, and I could just make
+out the blur of motion on the forecastle where a knot of
+niggers was circling round the capstan.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Washy-washy! Quick! quick! Whit-nee,&quot; implored
+Rona, leading the way, with Allen&#39;s head still in the
+crook of her arm, to the canoe; &quot;we must make the great
+hur-ee.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Luckily, the dugout, although Allen had left it pulled
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page69" id="page69"></a>[pg&nbsp;69]</span>
+well up on the beach when he landed, was half awash
+through the rising of the tide, now just about to ebb. I
+launched it without difficulty. Still with her knife at
+&quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; neck, Rona made him enter ahead of her and
+crouch in the bottom of the canoe, well forward, while
+she seated herself on the sinnet-wrapped thwart immediately
+behind his hunched shoulders. When the unabashed
+rascal coolly leaned back and started to make
+himself comfortable with an arm thrown over her knee,
+the girl stiffened with a start of repulsion. It was more
+than a prick she gave him this time, for I saw the sudden
+swell of his jaw muscles wipe out the lines of his grin
+as his teeth set over a repressed oath.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Pushing off, I slid gingerly along the port weatherboard
+until the canoe heeled just enough to bring a
+gaping hole in the starboard bow clear of the water that
+started to pour through it, and began to paddle cautiously
+inside the outrigger, the only place I could get at
+from where I sat. Our progress was, of course, slow as
+to speed and wobbly as to direction. Even at that, a
+good deal of water kept slopping in, and I couldn&#39;t blame
+Allen, who was sitting in it, for asking Rona if she
+minded if he baled a bit with his sun-helmet.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Her only reply was another prod with the needlepointed
+<i>kris</i>. (I knew it was the little Jolo dagger, for
+I had seen it as she adjusted her shawl on sitting down).
+&quot;Hur-ee, Whit-nee,&quot; she urged, quiveringly tense, and
+continued to keep her flaming gaze riveted on the
+schooner, where the latter, foot by foot, was moving up
+on her shortening chain.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">About halfway out Rona gave a start and a glad little
+cry. &quot;I see Bel-la,&quot; she laughed. &quot;He stand up by
+wheel. By jingo, he look&mdash;he look like he lick his weight
+in wile cats!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page70" id="page70"></a>[pg&nbsp;70]</span>
+That had been the big Southerner&#39;s favourite expression
+when, glowing with the reaction from his deep,
+eye-opening dive from the reef, he would come prancing
+back to his door of a morning. The sight of his bare
+muscular torso, white as marble against the dingy folds
+of the half-hoisted mainsail, must have called up in the
+girl&#39;s mind the picture of Bell breezing in from his bath,
+and brought the tersely quaint phrase to her lips. As a
+matter of fact, there was no saying at that distance <i>how</i>
+Bell looked; but it was good to see him on his feet, at
+any rate. Probably Rona had been mistaken about the
+poisoning.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I told you he was all right,&quot; Allen remarked drily,
+shifting a few inches to get clear of the water that was
+beginning to swish about his knees. &quot;He was drunk&mdash;dead
+drunk; that&#39;s all. He began to buck up an hour
+ago. Looked through my glass and saw them dousing
+him with water. First thing he did was to take a drink
+(plenty of it aboard)&mdash;saw him tilt the bottle. Then
+he must have made them open up the hatches. There&#39;s
+more than the crew lining the rail there for&#39;ard; besides&mdash;you
+don&#39;t think the slop-chute from the galley spills
+out the bait that&#39;s drawing those black fins, do you? I
+won&#39;t need to tell you they don&#39;t belong to chambered
+nautili out for an afternoon sail. There&#39;s a man-eating
+shark under every one of them. Can I lend you my
+binoculars?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">He started to slip the strap of the powerful racing
+glasses over his neck, but desisted when Rona refused to
+clear the way by lifting the point of her dagger. Save
+for maintaining that one important little point of contact,
+she ignored him completely, and &quot;Slant&quot; seemed
+rather to resent the latter more than the former.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Well, if you don&#39;t want to use it, I suppose you won&#39;t
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page71" id="page71"></a>[pg&nbsp;71]</span>
+mind if I have a bit of a look-see,&quot; he went on in half-assumed
+petulance. Rona replied with the usual prod,
+but interposed no further objection when he raised and
+began focussing the glasses.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Clubbing niggers on the fo&#39;c&#39;sl&#39;,&quot; he commented
+presently, as signs of commotion were visible forward.
+&quot;Skipper don&#39;t want &#39;em too thick on deck while he&#39;s
+getting under way, most likely.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Then, a minute later: &quot;Looks like you&#39;ll need an ice-breaker
+to clear a passage through those sharks, Whitney;
+or perhaps we can walk across their backs from the
+edge of the jam. Seem to be thick enough to give good
+solid footing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">And again, shortly: &quot;Chain almost straight-up-and-down,
+Whitney. Mudhook going to break out in a
+couple of minutes. Can&#39;t accelerate that &#39;long, long
+pull&#39; of yours, can you? Looks as if they weren&#39;t planning
+to wait for us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was a gruesome passage, that last hundred yards.
+The sharks were hardly as thick as Allen&#39;s picturesque
+hyperbole might have led one to believe, but there were
+undoubtedly more than a score of triangular dorsals
+slashing about in swift circles. But the sharks, for the
+most part, gave us a good berth. It was the things that
+<i>didn&#39;t</i> get out of the way that came near to flooring me
+at the last&mdash;black, bloated bodies, floating face down, like
+logs awash, till the canoe struck them, then to roll shudderingly
+over and sweep you with the sightless gaze of
+their wide, staring eyes as you fended with the paddle.
+Rona, her flashing glances running back and forth over
+the schooner (following Bell, who appeared to be lending
+a hand now and then on sheet or halyard), seemed not
+to see the floating horrors around us. Allen&#39;s steely
+eyes met the corpses stare for stare, and looked them
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page72" id="page72"></a>[pg&nbsp;72]</span>
+down. But upon me the horrors which passed the others
+by descended with full force. How I kept going is more
+than I can guess. But I did it. At last the loom of the
+<i>Cora&#39;s</i> blistered starboard quarter cut off the seaward
+view, and I steadied the dugout in close to the upper
+line of her weed-foul copper sheathing.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Apparently no notice whatever had been taken of us
+up to this time. Short-handed as he was, Bell was
+doubtless too busy to keep a lookout, while to the few
+niggers watching us through the wire the sight of a dugout
+carrying &quot;two fella white marsters and one fella
+Mary&quot; was of indifferent interest. All they cared about
+was getting away from the Death Ship, and they didn&#39;t
+need to be told that this &quot;pickaninny boat&quot; hadn&#39;t come
+to help forward their desires in that direction. Besides,
+the guard walking up and down behind them with
+a Lee-Enfield over his black shoulder had undoubtedly
+given them to understand that the first one to start over
+the side would be shot.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It must have been the guard who reported us finally.
+Burning with impatience, Rona was just prodding up
+Allen and ordering him to clamber aboard and tell
+&quot;Mistah Bell&quot; she wanted to speak to him, when I heard
+the shout of &quot;&#39;Vast heavin&#39;!&quot; ring out, and presently
+a familiar tousled head was poked over the top of the
+barbed wire. (I should explain, perhaps, that three or
+four strands of &quot;nigger wire&quot; are run all the way round
+the rail of every labour-recruiting ship. This is done
+with a double purpose&mdash;to make it difficult for the
+blacks aboard to bolt, should the spirit move them, and
+to serve as a partial protection while at anchor against
+the always imminent attacks of the treacherous shore
+natives.)</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There was a look in Bell&#39;s face I had never seen there
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page73" id="page73"></a>[pg&nbsp;73]</span>
+before. The old familiar furrows of dissipation showed
+deep around the mouth, but if he had been drinking
+heavily, there was nothing to indicate it. What struck
+me at once was his air of determination&mdash;I might almost
+say exaltation. His head was held high, his shoulders
+were thrown back, and he might have been treading the
+deck of a battle-ship as he swung up to the rail. Everything
+about him betokened the man who has taken a
+great resolve, and means to see it through if it kills
+him.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Although I had heard no word of it up to that moment,
+I understood at once that Bell had taken command
+of the schooner, that he was going to try to sail her to
+some port where the plague-stricken blacks could be
+given medical attention and kept under control. It was
+like Bell to take on a job like that, I said to myself; but
+he would do it as a matter of course. It would never
+occur to him that there was any alternative, just as with
+an order in the Navy. There must be something more to
+account for that air of high resolve.... I couldn&#39;t
+help thinking that, and I was right. He let out what it
+was shortly.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It&#39;s right nice of you to come off to say good-bye,
+honey&mdash;and of you, too, Whitney,&quot; Bell called down
+genially; &quot;but, as we&#39;ah not quite what you&#39;d call fixed
+fo&#39; cawlahs, you&#39;d bettah do it from wheah you a&#39;. You,
+Mistah Allen, if you have fin&#39;ly made up youah mind in
+the mattah of signin&#39; up for the voyage, I reckon we can
+find accommodation fo&#39; you. But fust, let me say that
+if you&#39;ve got any mo&#39; of that dope you put in my whisky
+stowed about youah puson, you&#39;d best scuppah it befo&#39;
+you climb abo&#39;d. I doan quite twig what you did it fo&#39;,
+unless it was to dodge out of goin&#39; yo&#39;self, afta you had
+promised to help me see the job through. But now,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page74" id="page74"></a>[pg&nbsp;74]</span>
+seein&#39; you&#39;ve come off of youah own free will, I reckon
+I can fo&#39;get that lil&#39; slip, providin&#39; it ain&#39;t repeated.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Although Rona could hardly have known the exact
+meaning of &quot;free will,&quot; she caught the drift of Bell&#39;s
+remarks readily enough. &quot;This rotten boundah&quot;
+(bounder was the worst name she knew to call a man in
+&quot;pure&quot; English) &quot;not come himself,&quot; the girl cut in
+shrilly, speaking for the first time. &quot;I fetch him. See!&quot;
+and she threw back the folds of the peacock shawl to
+reveal the bright wavy blade of her little <i>kris</i> boring into
+the hollow between Allen&#39;s right shoulder-blade and the
+corded column of his sinewy neck.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;From the reef I see you an&#39; this fella &#39;Slan&#39;&#39;&quot;
+(Allen&#39;s shoulder quivered under her designative prod)
+&quot;go off to schoonah in boat,&quot; Rona went on, avoiding as
+well as she could in her excitement the jargons she knew
+Bell disliked so much. &quot;Bime-by I see &#39;Slan&#39;&#39; come
+back&mdash;you stop schoonah. When I go home I smell&#39;em
+<i>kor-klee</i>. You no sabe <i>kor-klee</i>, Bel-la. I sabe him too
+much long time. I smell <i>kor-klee</i> in one glass&mdash;not in
+othah. Pu-retty soon this boundah &#39;Slan&#39;&#39; come house.
+He say: &#39;Bel-la go off in schoonah. Now I stop with you
+all time!&#39; Then I sabe what for <i>kor-klee</i> veh-ry queeck.
+So I katch&#39;em this fella by neck an&#39; fetch&#39;m off schoonah.
+I say myself: &#39;If Bel-la dead, I keel this boundah; if
+Bel-la not dead, <i>he</i> keel him.&#39; Heah he is, Bel-la&mdash;you
+fix him pu-lenty. Then we go home-side.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;So that&#39;s what upset the appl&#39;-ca&#39;t?&quot; There was
+nothing of the wrath of the jealous male in Bell&#39;s deep,
+chesty laugh. &quot;Well, I&#39;m not blamin&#39; Mistah Allen fo&#39;
+fallin&#39; in love with you, honey. No propah man could
+quite help doin&#39; that, as I see it. Just the same, I can&#39;t
+quite approve of his way of goin&#39; about it, no&#39; the occasion
+he took fo&#39; it, eethah. So you brought him off fo&#39;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page75" id="page75"></a>[pg&nbsp;75]</span>
+me to execute, honey. That&#39;s right rich. Youah a
+brick, you shuah a&#39;. But I won&#39;t be killin&#39; him, honey&mdash;no,
+hahdly that. I&#39;m just goin&#39; to sign him on as
+Fust Mate of the <i>Cora Andrews</i>, just as he &#39;lowed he do
+at the beginnin&#39;. Of co&#39;se I won&#39;t be goin&#39; home with
+you, honey. Doan you see I&#39;m in command of this heah
+ship?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A sudden shiver shook Rona&#39;s tense frame at those
+last words. Half rising, she started to speak, but Bell
+cut her short with lifted hand and went on himself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Mistah Allen,&quot; he said, addressing himself now to
+the huddled figure in the bottom of the canoe; &quot;I said
+I was goin&#39; to sign you on an&#39; take you with me. Let
+me qualify those wuds just a trifle. I&#39;ll pumit you to
+go if you&#39;ll agree in advance to my tums. I might explain
+that theah&#39;s two dif&#39;rent views in the mattah of
+the best way of avoidin&#39; catchin&#39; the pleg. One is, that
+you must keep strictly soba&mdash;straight teetotal; the otha&mdash;diametrically
+opposed to the fust&mdash;is that you must
+keep dead drunk&mdash;pif&#39;ucated. Now I reckon that it&#39;s
+goin&#39; to take at least one white man to sail this hookah
+all the way to Australyuh; that is to say, at least one
+white man must steah cleah of the pleg fo&#39; the entahprise
+to be crowned with success. But as theah ain&#39;t
+no suah data as to which is the safe an&#39; sutin way to
+&#39;complish this, I figa theah&#39;s nothin&#39; else to do but sta&#39;t
+with two white men, and let one of &#39;em try the fust
+purscripshun an&#39; the otha the second.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Now (tho&#39; I must admit it&#39;s a bit high-handed on
+my pa&#39;t) I&#39;ve already picked the one I&#39;m goin&#39; to take;
+so, if you elect to sign on, Mistah Allen, you&#39;ll have to
+take the otha. Theah&#39;s a dozen cases of whisky abo&#39;d&mdash;not
+Jawny Wakah, to be suah, but still fayah to middlin&#39;
+cawn jooce&mdash;an&#39; I had to toss off a tumblah o&#39; two of it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page76" id="page76"></a>[pg&nbsp;76]</span>
+as an antidote fo&#39; that dream-provokin&#39; dope you wished
+onto me. But&quot;&mdash;Bell&#39;s head was up and his shoulders
+back again&mdash;&quot;<i>that&#39;s the last</i>.&quot; His square jaw snapped
+shut on the words like a sprung wolf-trap. Now I understood.
+<i>That</i> was his Great Resolve.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Bell paused, and in the waiting silence I became
+aware for the first time of the low rumble of groaning
+from the bowels of the ship.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;So you&#39;ll see, Mistah Allen&quot;&mdash;the corners of his
+mouth relaxed into a smile as Bell resumed&mdash;&quot;that since
+the Skippah&#39;s plumped to try the &#39;soba man&#39; preventative,
+theah&#39;s nothin&#39; left for the Mate to do but to fight
+off the pleg by the &#39;drunk man&#39; method. Theah&#39;ll only
+be two of us, you see, an&#39; it&#39;s theahfo&#39; up to us to hedge
+ouah bets an&#39; play safe. But you won&#39;t be havin&#39; to
+go if you ain&#39;t hankerin&#39; after it. I&#39;m not (in spite of
+what the way you&#39;ve been &#39;shanghaied&#39; by&mdash;by Miss
+Rona might lead you to think) runnin&#39; a press-gang.
+It&#39;s entiahly up to you as to whethah o&#39; not you want
+to sail as the drunken Mate of the soba Skippah of a
+black-birdah full of pleg-rotten niggahs. You see, Mistah
+Allen&quot;&mdash;the whimsical grin broadened&mdash;&quot;you see
+I&#39;m not tryin&#39; to luah you on by paintin&#39; the picture any
+brightah than it is. &#39;Drunk Mate of a soba Skippah&#39;&mdash;do
+you get that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen made no reply, that is, not directly. Raising
+his hand to fend the expected prod from Rona, he
+wriggled halfway round and started to speak to me,
+where, in the stern, I still paddled the canoe gently
+against the turning tide and held it close alongside the
+schooner. For an instant I was puzzled with the look
+on the side-face he presented, but almost at once saw
+the reason for it. For the first time in my recollection
+the thin upper lip was uncurled by its mocking smile.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page77" id="page77"></a>[pg&nbsp;77]</span>
+By that, I thought I could gauge something of the extent
+of his slip-up. Yet&mdash;if I could have read the man&#39;s
+mind&mdash;I would have known that it was something even
+deeper than the wreck of personal hopes that had sobered
+&quot;Slant&quot; Allen. What it was I learned later.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Whitney,&quot; he began, the words coming huskily from
+the dryness of his throat; &quot;I don&#39;t dope a man&#39;s
+chances for finishing inside the distance flag in this little
+Handicap of Captain Bell&#39;s as better than a hundred to
+one. That&#39;s long odds to be on the short end of when
+a man&#39;s life is his stake. I don&#39;t give a damn about my
+life. Anyone will tell you that. I&#39;ve thrown it into
+the pool on worse than a hundred-to-one shot a good
+many times before this. But&mdash;well, I&#39;d rather appreciate
+it if&mdash;if you could see fit to make a point of not
+telling my friends on the beach that&mdash;that I had any
+help in&mdash;in volunteering&mdash;volunteering to lend Captain
+Bell a hand in getting this hooker on her way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Rona, sensing that her responsibilities, so far as Allen
+was concerned, were at an end, raised the <i>kris</i> from his
+neck and thrust it into the knot of her <i>sulu</i>. The Australian
+lifted himself lightly to his feet and looked Bell
+straight between the eyes. &quot;Lead me to your whisky,&quot;
+he said in a steadied voice.... &quot;By Gawd, I need
+it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Poising an instant on the middle of a forward thwart
+of the canoe, he sprang to the rail, clambered smartly
+to the top strand of the barbed wire, and swung lightly
+down to the deck on the main backstay.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was at this juncture that I went through the feeble
+motions of trying to act the part of a man myself. I
+pointed out to Bell that I had knocked about on yachts
+a good deal, and, while I couldn&#39;t claim to be much of a
+hand with niggers, was probably as good a navigator
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page78" id="page78"></a>[pg&nbsp;78]</span>
+as Allen was. I also said something about three men
+standing a better chance than two of pulling off the
+job, and even added, half jocularly, that I was about
+ready to go to Australia anyway, as I had had word
+that an exhibition of my pictures was due to open in
+Sydney in a fortnight. I only hope my words didn&#39;t
+sound as hollow to Bell as they did to me&mdash;for they were
+the last ones I was ever to speak to him.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Bell&#39;s gentlemanliness&mdash;nay, rather, his gentleness&mdash;came
+home to me more in what he refrained from saying
+in his reply than in what he said. He did <i>not</i> say that
+he had no absinthe aboard, and that, as a consequence,
+I would be only more useless and undependable than if
+he had. He did <i>not</i> say that his hands would be full
+enough looking after crazy niggers without having a
+crazy white man to keep an eye on. He even refrained
+from recalling to my mind a story I had told him of a
+French official in New Caledonia whose absinthe supply
+had run out while he was at an isolated post, and who,
+unable to stand the deprivation to the end of the three-days&#39;
+run in to Noumea in a trading cutter, had taken
+a header over the side almost in sight of port&mdash;and
+relief.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">All he <i>did</i> say was: &quot;Nonsense, ol&#39; man.... Quite
+out of the question.... Nothin&#39; doin&#39;.&quot; Then, as
+though to soften the curtness of his refusal:
+&quot;&#39;Twouldn&#39;t be propa, Whitney, to set a man that can
+slap colour on canvas like you can to herdin&#39; sick niggas.
+Besides, I&#39;m countin&#39; on you to stick &#39;roun&#39; Kai an&#39; be
+a sort o&#39; fatha an&#39; motha&#39; to Rona while I&#39;m gone.
+Youah the only man on the island I&#39;d ca&#39;ah to trust with
+that job.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There was nothing more to be said after that, I told
+myself; nothing more to be done. I gave up limply and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page79" id="page79"></a>[pg&nbsp;79]</span>
+relapsed into wondering how long it would take me to
+paddle Rona ashore and traverse the quarter of a mile
+of coral clinkers between the place where she would land
+and the long green bottle cooling in its breeze-swept
+swing beneath my coco leaf jalousies.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page80" id="page80"></a>[pg&nbsp;80]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VII<br />
+<small>RONA COMES ABOARD</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Well,</span> I still think I was right on the score of
+the futility of further words. Nothing more
+that I could have <i>said</i> would have changed the
+situation; but was there nothing more that I could have
+<i>done</i>? Rona answered that question, so far as she herself
+was concerned, then and there, though hardly in a
+way that I had the wit or the will to profit by.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Bell&#39;s answer to the girl&#39;s anxious appeal that she be
+allowed to join him had been no less brusque and decided
+than that he had made to mine. &quot;Sorry, honey.
+No &#39;commodations fo&#39; ladies this voyage. You wun&#39;t intended
+to nu&#39;se niggas, anyhow. Can&#39;t be done, honey.&quot;
+Then, to me: &quot;Time to be shovin&#39; off now, Whitney.
+Tide&#39;s already on the tu&#39;n. Right sorry to have to
+hurry you-all this way.&quot; Not a word of farewell....
+Navy training would not down.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Bel-la, leesten to me!&quot; There was more threat than
+entreaty in Rona&#39;s voice now. Beyond doubt, he had
+never crossed her before. That she was hurt and angry
+showed in every line of her tense figure, as she balanced
+precariously with her left foot on the outrigger and her
+right on the port weatherboard. &quot;Bel-la, by crackee, I
+say I go with you! If you let me come on schoona, all
+good. If you say no, by crackee, I&mdash;I sweem! I sweem
+afta you. You know I good sweema, Bel-la.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Swim! I knew the girl well enough to know it was
+not a bluff, and Bell must have known even better. I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page81" id="page81"></a>[pg&nbsp;81]</span>
+had heard him speak many a time of her absolute lack of
+fear. Also, although at that moment his imagination
+was not quickened (as mine was) by the drunken roll
+a black cadaver under the counter gave as a questing
+nose pushed into it from below, he must have known
+what shrift a swimmer would have in those shark-infested
+waters.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Bell&#39;s mouth twitched at her words (I could just see
+his head and shoulders where he conned ship with a foot
+on the starboard rail and a hand in the shrouds of the
+mainmast), but he made no reply. Doubtless he counted
+on my doing what I could to fish her out before anything
+happened. Sweeping his eye fore and aft, he noted
+how the turning tide had swung the schooner so that she
+headed directly away from the passage, with the fluky
+puffs of the freshening trade wind coming over her port
+quarter. Then, cautioning the men standing by at the
+fore and main sheets to &quot;take in sma&#39;t&quot; as she gathered
+way, he bellowed the order to &quot;Heave away!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The ululant surge of the <i>bêche-de-mer</i> anchor chantey
+floated aft as the blacks resumed their rhythmic tramp
+around the capstan.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&quot;<i>What name you b&#39;longa?</i></span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>What name you b&#39;longa?</i></span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>You Mary come catch&#39;m ride.</i></span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>What name you b&#39;longa?</i></span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>Come hear my songa&mdash;</i></span><br />
+<span class="i4"><i>I take you to Sydney-side.</i>&quot;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">I have often wondered if the frank invitation in the
+swinging lines might not have been the inspiration of
+Rona&#39;s astonishing action.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The obligato of the incoming chain grinding through
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page82" id="page82"></a>[pg&nbsp;82]</span>
+the hawse-pipe had accompanied the chantey for only a
+stave or two, when Allen&#39;s clear, ringing voice (he had
+not needed to be told where a mate belonged when a
+ship was getting under way) announced from the forecastle:
+&quot;Anchor broken out, sir!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Walk lively! Get catted &#39;fore she hits the passage!&quot;
+Bell roared back, anxious lest the great length
+of chain still out would make trouble where the lagoon
+shoaled at its seaward entrance. A moment later he
+came aft and relieved the man at the wheel, ordering
+the latter to stand by to keep the mainsheet from fouling
+the nigger wire. It was the gigantic Malay, Ranga-Ro,
+bulking mightily against the purpling eastern twilight
+sky, who responded with a deep-rumbling &quot;Ay, ay, su!&quot;
+and sprang to the starboard rail to clear the sagging
+lines running back from the unstable-minded main
+boom. Then the amazing thing befell.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As the schooner gathered way and began gliding ahead
+under the impulse of the half-filled mainsail, Rona had
+crouched as though for a spring at the towing whaleboat.
+The painter of the latter, however, made fast on the port
+side of the taffrail, brought the yawning double-ender
+too far away for anything but a creature with wings to
+bridge the gap. Seeing it was impossible to jump to
+the whaleboat, she straightened up again, swaying undulantly
+as the dugout bobbed about in the gently heaving
+wake of the schooner.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Bel-la, I come!&quot; There was more of anger than
+despair in that steel-clear cry; more indignation than
+resignation in the hair-trigger poise of the reed-slender
+figure. The instant that she hesitated on the chance
+that this final threat might soften Bell&#39;s resolve was all
+that prevented what at best could not have been other
+than a nasty mess for the both of us. There was no
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page83" id="page83"></a>[pg&nbsp;83]</span>
+possible chance for me to intercept her before she
+jumped, and, once in the water, I knew she was quite
+equal to upsetting the canoe rather than be dragged
+back into it. As for help from the schooner&mdash;Bell had
+determined upon his course, and his eyes, like his mind,
+were directed ahead, not astern.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was Ranga-Ro (deftly fending the slack of the
+mainsheet from the nigger wire), not Bell, who turned
+at the sound of Rona&#39;s cry. Whether or not he had
+glimpsed her during the previous ten minutes, I am not
+sure; but for the girl (whose eyes had been on Bell
+from first to last), I was certain that the big Malay had
+not impinged upon her vision before. Recognition of his
+racial characteristics must have been instantaneous.
+They were written for even an ethnic novice to read in
+the giant&#39;s straight black hair, high cheek bones, wide
+mouth, with its betel nut-stained teeth, and the light
+golden yellow skin clothing the monstrously muscled
+limbs. The peculiar twist of the loosely-looped <i>sarong</i>
+and a wisp of rolled leaf behind an ear would have
+located him even more definitely; but to Rona the fact
+that there was an indubitable Malay staring into her
+eyes from the nearest rail of the receding schooner, made
+the incidental of his being a Moluccan&mdash;a Spice Island
+man&mdash;of little moment. She was used to handling big
+golden-yellow men.... They had proved a deal more
+manageable than a certain white man she could mention.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I heard, without understanding, the swift run of her
+tripplingly-tongued Malay, and only the sibilant hiss of
+&quot;<i>Lekas! Lekas!</i>&quot; at the end told me that what she had
+ordered done was to be done &quot;quickly! quickly!&quot; Her
+next order&mdash;to me&mdash;was no less insistent. &quot;Paddl&#39;
+catch&#39;n schoona, Whit-nee! Paddl&#39; lak hell!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The girl&#39;s imperious mood brooked no delay. My
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page84" id="page84"></a>[pg&nbsp;84]</span>
+work was cut out clear for me, and, everything considered,
+I am not at all sure that the yellow man&mdash;on the
+score of zeal, at least&mdash;outdid the white man in carrying
+out the orders he had received. Slipping back to the
+stern to even up the down-by-the-head trim Rona&#39;s presence
+in the bow gave the cranky dugout, I plied the
+stubby paddle with all the strength and skill at my command.
+The crazy craft rode higher now with Allen out
+of it, but even so the speed with which I drove it threw
+a wave inches above the hole in the crumbling bow.
+The up-curling water poured through in a steady stream.
+My race, I saw, was against that rising flood in the
+bottom of the canoe quite as much as against the
+schooner.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There were only eight or ten yards to make up on the
+still slowly moving <i>Cora</i>, and, barring swamping or a
+collision with a shark or a floating nigger, I felt that I
+could do it easily. But what to do when we had caught
+her up? Ah, there was where the yellow man was to
+come in. Ranga was just as busily carrying out his
+orders as was I. &quot;Clear away the nigger wire and stand
+by to pick me up,&quot; had plainly been the drift of that
+swift stream of Malay Rona had directed at him. Superbly
+disdainful of the sharp barbs that were slashing
+his bare palms to ribbons, he forced the whole savage
+entanglement down to the deck with no more apparent
+effort than a child would have used in collapsing
+a string-strung &quot;cat&#39;s-cradle.&quot; Rove through steel
+stanchions set at close intervals along the rail, the wire
+could not be torn entirely clear. So the direct and
+simple-minded Ranga did the next best thing&mdash;gave a
+mighty heave and brought three or four of the nearest
+stanchions down to the deck in the tangle of wire they
+had supported.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page85" id="page85"></a>[pg&nbsp;85]</span>
+An order from Bell at this juncture would probably
+have stopped this wholesale destruction of his protective
+entanglement; or perhaps I should say <i>possibly</i> rather
+than probably. One cannot be sure just how strong a
+force Rona had lashed into action. It has since occurred
+to me that the man must have been gripped
+with something very closely akin to the madness of <i>amok</i>
+to handle that wire with his naked hands as he did.
+It may be that the only one from whom he would have
+brooked interference was the one who had fired that
+savage train of energy&mdash;Rona. These points were not
+to be put to the test, however. From first to last Bell&mdash;although,
+from the wrecking of the wire almost under
+his very eyes, he must have known what was going on&mdash;never
+looked back.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">What with the settling of the half-swamped canoe and
+the accelerating speed of the schooner, it was touch-and-go
+at the end. I had gained by feet at first; then by
+inches; and finally, with but a couple of yards more
+needed to bring the bow up even with the schooner&#39;s
+counter, I realized that I was no better than holding
+my own. It was the last ounce of reserve in my aching
+frame that I called upon for that final spurt. Rona
+must have sensed that I was going my limit, for she said
+no word ... only crouched, tense as a waiting wild-cat,
+for the moment of her spring.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">For the first few seconds the gap closed quickly as the
+canoe gathered increased headway from the impulse of
+my wildly driven paddle; then more slowly and more
+slowly, until, again, I was no better than holding even.
+Another foot, and the jump would be safe. Bending low
+to make the most of my expiring strength, my eyes wandered
+from the goal for an instant. It was a shuddering
+gasp of consternation from the bow that brought them
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page86" id="page86"></a>[pg&nbsp;86]</span>
+back again. The swooning mainsail, filled by the freshening
+puffs, was beginning to make its pull felt in earnest.
+The gap had widened. Instead of gaining a foot
+I had lost two. That dished me completely. &quot;No good,
+Rona&mdash;I&#39;m&mdash;all in,&quot; I groaned, and slid limply down
+into the bottom of the canoe, where the water now lapped
+level with the thwarts.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Half fainting though I was, the picture of that super-simian
+spring of Rona&#39;s is indelibly etched upon my
+memory. Save for that one quick gasp, she made no
+sound. The jump was an impossible one ... sheerly
+impossible. And yet&mdash; Only a swift gathering of muscles&mdash;very
+like the final quivering hunch of an ape that
+leaps from tree to tree&mdash;heralded action. Then, with a
+back-kick that forced the already half-submerged bow
+right under, she flashed up to her full height and
+launched her body into the air.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was a good jump,&mdash;a wonderful one, indeed, considering
+the unstable take-off&mdash;but of course she missed
+the rail&mdash;and by feet. That didn&#39;t surprise me.... I
+had seen it was inevitable. But what I had <i>not</i> reckoned
+upon was the astonishing length of Ranga&#39;s mighty left
+arm. Standing by with a bight of the mainsheet gripped
+in his right hand to keep from overbalancing, he had
+sprung to the top of the rail as Rona jumped, leaning
+out at all of an angle of forty-five degrees, probably
+more. It was into the solidly pliant muscles of his great
+corded left wrist, extended to the full reach of the arm,
+that Rona clawed with the last half inch of her out-stretched
+fingers&mdash;clawed and <i>held</i>. I say <i>clawed into</i>,
+not clutched or seized. The girl&#39;s hold on Ranga&#39;s wrist
+was not that of an acrobat grabbing over the bar for
+which he has jumped (her leap was short by an inch
+at least of giving her a chance to do that), but rather
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page87" id="page87"></a>[pg&nbsp;87]</span>
+that of a flung cat clawing into the limb or the trunk of
+a tree. With less strength of fingers or length of nails
+her hands would merely have brushed the outstretched
+arm and missed a hold.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Under the impact of that flying hundred and twenty
+pounds (in spite of her slenderness, Rona must have
+weighed quite that) of bone and muscle, striking, as it
+did, just where the greatest leverage would be exerted,
+Ranga was all but swung round and thrown from his
+footing. The hastily-seized mainsheet was hardly a scientifically-run
+guy for the leaning tower of his stressed
+frame, nor did the wreck of the barbed wire entanglement
+writhing over the rail offer the solidest of foundations.
+Back and forth he swayed, like the half unstepped
+mast of a grounded sloop; then steadied, quiveringly, up
+to his original tense slant.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The acrobatic miracle wrought by Ranga in swinging
+Rona&#39;s precariously hanging form inboard was the most
+perfect feat of strength and balance I ever saw, or ever
+expect to see. It looked as sheerly impossible as the
+jump had looked&mdash;and was accomplished scarcely less
+quickly. The drawing up of the extended left arm
+(what a marvellous rippling and bunching of golden muscles
+that was!) brought the girl&#39;s pendant form close in
+against the corrugated bulge of the giant&#39;s chest, reducing
+the terrific leverage by a good half. A similar
+doubling up of the right, with a sudden tug on the
+mainsheet at the end of it, did the rest. For an instant
+the great rangy rack of corded muscles balanced erect in
+the midst of the wire-tangle festooned over the rail; then
+jumped lightly down beyond and deposited its burden on
+the deck.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Hardly ten seconds could have elapsed from the instant
+of Rona&#39;s jump to the one in which Ranga plumped
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page88" id="page88"></a>[pg&nbsp;88]</span>
+her down beside Bell at the wheel. The gap between
+the canoe and the schooner had widened to hardly twenty
+yards. I could see both the Malay and the girl quite
+distinctly as, with the latter still looped in the crook
+of his fingernail-torn left arm, he poised for a moment
+on the rail. Neither appeared to have turned a hair.
+Neither seemed in the least flustered ... might have
+been in the habit of doing that sort of thing every day
+for all the excitement they showed about it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The first thing Ranga did, as the dropped mainsheet
+gave him a free hand, was to reach to the knot of his
+<i>sarong</i> and satisfy himself that the little bamboo flute
+tucked in there had ridden out the storm. And Rona&mdash;her
+first move was to gather up and stow an amber-streaming
+corner of the peacock shawl, which was
+threatening to catch in an uprearing strand of the nigger
+wire. Those two funny little incidentals complete my
+recollections of that breathless quarter-minute. Whether
+Rona, or Bell, or anyone else on the schooner waved
+good-bye in my direction I do not recall. Ranga was
+taking in the slack of the mainsheet when I looked again,
+and Bell, peering up at the flapping headsails, was
+grinding away at the wheel. Two or three shots rang
+out following a commotion forward&mdash;probably fired to
+check a fresh up-surge of the blacks from below.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As Bell brought her round in a wide circle, the <i>Cora&#39;s</i>
+sails were flattened in and she began to beat up toward
+the entrance of the passage in a series of short tacks.
+As she headed in past the quay, I heard a burst of cheers
+roll up from a knot of humanity blurring the beach in
+front of Jackson&#39;s. It was just a big, full-throated general
+whoop, that first one, but it was quickly followed by
+a number of other volleys of &quot;huroars&quot; that seemed to
+carry suggestions of control and leadership. The last of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page89" id="page89"></a>[pg&nbsp;89]</span>
+these was a hearty &quot;three-times-three,&quot; topped off with
+a &quot;tiger.&quot; &quot;Cheering the parting heroes by name,&quot; I
+muttered to myself, and wondered who that last rousing
+&quot;tiger&quot; was meant to speed. I was still speculating
+when the sharp whish of a heeling dorsal, as a sheering
+shark avoided the submerged outrigger by a hair,
+awakened me to a rude realization of the fact that the
+swift tropic night had all but fallen and that I was
+drifting out with the tide in a holed and barely floating
+dugout.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Of all the ebbings of the tide of courage that my sorrily
+spent life had known, and had still to know, those
+next few minutes&mdash;with the <i>Cora</i> dissolving into the
+swimming dusk as she beat out through the passage, the
+weirdly green wakes of the sharks lacing the oily-black
+water with welts of phosphorescence as they assembled
+for their ghastly banquet, and my swamped canoe teetering
+in balance between positive and negative buoyancy&mdash;registered
+low-water mark. I have never heard
+of a despairing absinthe slave trying to break his bonds
+at the end of the day. It is invariably at the end of
+the night that he makes his break for liberty&mdash;at the
+beginning of the day he has not the courage to face.
+But it was the shame of the yellow in me, rather than
+the green, that held empire now. Rona had brooked no
+refusal of her demand to be taken on the <i>Cora</i>. Why
+had I? She had been ready to swim for it. Why should
+not I? Surely the sea, better than anything else, would
+wash that yellow stain from my honour and leave it
+white at the last. I didn&#39;t even have to screw my nerve
+up to the point of jumping over. Listing heavily to
+starboard as the half-capsized dugout was, one little inch
+edged to the right, and not even the leverage of the outrigger
+could keep it from overturning. Just the inclination
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page90" id="page90"></a>[pg&nbsp;90]</span>
+of my shoulders would do the trick.... I would
+not even have to take the initiative to the extent of
+edging along. Surely&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">With a quick gasp, I slid sharply to one side&mdash;but it
+was to the left&mdash;the outrigger side. The great starshaped
+welter of green luminescence, where a half-dozen
+wallowing man-eaters nuzzled into a bobbing witch-fire-streaked
+shape of unreflecting opacity, proved too much
+for my last unbroken filament of nerve&mdash;all that I
+needed to make my honour white. I had always dreaded
+sharks, and it was my horror of them now that checked
+the worthiest impulse that had stirred me that day. The
+momentarily eclipsed image of the cooling green bottle
+took shape again before my eyes, and, after that, there
+was nothing to do but make the best fight I could to
+reach it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Proceeding with infinite caution to avoid the upset
+which I now feared above everything in the world, I
+crawled forward along the outrigger side and stopped
+the hole in the bow with my folded drill jacket, as a
+necessary preliminary to beginning to bail out with my
+waterproof sun-helmet. But before I turned to on what
+could have hardly proved other than a hopeless task,
+the sound of oars and voices reached my ears, and presently
+the bow of a hard-pulled whaleboat came pushing
+up out of the darkness. It was old Jackson whose
+strong arm reached out and dragged me in over the
+gunwale. When they got back their breaths lost in
+cheering the departing schooner, he explained, after depositing
+my limp form in the stern sheets, Doc Wyndham
+bawled over to them from &quot;Quarantine&quot; that some cove
+had been left behind in a foundered canoe. Jackson
+himself reckoned that the Doc was beginning to go off
+his nut and see things; but as several of the others
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page91" id="page91"></a>[pg&nbsp;91]</span>
+seemed to have hazy recollections of something of the
+same kind, it was thought best to put off and investigate.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;&#39;Ow&#39;d you &#39;appen to miss c&#39;nections?&quot; Jackson
+asked sympathetically. &quot;I spotted you paddlin&#39; the
+canoe off, an&#39; we was so sure the Skipper &#39;ad signed you
+on that we give a speshul w&#39;oop in your &#39;onour. &#39;W&#39;at&#39;s
+the matter wiv W&#39;itney?&#39; I bellered (&#39;member the night
+you learned us that one?&mdash;time the looted fizz from the
+<i>Levuka</i> was on tap); an&#39; the boys cum back wiv: &#39;&#39;E&#39;s
+all right!&mdash;you bet!&mdash;Ev&#39;ry time!&#39;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;That wasn&#39;t the big &#39;three-times-three&#39; at the end,
+was it, Jack?&quot; I asked, my face burning with shame at
+the thought.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Well, no; &#39;ardly that un,&quot; was the half-apologetic
+reply. &quot;That ripsnorter was in &#39;onour uv &#39;Slant&#39; Allen.
+Long time pal uv all uv us, &#39;e is. Slash-bangin&#39; finisher,
+li&#39;l ol&#39; &#39;Slant.&#39;... Trust &#39;im allus to be on &#39;and
+w&#39;en they&#39;re liftin&#39; &#39;ell&#39;s &#39;atches.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I knew then that I wasn&#39;t going to be tumbling over
+myself to tell &quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; friends on the beach that his
+volunteering to go with the <i>Cora</i> had been just a shade
+less voluntary than they reckoned. <i>He</i> had not pulled
+up dead at his first hurdle as I had, anyhow. No, until
+I knew more of what had transpired earlier in the day,
+I was not going to give the man away; and not to his
+old friends in any case. I would do at least that much
+homage to his nerve.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Seeing how dead beat I was, Jackson waved back the
+crowd at the quay and headed me straight for home.
+He knew what I needed, and I was as grateful for the
+bluff old outlaw&#39;s unspoken sympathy as I was for the
+help of his sustaining arm. With rare delicacy, he
+avoided being a witness to my assault on the green bottle
+by leaving me at the door. Like all the rest of those
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page92" id="page92"></a>[pg&nbsp;92]</span>
+rough, red-blooded roysterers of Kai, Jackson felt that
+habitual absinthe drinking was degenerate, almost immoral....
+All right for a &quot;Froggy,&quot; of course, but
+not for a proper white man.... A thing that a real
+self-respecting beach-comber would never allow himself
+to be guilty of. The fact (which could not be concealed
+for long) that I was known to be addicted to the habit
+had taken even more living down than my painting,
+especially when they learned I was straight Yankee and
+not a &quot;<i>We-we</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I drank hungrily at first&mdash;gulping glass after glass
+of the cool green liquid,&mdash;but stopped just as soon as I
+found my nerves were steadied and before the first stage
+of &quot;elevation&quot; was entered upon. (A seasoned drinker
+takes some time to reach the latter.) Unspeakably tired
+physically, I dropped off to sleep almost as soon as the
+absinthe relaxed the tension on my nerves. My rest was
+dreamless and untroubled&mdash;or comparatively so.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page93" id="page93"></a>[pg&nbsp;93]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII<br />
+<small>I LEAVE THE ISLAND</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Rolling</span> out of bed at the end of twelve straight
+hours of sleep, I found the Trades blowing fresh
+and strong again, and the air&mdash;after the soddenness
+of the past week&mdash;almost bracing. A plunge
+from the reef and a piping hot breakfast of fried clams
+and duck eggs&mdash;my first solid food in over thirty-six
+hours&mdash;bucked me up astonishingly. For almost the first
+time since I came to the island, I was out before ten
+o&#39;clock&mdash;and well in hand, too. I had to be....
+There was much that it was up to me to learn&mdash;and perhaps
+to act upon.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That which I most desired to get some line upon was
+what Allen had been driving at in drugging Bell, or
+even, possibly, trying to poison him. What was <i>kor-klee</i>?
+(of which Rona appeared to be so terrified), and
+how did it act? were questions which I wanted especially
+to find the answers to. Was it a drug with a delayed
+action, following a preliminary stupefaction of comparative
+mildness? If so&mdash;no, there was nothing that could
+be done for Bell in that case; but, as a friend of his, I
+might do what I could to square the account later on.
+There was no lack of confidence <i>that</i> morning. The reaction
+(which had eluded me completely the day before)
+was strong upon me, and I felt quite equal to any situation
+that might arise. I still blushed with shame at the
+thought of the contemptible figure I had cut from dawn
+to darkness of the day previous, but I was ready to make
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page94" id="page94"></a>[pg&nbsp;94]</span>
+such atonement as was humanly possible. It was merely
+one of my &quot;high&quot; moods coming three or four hours
+ahead of time. I could have slung my colours with
+telling effect that morning, if there had been a chance
+for me to get at canvas.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">From one and another at Jackson&#39;s I gathered a fairly
+connected account of what had happened during the
+hours I was away on the leeward side of the island.
+The salient incidents of this I have already set down.
+None of them knew much of anything about <i>kor-klee</i>,
+but all agreed that Doc Wyndham would be sure to be
+an authority upon it. I dropped the subject for the
+moment, as I did not care to be pressed for an explanation
+of why I sought the information. The next day I
+slipped quietly over and had a long-distance interview
+with the learned Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Doc had buried the <i>Cora&#39;s</i> recruiting agent the
+night the schooner sailed, doing everything except the
+digging of the grave with his own hands. He had then
+returned home and shut himself in for his ten days of
+solitary quarantine. Solitary is hardly the word, though.
+Wyndham was far from being alone. Unlike Bell, he was
+a &quot;spree drinker&quot; rather than a speedy tippler. It was
+his habit (as he put it himself) to accumulate aridity during
+five or six months of the most rigorous teetotalism,
+and then blow up the dam and make the desert blossom
+like the rose under the stimulus of a generous flood.
+The breaking up of the Monsoon and the culmination of
+Doc Wyndham&#39;s biennial sprees were bracketed together
+in the Islands&#39; list of seasonal disturbances.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The desert was hardly due for its wetting at this
+time, but Wyndham, shaken by his unsuccessful fight to
+save the Agent&#39;s life, was loath to face the ordeal of the
+confinement ahead of him without company. So (as he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page95" id="page95"></a>[pg&nbsp;95]</span>
+explained after he had halted me a dozen paces from
+his door with a revolver flourished from the window)
+he called in the only dead sure plague-immune he knew&mdash;his
+old friend John Barleycorn&mdash;and raised the floodgates.
+The last thing he had impressed upon his brain
+before putting Barleycorn in charge was that he must
+rigidly confine his desert reclamation project to his
+own wastes. On no account was he to leave his own
+house, and, on no account, was anyone to be allowed to
+enter it. &quot;Strict quarantine&#39;s the word,&quot; he had repeated
+to himself many times before he started drinking,
+and &quot;Strict quarantine&#39;s the word&quot; was the greeting&mdash;and
+the warning&mdash;I heard when I stepped into the
+shadow of the big breadfruit tree in front of his
+door.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Solemn as an owl, Wyndham had been catching purple
+shrimps (or something of the kind) with a butterfly net
+and putting them under his microscope for examination.
+The big brass instrument was set upon a table pulled up
+to the window, while the shrimps were being harvested
+from the bosky depths of a patch of elephant-eared taro
+just outside. It was his favourite hunting and fishing
+preserve, that taro patch, the Doc had confided to me
+once, and the rarity and variety of the specimens captured
+there were rather remarkable. I don&#39;t remember
+many of them, but a sea-cow and a sabre-tooth tiger were
+among the commonest he had made slides of. Everything
+went under the microscope, of course. His captures
+were small in size during the first few days, starting
+with mere animalculae, but bulked steadily bigger as the
+desert blossomed to a jungle. It required a microscope
+with a great latitude of adjustment to handle such a wide
+range of subjects&mdash;but his was a most excellent instrument
+... most excellent. Thus the Doc.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page96" id="page96"></a>[pg&nbsp;96]</span>
+Pretending to ignore my approach completely, Wyndham
+continued squinting through the eye-piece of his
+microscope until I crunched over the dead-line he had
+established. Then he flourished the revolver, barked out
+his quarantine formula, and asked what I wanted.
+&quot;When I replied that I had come to inquire respecting
+the effects of a drug called <i>kor-klee</i>, his manner changed
+instantly. By some queer psychological process quite
+beyond me to fathom, he started at once speaking French,
+or rather what he thought was French. It was a weird
+jargon he had picked up in the Marquesas, where he had
+spent a year in research work when he first came to the
+Islands, and where (it was said) only his passion for
+collecting pearls&mdash;other people&#39;s&mdash;had prevented his
+winning to international fame for his all-but-successful
+efforts to isolate the bacteria responsible for the dread
+<i>fe-fe</i> or <i>elephantiasis</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;<i>Kor-klee&mdash;mais oui, mon ami. Je comprend him
+fella kor-klee too much. Parfaitement. C&#39;est la liqueur
+essential de la ficus&mdash;ficus&mdash;nom d&#39;un chien&mdash;ficus what-dyucalum.
+C&#39;est la aphrodisique le plus exquite, le plus
+fort, en tout le monde. Prenez vous comme ca&mdash;whouf!</i>&quot;&mdash;and
+he made a great pretence of inhaling the contents
+of his shrimp net to show how the drug was administered
+for that particular purpose.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;<i>Encore&mdash;quand&mdash;quand eat&#39;m like kai-kai!</i>&quot; he
+floundered on learnedly; &quot;<i>quand eat&#39;m kor-klee il fait&mdash;mak&#39;m
+mort&mdash;dead&mdash;tres vite</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Here he interrupted himself to ask for which purpose
+it was I intended to use the stuff.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Neither,&quot; I denied stoutly. &quot;I was merely asking
+out of curiosity.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;<i>Parle that talkee a la marines</i>,&quot; he scoffed. &quot;<i>Le
+meme chose talkee parle</i> &#39;Slant&#39; Allen. <i>Je voudrais</i>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page97" id="page97"></a>[pg&nbsp;97]</span>
+<i>connoce ou&mdash;ou in hell you fella catch&#39;m kor-klee.</i> I&#39;d
+like to get my fist on some of the blooming elixir myself,&quot;
+he trailed off into English.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Save for that one lapse, Wyndham, in spite of my
+reiterated appeals that he speak straight English, rattled
+on in his impossible Franco-<i>bêche-de-mer</i> from first to
+last. That which I have tried to render does it scant
+justice. Most of it was quite unintelligible. At the end
+of a rather trying half-hour (though it would have been
+amusing enough had I been less anxious for information
+that might throw light on the mystery I had set myself to
+unravel), about all that I had been able to gather was
+that <i>kor-klee</i> was the name given in the Dutch Indies
+to several preparations made from the latex of the wild
+fig of New Guinea. A crude infusion of it was employed
+by the Papuans in stupefying fish in their rivers. More
+elaborated extracts were distilled for their narcotic and
+other properties. One of these, vapourized and inhaled,
+was much prized by the Rajahs of Malaysia as a quickener
+of the languid pulse, a restorer of youth. Another&mdash;the
+most powerful extract of all&mdash;was a deadly poison&mdash;very
+neat and incisive in its action.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I also understood Wyndham to say that the use of the
+drug in any form acted as a great exciter of the cravings
+for alcohol and narcotics on the part of those addicted
+to these habits. &quot;If that&#39;s the case,&quot; I said to myself
+as I turned home, &quot;God pity poor old Bell&#39;s teetotal
+resolutions! It would have been hard enough without
+anything further in the way of a &#39;thust aggravata.&#39; I&#39;m
+afraid he&#39;ll be having to exchange rôles with &#39;Slant&#39;
+after all&mdash;to let the latter be the &#39;soba Mate of a drunken
+Skippa.&#39;&quot; Now that I had a chance to think about it,
+I didn&#39;t have any great faith in Bell&#39;s ability to refrain
+from drink for any length of time&mdash;certainly for not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page98" id="page98"></a>[pg&nbsp;98]</span>
+more than a day or two at the outside. He&#39;d probably
+see the thing through, I admitted, but not as a &quot;soba
+Skippa.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Turning over all I had picked up at the end of a
+couple of days, I felt that I could come pretty near to
+reconstructing in my mind those scenes of the drama of
+which there had been no witnesses save the actors themselves.
+Allen&#39;s infatuation for the girl had undoubtedly
+got the better of him the instant the turn of events suggested
+a plan which promised to give him undisputed
+possession of her. To this end he had plotted to get Bell
+off on a voyage from which there was no more than a
+negligible chance of his ever returning, while he himself
+remained behind to enjoy the spoils.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Considering that Allen&#39;s plan was evolved upon little
+more than a moment&#39;s notice, there could be no question
+that it was laid with consummate cleverness and carried
+out without a hitch&mdash;save, of course, for that final fatal
+slip-up which undid all the rest. To make sure of Bell
+and disarm his suspicions, Allen had assured the
+American that he himself would also go on the <i>Cora</i>.
+That he had tried to poison Bell, I had my doubts. I
+had not learned enough of how the drug acted to make
+my speculations on that point of much use. At any
+rate, with Bell unconscious on the schooner, it had clearly
+been the Australian&#39;s plan to return to the beach and
+remain there until she sailed, at the turn of the tide.
+That the <i>Cora</i> should get under way at that time had
+already been arranged between the unsuspecting Ranga
+and himself. The pretence that he had missed the
+schooner while engaged in getting his own and Bell&#39;s
+kits together would save his face with his friends on the
+beach. This latter consideration, it appears, was something
+the rascal never lost sight of. In the improbable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page99" id="page99"></a>[pg&nbsp;99]</span>
+event that Bell ever returned&mdash;but that bridge need not
+be crossed until it was in sight.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen&#39;s cropper at the last jump was directly due to
+his cool assumption (natural enough, considering his
+success with South Sea ladies generally) that the girl,
+once Bell was out of the way, would fall into his lap
+like a ripe mango. That, and his long-curbed passion for
+her, led him to rush in search of Rona the moment he
+landed from his first visit to the schooner, and, missing
+her then, to return before the <i>Cora</i> had got her anchor
+up. The consequences of his finding her in on this latter
+occasion I had seen something of myself. How that slip
+of a girl got the drop on the most notorious bad man in
+the Islands I could only conjecture. Probably, with
+Allen, it was the old story&mdash;prudence going out of one
+door as passion entered at the other. I didn&#39;t reckon
+that Rona had ever read the story of Delilah; yet I felt
+pretty confident that the point of that little Joloano <i>kris</i>
+had found its way to the pulse of &quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; jugular
+some time after the girl&#39;s arm had gone round his neck
+in what he thought&mdash;for a second or two at least&mdash;was a
+warm embrace. Rona&#39;s uncanny faculty for getting
+away with everything she went after&mdash;from having her
+peacock shawl dry-cleaned to boarding a schooner which
+was all of &quot;two jumps&quot; beyond her reach&mdash;had greatly
+impressed me. And well it might have....</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Even allowing that Allen had not tried to poison Bell
+outright, the fact remained that he had played the worst
+kind of a low-down trick on the American in treacherously
+attempting to railroad the latter out of the way
+and deprive the girl of his protection. That much was
+plain, and it was dead against the shifty Australian. In
+&quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; favour was the game manner in which he had
+stood the gaff at the last, when Bell left the way wide
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page100" id="page100"></a>[pg&nbsp;100]</span>
+open for him to return ashore without even going over
+the side of the plague-infested schooner. He had not
+hesitated an instant in staking his life in what he had
+very fairly characterized as the short end of a hundred-to-one
+shot. There must be redeeming qualities in a man
+who could do that, no matter how shot through with infamy
+his past record had been. It occurred to me as just
+possible that Bell&#39;s magnanimity had struck a responsive
+chord in Allen&#39;s sense of sportsmanship&mdash;that the latter
+was going to play whatever remained of that grim game
+on the square. If the <i>Cora</i> was lost, or if Allen and Bell
+and the girl all died of the plague (one or both of which
+contingencies seemed practically inevitable), the whole
+slate would be wiped clean anyhow. If not&mdash;if the <i>Cora</i>
+won through with any of those three surviving&mdash;some
+hint of what had transpired on the voyage would certainly
+be obtainable at Townsville, or whatever port
+the schooner succeeded in making. In any event, I told
+myself, it was up to me to get on to Australia at the
+earliest possible moment.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The fact that my Exhibition would be sure to have
+opened in Sydney by the time I reached Australia,
+really had nothing to do with my decision. In spite of
+the bluff I had tried to put over on Bell, I had had no
+intention of leaving Kai for a number of months to come.
+Nor, even after I began getting ready to go, did I
+attempt to ignore the fact that there might be duties
+for me to carry out in Townsville, the performance of
+which would be more likely than not to interfere seriously
+with my freedom of action for a good deal longer than
+the art world of Sydney would be inclined to pay homage
+to my marines.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">No, my coming show had nothing to do with my resolve
+to hurry south, although, naturally, I fully intended to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page101" id="page101"></a>[pg&nbsp;101]</span>
+take it in if things shaped so as to make it possible.
+Since my daubs had been making good with the connoisseurs
+of Kai&mdash;men who knew at first hand the things
+I was trying to paint,&mdash;I had little fear that the more
+sophisticated critics of civilization would not fall for
+them. I hadn&#39;t any worry on that score. I knew I
+had been doing good work. But&mdash;well, an artist who
+isn&#39;t interested in the way his work will react on his
+fellow-beings is lacking in a very important stimulus
+to success.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Kai manifested its usual sympathetic interest in my
+preparations for departure, but, with characteristic delicacy,
+asked no questions. Well off the steamer routes,
+and with only the most infrequent comings and goings
+of pearling and trading craft, the problem of reaching
+Australia with any dispatch seemed, at first, a hopeless
+one. For a while it looked like the best I could do would
+be to accept &quot;Slim&quot; Patton&#39;s kindly offer to run me
+over in his pearling sloop to Thursday Island, where I
+could count on getting a south-bound China-Australia
+liner inside of a fortnight. As Patton was known to be
+in bad for several little things at Thursday Island, his
+offer did more credit to his heart than to his head, and I
+was a good deal relieved when Jackson figured out a
+plan that promised to make it possible for me to reach
+my goal by another route. After thumbing a greasy
+sheet of Burns, Phillip sailings for the best part of an
+afternoon, the old outlaw suddenly announced he had
+found reason to believe that, with luck, a cutter getting
+away from Kai that night could intercept the Solomon-Australia
+packet at Samarai, off the easternmost tip of
+New Guinea. To be sure that the thing was done
+properly, he would take one of his own cutters and sail
+her himself. As my impedimenta consisted of little beyond
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page102" id="page102"></a>[pg&nbsp;102]</span>
+a few changes of drills and ducks, my painting kit,
+and a case of absinthe, and as Jackson used neither paint
+nor absinthe and wore a flowered <i>sulu</i> in place of ducks
+and drills, we had little difficulty in getting away on
+schedule.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Jackson&#39;s carefully tabulated calculations&mdash;you can do
+that kind of thing in those latitudes when the southeast
+Trades are blowing steady and you know your boat&mdash;were
+only wrong by an hour. That is to say, we would
+have missed the <i>Utupua</i> by something like that had we
+pushed right in to Samarai. Old &quot;Jack,&quot; however, sighting
+a bituminous smear trailing off above the tufted
+tops of the coco palms that line the inner passage,
+promptly shook out all his reefs, hauled up four or five
+points, and headed away on a course calculated to converge
+with that of the outgoing steamer a couple of
+miles to seaward. It was only after an abrupt greening
+of the tourmaline depths of the passage we had been
+threading suggested a sudden shoaling that it occurred
+to him to unroll and study his chart.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Five &#39;undred fathom&mdash;three &#39;undred fifty fathom,&quot;
+he read laboriously as his tarry forefinger cruised along
+the tiny rows of dots and figures indicating soundings.
+&quot;Three &#39;undred fathom&mdash;two &#39;undred fifty fathom&mdash;<i>one</i>
+bloody fathom! By Gawd, W&#39;itney, we&#39;re &#39;igh an&#39;
+dry already! This bally chart says they&#39;s only one
+fathom uv water on this kerblasted coral patch, an&#39; the
+cutter draws two feet mor&#39;n that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But he never luffed her, never altered her course a
+fraction of a point. &quot;More she &#39;eels the less she draws,&quot;
+he muttered philosophically, sitting down on the weather
+rail of the cockpit and starting to whittle at the end of a
+stick of tobacco with his clasp-knife. &quot;Save a lot of
+wig-waggin&#39; if we do pile up,&quot; he continued presently,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page103" id="page103"></a>[pg&nbsp;103]</span>
+rolling the shaved-off blackjack between his palms. &quot;Ol&#39;
+&#39;Choppy&#39; Tancred never giv&#39; the go-by to even a nigger
+dugout he could len&#39; a han&#39; to.&quot; Then he lighted his
+pipe, whoofed two or three whirling jets of blue smoke
+to leeward as he brought it to a proper draw, and settled
+comfortably back in puffing contentment. Ten minutes
+later he unrolled the chart again, produced a greasy stub
+of pencil from the band of his <i>koui</i>-leaf hat, and wrote
+with great care the letters &quot;P.D.&quot; across the dotted expanse
+where curving lines of figure &quot;1s,&quot; like the
+graphic representation of telegraph lines on a bird&#39;s-eye
+map, indicated six feet of water where the eight-feet-draught
+cutter had just crossed without a bump.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;As I figger it,&quot; Jackson observed drily, rolling up
+the chart and tossing it down the companionway as a
+thing whose usefulness was ended,&mdash;&quot;as I figger it, a
+bloke&#39;s only manifestin&#39; proper conserv&#39;tism w&#39;en &#39;e
+marks as &#39;Position Doubtful&#39; a reef that ain&#39;t tangibl&#39;
+enuf to stop &#39;im w&#39;en &#39;e &#39;its it.&quot; Then, presently, between
+puffs, as he stretched himself and sidled along
+to take the wheel as the cutter began to close the slowing
+steamer: &quot;Wonder &#39;oo the bally cove&#39;ll be &#39;oo bumps a
+mis-charted reef w&#39;en &#39;e thinks &#39;e&#39;s got four &#39;undred
+fathom uv brine &#39;tween his keel an&#39; the bottom uv the
+Pacific.&quot; The notorious inaccuracy of the South Sea
+charts is a continual source of amusement or wrath&mdash;according
+to whether a misplaced shoal or passage has
+spelt comedy or tragedy to him&mdash;for the man who sails
+their reef-beset waters.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was Captain Tancred himself who came tumbling
+down from the <i>Utupua&#39;s</i> bridge to greet me as I clambered
+up the Jacob&#39;s ladder thrown over from the forecastle
+head. Hearing of him often before, this was the
+first time I ever set eyes on one of the best-loved characters
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page104" id="page104"></a>[pg&nbsp;104]</span>
+in the South Pacific. He was a red-faced, blue-eyed,
+sandy-haired Scot, with a heart as big as his fist,
+and as soft as his voice was rough. Square himself as
+his own broad shoulders, and strictly law-abiding personally,
+he was credited with an amiable weakness for
+befriending every man who had run afoul of the statutes.
+I had heard them yarn by the hour at Kai of the way
+he had smuggled this one out of Australia, and that one
+into New Guinea; of how he had all but bumped South
+Head while standing-off-and-on in a &quot;Southerly Buster&quot;
+one night, on the off chance of picking up a jail-breaker,
+whose only claim upon Tancred had been that the latter
+had once before performed a similar service for the
+reprobate when he had forced his way out of the jug in
+Suva. Several of the push at Jackson&#39;s claimed actually
+to owe their lives to the bluff old Scot; many of them
+their liberty. &quot;Choppy&quot; Tancred&mdash;so called from his
+sun-washed red-brown mutton-chop side whiskers&mdash;was
+the nearest thing to a patron saint Kai ever had&mdash;that
+is, until the Rev. Horatio Loveworth hove up on their
+skyline some years later and converted the lot of them
+(just about) with the knuckles of his brawny fists.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The last thing Jackson had said, as he steadied the ladder
+for me to swarm up the <i>Utupua&#39;s</i> side, was to the
+effect that I ought to consider myself dead lucky to be
+stacking up with &quot;Choppy&quot; Tancred; &quot;or, leastways,&quot;
+he qualified, &quot;you would be if you was in any kind uv
+a mess &#39;e could fish you out uv.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Don&#39;t give up hope, Jack,&quot; I chaffed back, clawing
+round a projecting ventilator; &quot;I may land in a mess
+yet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Then don&#39;t be forgettin&#39; ther&#39;ll allus be a refooge
+for the errin&#39; on the banks an&#39; brays uv Kai Lagoon,&quot;
+he sang back, taking in the mainsheet as the cutter came
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page105" id="page105"></a>[pg&nbsp;105]</span>
+up to the wind; &quot;an&#39; that &#39;Choppy&#39; Tancred&#39;ll be the
+cove to give you a first leg-up on the way back there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Except for his very evident disappointment over the
+fact that I disclaimed any need of his help in getting
+ashore in Australia, Captain Tancred seemed not in the
+least put out over being stopped and boarded so high-handedly.
+He had carried many queer birds in his time,
+so that a man eccentric enough to take a case of drinkables
+with him on the <i>return</i> trip from the Islands didn&#39;t
+worry him as much as it might have some others. He
+was also kindly charitable about my &quot;exclusiveness&quot; of
+evenings (when all normal beings expand and grow sociable
+at sea), and even good-naturedly tolerant of my
+weakness for having breakfast in my cabin. I made it
+up to him to the best of my ability in my &quot;quickened&quot;
+hours of the afternoon, and we became good
+friends.... Really good friends. I felt that I could
+count upon him in a pinch.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The grounding of the company&#39;s Port Moresby
+steamer somewhere along the Barrier Reef was responsible
+for the fact that the <i>Utupua</i>, this voyage, had been
+ordered to pick up freight at both Cooktown and Cairns,
+instead of proceeding direct to Townsville on her regular
+schedule. This set her back two days, and brought us
+into the offing at Townsville twenty-four hours after&mdash;instead
+of twenty-four hours before&mdash;a sun-blistered, foul-smelling
+labour-recruiting schooner, with a dead Captain
+and a score or more of dying niggers, was brought
+to anchor off the Quarantine Station by the Mate, who,
+immediately the hook was let go, collapsed on the deck
+and went to sleep. The empty hulk of the <i>Cora Andrews</i>,
+swinging lazily to the turning tide, was one of the first
+things to catch my eye as the <i>Utupua</i> steamed in and
+tied up to her buoy.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page106" id="page106"></a>[pg&nbsp;106]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IX<br />
+<small>A GRIM TALE OF THE SEA</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">I have</span> often tried to figure just what effect on the
+succeeding train of events my earlier arrival in
+Townsville might have had. I have never come to
+any very definite conclusions in that connection. There
+were two or three things that were pretty well bound to
+happen, and if they hadn&#39;t come about one way, there is
+little doubt that they would have done so in another.
+Had I been there when the <i>Cora</i> arrived, it is probable
+that I would have learned definitely at once (instead of
+somewhat tardily) that Bell had <i>not</i> died of the plague.
+Certainly, on learning that fact, my impulse would have
+been to try to force Allen to an immediate showdown&mdash;to
+insist on his proving that the dope he had put in the
+American&#39;s whisky at Kai had not been the direct cause
+of the latter&#39;s death. Such a showdown would have
+been impossible to bring about at the time, however: for
+one reason, because Allen had been put into quarantine
+immediately, and, for another, because, completely
+played out by thirty-six hours at the wheel without relief,
+he had sunk into a sleep from which he had not rallied
+for over two days. Similar considerations would have
+prevented my seeing Rona. Besides being in quarantine
+she was in a state of raving delirium, which would have
+made it impossible for her to convey coherent information.
+Even Ranga, unaffected in mind and body though
+he was, I would hardly have been permitted to talk with
+when he landed, any more than I was two days later.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page107" id="page107"></a>[pg&nbsp;107]</span>
+No, everything considered, I fail to see where my earlier
+arrival would have made much difference in what happened.
+It must have been slated anyhow, I think&mdash;just
+bound to come off however the incidentals shaped.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Still askance at what he rated as my temerity in making
+an open landing in Townsville, Captain Tancred
+had somewhat reluctantly granted my request for a boat
+to take me ashore as soon as the quarantine officials were
+through with the ship. I couldn&#39;t, of course, go off in
+the quarantine launch, but one of the doctors lingered a
+few minutes to tell me what he knew of the <i>Cora</i>. Although
+her captain had died twenty-four hours before
+the schooner anchored, his remains had not been buried
+at sea. This, it appeared, had been largely due to the
+protests of some sort of a Kanaka girl the Skipper had
+had with him. According to the Bo&#39;sun&#39;s statement
+(fine upstanding fellow that looked like some kind of a
+Java man), she had gone plumb off her chump. Tried
+to knife the Mate first, and then plumped down by the
+Skipper&#39;s remains and threatened to stick the first man
+to touch it. The Mate, endeavouring to humour her,
+had not insisted on the burial&mdash;a reprehensible weakness
+on his part.... Common prudence demanded that
+the dead on a plague ship should be scuppered as soon
+as the breath was out of their bodies. That is, with a
+white man; with a nigger it did no harm to anticipate
+that event by an hour or so&mdash;as long as you were sure
+the fellow was going to whiff out anyway.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The funny part of it was, though (the Doctor went on),
+that the Skipper had not died of the plague at all. They
+had not, it was true, made any post-mortem in the rush of
+things; but it was certain, nevertheless, that his body
+had not displayed even the preliminary evidences of infection&mdash;no
+swelling of the glands of the groin or under
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page108" id="page108"></a>[pg&nbsp;108]</span>
+the arms. Magnificent physical specimen the chap was,
+but plainly a man who had punished an ocean of booze
+in his day. And yet&mdash;confound it all!&mdash;there was no
+evidence that the fellow had drunk himself to death,
+either. Now if it had been the Mate&mdash;<i>he</i> was exuding
+alcohol from every pore&mdash;absolutely reeking with it. Almost
+made a man drunk to breathe the air down to leeward
+of him. Seemed to have been on one glorious spree
+all the way from&mdash;somewhere up Solomon-way, he
+thought it was. Harried the niggers like a fiend, according
+to the Bo&#39;sun. Clubbed three or four of them
+to death for not stepping lively enough to his orders.
+Lucky thing the Skipper had scuppered all but one of
+the guns the first day out. But not all the booze he had
+soaked up had effected the nerve of the Mate. Kept his
+head and his legs to the last, finishing up with a straight
+twenty-four-hour trick at the wheel. Said none of the
+crew knew the Barrier Reef as well as he did. Had one
+nigger holding a parasol over him, another playing a
+concertina, another waiting handy with a bottle of
+whisky, and a fourth standing by to block any rushes
+from the Kanaka girl with her knife. Funny thing it
+never occurred to him to have her disarmed and tied up,
+or shut up. Grabbed the bottle of whisky and started to
+brain the Bo&#39;sun with it every time the latter tried to
+push in and relieve him at the wheel.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A chap of terrible determination and iron nerves, that
+Mate was, observed the Doctor. But no wonder....
+Think who he was! Allen! The Honourable Hartley
+Allen! The great Allen! Son of old Sir Jim Allen!
+Melbourne Cup winner! Best horseman in all Australia!
+Crooked as they make &#39;em&mdash;but how he could
+ride! Sent off to the Islands four or five years back for
+raising some sort of hell. His old Ticket-of-Leave had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page109" id="page109"></a>[pg&nbsp;109]</span>
+given him away when they came to strip him for a bath.
+No possible mistake about it. One of the doctors at the
+Quarantine Station had set a broken collar-bone for
+him once after he had fallen in a steeplechase at Coolgardie.
+Found the marks of the old compound fracture
+still humping up on the clavicle&mdash;the left one....</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was not without difficulty that I brought the excited
+young medico round to speaking of Bell again. The
+astounding fact that he himself, with his own hands, had
+actually helped to put the great and only Hartley Allen
+to bed, was proving almost too much for him. It was
+certainly not less than three separate times that he assured
+me that it was his own silk pajamas that were encasing
+the limbs of the resurrected hero. He switched
+subjects reluctantly, rising to go to his waiting launch.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Nothing in the world the matter with the big fellow&mdash;not
+even too much drink,&quot; he said as he began shuffling
+his health sheets together. &quot;He must have passed away
+from the sheer mental strain of the stunt he had tackled.
+Intense nervous strain&mdash;that was the one thing written
+all over the man. Face was starting to bloat a bit from
+the heat by the time I saw it first; but, even so, it still
+showed the lines of the most terrible mental suffering.
+Seemed to have gone out fighting hard to pull himself
+together&mdash;shoulders hunched up, finger-nails clenched
+deep into palms, lower lip bitten clean through.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;May not those&mdash;those things you mention have been
+caused by physical rather than mental agony?&quot; I asked,
+speaking very slowly to hide the agitation aroused by
+this significant intelligence. &quot;Isn&#39;t that about the way a
+man would repress his feelings if he was racked with&mdash;with
+stomach cramps&mdash;if he had eaten something that
+disagreed with him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Possibly so,&quot; admitted the Doctor, with the air of a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page110" id="page110"></a>[pg&nbsp;110]</span>
+man weighing an idea that had not occurred to him before;
+&quot;but somehow that wasn&#39;t the suggestion they
+carried to me&mdash;nor to any of us. Fact is, though, we
+didn&#39;t give the matter very much attention. That chap
+was dead&mdash;finished,&mdash;while the other white man and the
+girl&mdash;to say nothing of forty or fifty niggers&mdash;were alive.
+Then, with the excitement of finding we had the great
+Hartley Allen on our hands&mdash;and, on top of that, having
+the girl run <i>amuck</i> and give us the slip complete,&mdash;there
+was enough else to think about. The only&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The girl gave you the slip?&quot; I interrupted. &quot;How
+was that? You didn&#39;t mention it before.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Bolted and drowned herself in the creek,&quot; he replied;
+&quot;or at least there&#39;s every reason to believe she drowned
+herself, though they haven&#39;t found her body yet. She
+wasn&#39;t going to leave the Skipper, even when we started
+to take his body away for burial.... And of course
+we couldn&#39;t allow her to leave the Station until her
+period of quarantine was over. Had to take her away
+from the body by main force. She fought the whole lot
+of us with tooth and nail and a wicked little curly-bladed
+dagger. Stood us all off, too, and looked like
+getting ready to use the knife on herself when the big
+Malay (who chanced to be there, but had taken no part
+in the shindy up to that moment) stepped in, caught her
+wrist and took the nasty little toy away from her.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The big yellow man seemed to have rather a quieting
+effect on the girl. Blind mad as she was, she didn&#39;t try
+to stick him. It seemed to steady her a good deal when
+he talked to her in her own lingo. She was panting like
+a cat coming out of a fit when we left her, but was quite
+over her raving&mdash;wasn&#39;t even sobbing aloud. She was
+coming out of her hysteria&mdash;getting rational again. Her
+eyes, though still wild and almost throwing off sparks of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page111" id="page111"></a>[pg&nbsp;111]</span>
+anger, were quite free of the crazy look. It looked like
+our trouble with her was about over, but, to be on the
+safe side, we locked her up in one of the &#39;mad&#39; rooms.
+That was the last anyone has seen of her alive&mdash;or any
+other way, for that matter.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;You wouldn&#39;t have believed the thing possible!&quot;
+he ejaculated feelingly, turning back from the door and
+slapping the table resoundingly with his portfolio.
+&quot;That room was made to confine dangerous lunatics in,
+and it had fulfilled its purpose, too&mdash;up to night before
+last. To make it perfectly secure, it had been constructed
+without windows&mdash;nothing but a two-by-two
+hole up against the twelve-foot-high ceiling admitted
+light and air. There were no beds or chairs to be broken
+up when the occupant had tantrums.... Just sleeping
+mats, a sheet, a blanket and a mosquito net. No
+more. Even the wash basin was brought in and taken
+out by the attendant.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;In locking the girl in, no precautions were omitted
+except that of strapping her in a strait-jacket, and we
+had never resorted to that save in violent cases. The
+window&mdash;or rather air-hole&mdash;was so high and so small
+that it had never been considered worth while to put
+bars on it. But as it was the only conceivable way she
+could have got out (the attendant is absolutely trustworthy,
+and the key was not in his hands more than a
+minute or two anyway), we would have been forced to
+conclude that the girl had reached it with wings&mdash;had
+not we found the lower four or five feet of wall marked
+with the prints of the toes and balls of the bare feet which
+had apparently been violently projected against it. That
+led us to get a ladder and light and examine about the
+window more closely. For a foot or more below it the
+wall was splashed with blood and slightly scratched,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page112" id="page112"></a>[pg&nbsp;112]</span>
+where lacerated fingers had clawed at the narrow
+ledge.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It did not take us long to figure that, taking the
+whole length of the room to get going in, the girl had
+flung herself up the wall something in the way that a
+terrier will run six or eight feet up the side of a house
+for a ball or handkerchief fastened there. That&#39;s the
+only way we could account for the toe-prints on the wall,
+though it is quite possible that, after failing to pull off
+the trick in that fashion&mdash;it&#39;s a stunt that looks dead
+hopeless for anything but a monkey,&mdash;she managed it
+with a straight spring, high enough to get her fingers
+over the ledge. Even from there, not one woman in a
+million could pull herself up. But we had already remarked
+on the extreme wiriness of the girl (a regular
+human ape she was for agility), and so found it a bit
+easier to accept the evidence of our eyes. In some way or
+another she had managed it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The air-hole opened out under the eaves of the sheet-iron
+roof,&quot; the Doctor went on, forgetting his waiting
+launch in the interest of the story, and seating himself
+again at the table. &quot;It must have taken some jolly
+snaky wriggling to crawl through the hole, out over the
+eaves and on top of the roof; but she did it, else she
+could never have jumped across the big banyan, where
+we found some twigs broken at the point she hit, and
+some wisps of silk floss. The other side of that banyan&mdash;a
+hundred feet from the wall of the hospital&mdash;spreads
+until it comes to about fifteen feet from the station wall.
+The wall is ten feet high, has broken glass on the top of
+it, with three or four strands of barbed wire above
+that.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Swinging to the ground by a pendent air-root on the
+side she had landed in, the girl crossed under the tree&mdash;the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page113" id="page113"></a>[pg&nbsp;113]</span>
+marks of her bare feet showing plainly in the soft
+earth&mdash;and used a similar ladder with which to mount on
+the other side. To be sure of clearing the barbed wire,
+she had climbed to a firm perch fully twenty-five feet
+from the ground, and made her final jump from there.
+Luckily for her, the cane field on the other side of the
+wall had been flooded but a day or two before&mdash;though
+I don&#39;t doubt she would have jumped just the same
+if it had been to a cobblestone pavement.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;We found the deep prints of her feet, knees and
+hands where she had sprawled on striking. Her tracks
+down to the edge of a sprouting row of seed-cane, and
+the marks where she had crawled up out of a deep irrigating
+ditch to the road, were all we had to indicate the
+direction she had taken. As she had seemed plumb daft
+about the dead Skipper, we figured that she had probably
+broken out with the idea of going to his grave, and perhaps
+making an end of herself there. If that was it, she
+failed. There were no signs whatever of her having been
+near the fresh mound we had tucked the big fellow
+away under. It was some distance away from the Station,
+and, in the night, it isn&#39;t likely she would have met
+anyone to ask the way of. The only grave she found
+was her own, and not a very restful one at that, I&#39;m
+afraid.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;We had noticed that she seemed to set great store by
+a big yellow shawl she wore&mdash;rather a fine old piece of
+Oriental work it looked, with a dragon or some other
+kind of wild animal embroidered on it. Well, when we
+found that lying on the bank of Ross Creek, just a bit
+inland of the town, we felt so sure that it marked the
+jumping-off place for her in more ways than one. For
+that reason, what search has been pressed since has been
+in the form of shooting alligators, and seeing if one of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page114" id="page114"></a>[pg&nbsp;114]</span>
+them appears to have enjoyed anything extra-special in
+the way of tucker lately.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">An impatient toot from his launch carried the Doctor
+to the door again, where he paused long enough to assure
+me for the third or fourth time that it would be most
+unlikely that permission would be granted me to see the
+Mate or the Boatswain of the <i>Cora</i> until their spell of
+quarantine was over. If I was really anxious about it,
+he would gladly put in a word for me with the Chief.
+I would have to show good reason for my request, of
+course. Perhaps, if it chanced that I was able to shed
+any light on how the schooner came to get into such a
+mess&mdash;I cut him short by saying that I might call at
+the Quarantine Station when I came ashore a little later.
+What I knew about the sailing of the <i>Cora</i> from Kai
+happened to be the one thing I didn&#39;t care to confide to
+anyone&mdash;just yet. Asking the Mate to order my boat
+to stand by for me a few minutes longer, I went to my
+cabin to be alone while I turned the fresh developments
+over in my mind.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had been prepared to await the coming of the <i>Cora</i>
+indefinitely. In fact, what I expected above anything
+else was that the final news would be a report that she
+had been found piled up on any one of a thousand reefs
+that spread their coral claws all the way from the Louisiades
+to the Great Barrier. And in case she did get
+through, I was quite prepared to learn that both of the
+white men and the girl had succumbed to the plague. But
+to be told that, after the schooner had avoided disaster,
+and all three of them the plague, that the two upon
+whom my interest and affection had centred were gone&mdash;dead,&mdash;was
+just a bit staggering. It was now up to me
+to determine upon a definite course of action, and, since
+it was now out of the question attempting to follow my
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page115" id="page115"></a>[pg&nbsp;115]</span>
+first impulse of going to Allen at once and forcing a
+showdown, I wanted time to think.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">What the Doctor had told me of the way Bell appeared
+to have died had instantly reawakened my suspicions
+of Allen. Had the <i>kor-klee</i>, working with a
+recurrent effect, finally proved fatal? Or had Allen,
+perhaps, administered a second and stronger dose? He
+would have had a hundred opportunities to do that had
+he desired to. Rona&#39;s attacks on the Mate, indicating
+the deadliest hatred, seemed to prove that her first suspicions
+of him had not weakened during the voyage&mdash;more
+likely, indeed, had hardened to a certainty. The
+belief I had been entertaining that Allen had made up
+his mind to play the game out on the square was not very
+deeply grounded.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">My sense of personal loss in the passing of Bell and
+Rona was not a thing I cared to let myself dwell upon
+for the moment. There was no question that the news
+of Rona&#39;s death had shocked me even more than that of
+Bell&#39;s. Not that there was anything more between us
+than I have already told. I had never let myself think
+of her in terms of physical possession, though the sheer
+animal attraction of the girl was beyond anything I had
+ever experienced in a woman. But her appeal to the
+artistic side of me had been stronger even than that.
+Just as the thrill I felt at the first sight of her bathing in
+the pink-lipped bowl of the reef had made the very world
+itself seem more wonderful and beautiful, so now the depression
+that filled me on realizing that I was never
+again to have sight of her made the world seem emptier
+and drearier.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Another thing: there was no denying that Bell, splendid
+fellow that he was, had shot his bolt. A real come-back
+with him was too much to expect. The most that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page116" id="page116"></a>[pg&nbsp;116]</span>
+could have been hoped for was that he would &quot;finish in
+style,&quot; and that I was assured he had done, no matter
+in what agony of soul and body his brave spirit had taken
+flight. But Rona&#39;s bolt was still unsped. The girl had
+hardly begun to finger Life&#39;s bowstring. It was almost
+as hard to think of the flaming, soaring spirit of her as
+quenched, as it was to believe that the matchless perfection,
+the supple gracefulness of her body&mdash;<i>shooting alligators
+to see if any of them had been enjoying anything
+extra-special in tucker lately</i>! I could not pursue that
+line of thought any further. I agreed with the Doctor
+that the fact that the girl had parted with her beloved
+shawl indicated that she had reached a jumping-off
+place&mdash;a point where she had no further use for it. I
+could not picture her&mdash;living&mdash;without its amber-bright
+flame streaming about her limbs. The wonder was that
+she had not kept it for a shroud. As I came out upon
+the deck to go to my boat, the intermittent crack of
+rifle shots along the shore told me that the &quot;search&quot; had
+not been abandoned.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Beyond deciding to go ashore and see if anything further
+could be learned, I had made no plans. It seemed
+that about the best I could do would be to wait in Townsville
+until Allen and Ranga were out of quarantine, and
+then let things shape as they would; but always assuming
+that, in case the former could not satisfy me he was
+innocent of Bell&#39;s death, I should do what I could to
+settle the reckoning with him. That would be my atonement&mdash;to
+Bell and to myself&mdash;for my sorry failure to
+&quot;measure up&quot; the day the <i>Cora Andrews</i> came to Kai
+Lagoon.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Captain Tancred, who had never quite settled it in his
+own mind how a man who openly admitted he had been
+living in the Kai colony for months would not have to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page117" id="page117"></a>[pg&nbsp;117]</span>
+be smuggled ashore on the quiet if he expected to avoid
+arrest in Australia, met me at the gangway.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Best to leave the luggage aboard, lad,&quot; he began
+genially; &quot;then that&#39;ll be ain less thing ye&#39;ll hae to
+bother wi&#39; if ye&#39;re haen&#39; to cut an&#39; run for it. If ye&#39;re
+not back ag&#39;in by the time I&#39;m gettin&#39; awa&#39;, than I&#39;ll
+be sendin&#39; it in for ye on the Company&#39;s launch. But
+ye&#39;d best be hangin&#39; on wi&#39; me a bittie, an&#39; tak&#39; me to see
+them pictur&#39;s ye&#39;ve been tellin&#39; me aboot in Sydney
+toon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">My pictures! The Exhibition had slipped my mind
+completely, driven out by the news of the <i>Cora</i> and the
+anxieties that had followed in its train. I had told
+Captain Tancred something of my coming show, but had
+hardly convinced him. He was far too considerate to
+say outright that he didn&#39;t believe me, but my Kai origin
+could not be ignored. If I was to have an exhibition
+of paintings in Sydney, then why was I stopping off in
+Townsville? On that point&mdash;since I didn&#39;t want to go
+into the <i>Cora</i> affair with anyone until I knew how things
+were going to shape&mdash;I had hardly been able to reassure
+the old sceptic. I might be an artist all right enough&mdash;I
+don&#39;t think he had any serious doubts on that score,&mdash;but
+I must also be some kind of a crook. He was plainly
+convinced in his own mind that I was trying to slip into
+Australia on the quiet, and was rather hurt because I
+would not take him into my confidence and let him
+help me.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But why not take in the Exhibition? In nine days,
+with any luck in connections, I could go to Sydney and
+back, with a day or two to spare. Even if the trip ran
+over that time, it was not likely that the man I wanted
+to see would be getting away immediately.... And,
+in any event, I would know how to find him, whether in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page118" id="page118"></a>[pg&nbsp;118]</span>
+Australia or the Islands. Further, it could not but have
+a salutary effect on my nerves to get quite beyond the
+attraction I felt that Quarantine Station would have for
+me if I lingered within physical reach of it. Nothing
+but absinthe, and more absinthe, and then more absinthe,
+could be depended upon to relieve my nerves once
+they were fully wrought up, as I knew they must be if I
+remained in Townsville in enforced inaction, fretting my
+heart out with impatience. And too much absinthe
+would mean only one thing&mdash;that I would begin the day
+on which I was to meet &quot;Slant&quot; Allen for a final showdown
+in a condition of mind and body precisely similar
+to that in which I had entered upon another day of
+accursed memory&mdash;and, doubtless, with equally shameful
+consequences to myself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">These thoughts flashed through my mind in a fraction
+of the time I have taken to set them down. My reply
+to Captain Tancred followed close upon his suggestion
+that I leave my luggage aboard.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I think I&#39;ll be going through to Sydney with you,
+Captain&mdash;or at least as far as Brisbane,&quot; I said, motioning
+to the steward to bring up the bags he had already
+stowed in the waiting boat. &quot;I know no one whose
+opinion on my daubs I&#39;d rather have than yours. But
+I&#39;ll pay my little visit ashore here just the same, counting
+on you to get my kit landed in the unlikely event of
+my not being aboard again when you get under way this
+afternoon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was not long in coming to the conclusion that there
+was nothing new to be learned ashore, that is, with respect
+to what had happened on the <i>Cora</i> in the course of
+her voyage from Kai. This was not because the story
+was not on everyone&#39;s lips.... Quite to the contrary,
+indeed, the town was agog with the dramatic suddenness
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page119" id="page119"></a>[pg&nbsp;119]</span>
+of the arrival of the plague ship and its astonishing
+sequel. But as no one had been allowed to see
+any of the survivors, such accounts as were current were
+only those which had been passed out by the quarantine
+people, and about all the latter knew I felt that I had
+already gathered that morning from the Doctor on the
+<i>Utupua</i>. Bell&#39;s name was not mentioned, and not a man
+I talked with knew that the dead white man had been the
+Skipper.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">For Townsville&mdash;for all of Australia&mdash;the overwhelming
+appeal of the event was in the fact that a black-birding
+schooner had been brought into port by an ex-Ticket-of-Leavester,
+who had <i>volunteered</i> to risk his life
+in an attempt to save those of half a hundred plague-stricken
+niggers. That one circumstance in itself was
+wonderful enough, but when, on top of it, the announcement
+was made that the hero was none other than the
+former idol of sporting Australia, the Hon. Hartley
+Allen, popular imagination was stirred as rarely ever
+before. What man in all the Antipodes had not envied
+Allen, the supremely successful owner, rider and sportsman?
+What woman had not been intrigued by the
+romantic dash of him? What boy had not dreamed of
+growing up in his image?</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Townsville, delirious with the dramatic appeal of this
+splendid act on the part of a man who had tasted the wine
+of adulation as he had drunk the dregs of infamy, was
+but a microcosm of Sydney and Melbourne, Brisbane and
+Adelaide, to all of which the news had been flashed by
+wire. Every town and hamlet, from Cairns to Hobart,
+from Perth to Woolongong, were dispatching telegrams
+of congratulation to a man who was still muttering in
+his drunken sleep behind the walls of the Townsville
+Quarantine Station. Sydney was competing with Brisbane
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page120" id="page120"></a>[pg&nbsp;120]</span>
+for the honour of being the first to bestow the
+&quot;Freedom of the City&quot; upon the man both of them had
+had some share in transporting. A special from Sydney
+to the local sheet, hinted darkly of what might happen to
+the misguided official who attempted to revive any of
+the old charges against the man &quot;whose sublime courage
+had emblazoned his name upon the tablets of undying
+fame.... A hand that is raised today against the
+Hon. Hartley Allen is a hand that is raised against the
+noblest traditions of Australia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had to elbow through half of a densely packed block
+to read that last on the bulletin in front of the <i>Trumpet&#39;s</i>
+office. The mob cheered wildly as the message was
+chalked up on the blackboard&mdash;cheered the stirring sentiment
+and growled ominously at the suggestion that
+any hand would dare to be raised against the Hon.
+Hartley Allen and the noblest traditions of Australia.
+As I elbowed my way out again, I wondered just what
+the Charters Towers miner, who had manifested his exuberant
+approval by slapping me on the back, would
+have thought&mdash;nay, what he would have done&mdash;had he
+known that the hand fingering the guard of the revolver
+in the right side-pocket of my shooting jacket (I had
+brought the useful little weapon on the off chance that
+it might be needed) was rather more likely than not to
+be raised against at least one of those cherished institutions
+he was so anxious to uphold.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I began to perceive that the line between dealing out
+retributive justice to a blackguard of a murderer and
+assassinating a national hero in cold blood might easily
+become too hairlike in its tenuousness for a red-eyed
+Australian jury to admit the existence of it. For it was
+nothing less than a national hero that &quot;Slant&quot; Allen
+was becoming, even before he roused from the heavy
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page121" id="page121"></a>[pg&nbsp;121]</span>
+sleep which had held him ever since he collapsed over the
+wheel as the <i>Cora</i> came to anchor. That circumstance,
+I told myself, complicated my task beyond measure,
+though I couldn&#39;t, of course, allow it to make any difference
+in my program in the event Allen wasn&#39;t able to
+satisfy me that he was guiltless of the murder of my
+friend. But if things should transpire which might
+make Allen anxious to put <i>me</i> out of the way&mdash;if he, not
+I were the attacking party&mdash;that would simplify things
+greatly. I began to ponder that felicitous possibility.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Would not the fact that I was the only living man
+(Ranga, whatever he had seen or heard, would hardly
+need to be reckoned with as a witness) who knew the
+actual facts about the way he had &quot;volunteered&quot; to join
+the <i>Cora</i> at Kai awaken a desire in Allen&#39;s lawless breast
+to seal my mouth for good and all, now that he had so
+much to lose by the truth&#39;s coming out? The feeling
+that such would be the case&mdash;that the dizzily mounting
+fortunes of the ex-beach-comber would ultimately impel
+him to seek me out for an understanding&mdash;grew on me
+more and more as I turned the situation over in my mind,
+until at last it became a certainty, against which I felt
+justified in preparing as a boxer trains for a definitely
+scheduled prize fight.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I did not reckon it worth while to call at the Quarantine
+Station, which was some distance from the town and
+not easy to reach. I did, however, just before I put off
+to the ship, meet the young doctor with whom I had
+talked in the morning. The only thing which he was able
+to add to what he had already told me was in connection
+with the question I had raised respecting the cause of
+Bell&#39;s death. To be certain that he had been correct in
+stating that the latter had not died of plague, he had
+made a special inquiry. In response to this he had been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page122" id="page122"></a>[pg&nbsp;122]</span>
+shown a slide made from a smear they had taken of the
+late Skipper&#39;s blood. The bacteriologist had seen to that
+immediately the body was landed. It showed no traces
+whatever of plague bacilli. I could be quite assured on
+that point. The Chief was unwilling to hazard an
+opinion as to what the real cause of the man&#39;s death
+might have been. He seemed rather to regret that he
+had failed to order a post-mortem. Allen was still
+sleeping heavily, but would be right as a trivet beyond a
+doubt as soon as he woke up and gave them a chance to
+sweat some of the alcohol out of his hide. Pulse steady
+as a church.... Temperature a shade sub-normal.
+Marvellous constitution.... Wonderful fellow altogether.
+Any word of the girl? No, nothing. Ten
+pounds reward had been offered for the recovery of her
+body, or any recognizable part of it. Search was still
+going on, and he pointed across to the opposite foreshore,
+where a couple of spindling Hindu coolies&mdash;evidently
+sugar plantation contract hands&mdash;were earnestly engaged
+in performing &quot;<i>hari-kiri</i>&quot; upon a plethoric &#39;gator
+they had just bagged and towed to the beach.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Doctor was already beginning to look ahead. Did
+I fancy Allen would be able to wangle it so as to get
+an entry in for the Melbourne Cup in the short time
+that remained before that classic was run? Entries
+closed some time ago, of course. He&#39;d have to square
+it with the stewards some way. They might make a
+special exception, seeing who Allen was, and what he
+had just done. Any horse with his colours would carry
+a barrel of money, just out of sentiment if nothing else.
+Did I think he would wangle an entry?</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;No,&quot; I replied, stepping down into my boat. &quot;No,
+I&#39;m afraid the chances are all against it.&quot; My mind
+had been torn with doubt over a number of things that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page123" id="page123"></a>[pg&nbsp;123]</span>
+day.... It was a relief to be asked to express an
+opinion on a matter respecting which I had no doubt....
+Not a shred of it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Captain Tancred welcomed me back to the <i>Utupua</i>
+with a significant grin. &quot;So ye didna find the outlook
+ashore to yer likin&#39; lad?&quot; he boomed boisterously,
+thumping me on the back. &quot;Weel, dinna ye mind, since
+ye wasna nabbed. I&#39;ll be findin&#39; a wa&#39; to slip ye aff in
+Sydney sae they wan&#39;t be puttin&#39; nose to yer trail till
+ye&#39;re clean awa&#39;.&quot; The look on the old boy&#39;s face was
+a study when, a few days later, after the tugs had nosed
+his ship into her berth at the Circular Quay, I stalked
+brazenly off down the gangway, with no more regard for
+the two Bobbies guarding the dock gate than they had
+for me. He had exacted two promises from me before
+he let me go: one, that I was to take him to see my pictures,
+and the other, that I would not fail to let him
+know if there ever came a time when he could be of
+Service to me.... &quot;Real sarvice, lad; you&#39;ll be twiggin&#39;
+wha&#39; I mean.&quot; I gave both promises freely, just as
+I kept them later&mdash;yes, both of them.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As I had trunks, with all the common accessories of
+civilization, stored at the <i>Australia</i>, my transformation
+from a beach-comber to a fairly correct imitation of a
+comfortably heeled artist was the matter of but a few
+hours. My appearance at the Exhibition could not have
+been better timed. The affair had been extremely well
+handled from the first. I had been sending pictures to
+Sydney from all parts of the South Seas for the last
+eighteen months, packing them up as completed and
+getting them off whenever opportunity offered. Two or
+three had been lost, but, on the whole, I reckoned the
+plan safer than trying to take them round with me in
+one lot, at the risk of losing the bunch.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page124" id="page124"></a>[pg&nbsp;124]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER X<br />
+<small>ART AND SUSPENSE</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">Nothing</span> had been further from my mind than
+an Australian exhibition. I cared little for the
+provincial approbation of the Antipodes, and I
+was hardly ready for Paris&mdash;not quite yet. It was only
+at the reiterated requests of friends (two of them were
+young Australian artists I had known in my student
+days in Paris), to whom I was under real obligations for
+their kindness in receiving and storing my pictures as
+they dribbled into Sydney, that I finally gave consent to
+a public showing. In doing this, I had stipulated particularly
+that they were to take all the troubles and
+responsibilities of the affair, and that under no circumstances
+was I to be expected to appear in person&mdash;unless,
+of course, it suited my convenience and inclination at the
+time.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As I have said, the affair had been most intelligently
+handled from the first. There had not been enough of
+my canvases comfortably to fill the wing of the big New
+South Wales Government Museum and Art Gallery
+which was available for exhibitions, but my friends,
+rather than pull the show off at a less pretentious and
+worse lighted gallery, had added enough of their own
+pictures to relieve the coldness of otherwise blank walls.
+These were also South Sea marines&mdash;it was a straight
+seascape show throughout,&mdash;but more or less conventional
+in inspiration and execution. Benchley might
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page125" id="page125"></a>[pg&nbsp;125]</span>
+have been painting marine backgrounds for an aquarium,
+so faithfully did he labour to reproduce every detail of
+jutting coral branches and floating seaweed. Crafts,
+on the other hand, had fallen early under the influence
+of Turner, and persisted in bulling the yellow ochre
+market by drenching his Great Barrier Reef seascapes
+with such a flood of golden light as was never seen save
+at the head of the Adriatic and now and then on the
+coasts of Tripoli and Algeria.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I would hardly characterize my own work as a compromise
+between these two extremes.... It was <i>not</i>
+that, though I <i>was</i> less of a slave to form than Benchley,
+and by no means so emancipated from it as Crafts.
+Rather, I should say, I was striving, independent of
+either classic or contemporary influence, to paint such
+depth, warmth and atmosphere into my tropical seascapes
+as would make them convey an <i>intenser</i> suggestion
+of reality. I did not expect water spaniels to pay me
+the subtle compliment of trying to gambol in my breakers,
+nor children to try to launch their toy sailboats in
+my lagoons.... Benchley&#39;s &quot;colour photograph&quot;
+effects were more likely to attain to those distinctions
+than my comparatively impressionistic sketches. What
+I was striving for was an effect that would compel some
+such comment as old Jackson had made the first time
+he stood off and conned my &quot;Swells and Shells&quot;&mdash;&quot;Gawd
+bly&#39;me, that&#39;s <i>it</i>! That water&#39;s wetter &#39;n a swept
+deck, an&#39;, s&#39;elp me Mike, but I c&#39;n bloomin&#39; near sniff
+them bloody clams!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Very naturally, then, since the sea was what I was
+painting, the impressions of anyone who didn&#39;t know the
+sea as intimately as did my beach-combing cronies of Kai
+wasn&#39;t going to worry me much. The opinions of men
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page126" id="page126"></a>[pg&nbsp;126]</span>
+who knew less about the subject of my pictures, and
+more about how pictures in general were painted, didn&#39;t
+strike me as anything that counted very seriously.
+Nevertheless when, at Brisbane on the voyage south, I
+got the Sydney papers with the account of the opening
+of the show, it was a good deal of a satisfaction to find
+that my work appeared to have got over with the art
+critics. These had, of course (since they were denied
+Jackson&#39;s facility of expression), to confine themselves
+to the jargon of their kind. It was plain, however, that
+they had been favourably impressed, and were doing
+the best they could with their comparatively restricted
+vocabularies. Mere city dwellers, too, most of them, one
+had to allow for their limited capacity of appreciation
+for something&mdash;the sea&mdash;which they knew only from
+other pictures. But even allowing for that, it was reassuring
+to find that they were coming across so whole-heartedly.
+Such capsules of praise as they had in stock
+were scattered with lavish hands for whoso would to
+swallow. &quot;The soul of the sea palpitates through every
+canvas,&quot; said the <i>Herald</i>; &quot;you leave the gallery with
+the tang of blown brine fresh in your nostrils,&quot; said the
+<i>Telegraph</i>; &quot;Australia is honoured with having the
+first chance to see this brilliantly distinctive work,&quot; said
+the illustrated <i>Australasian</i>, and promised four full pages
+of reproductions of the &quot;gems of the collection&quot; in its
+next issue. The young lady (I judged she was young)
+who was on the job for the Melbourne <i>Age</i> gushed
+breathlessly for a column and a half. This was a sample:
+&quot;In &#39;Mother-of-Pearl&#39; he has woven with a warp
+of sunbeams and a woof of rainbow&mdash;a shimmering brocade
+of exultantly sentient brightness!&quot; Capsules of
+praise, every one of these; but they were from the top
+shelf beyond a doubt, and the fact that they had been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page127" id="page127"></a>[pg&nbsp;127]</span>
+reached for indicated that at least something of my message
+had dribbled over the frames.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The <i>Bulletin</i> had done rather better than the others in
+commissioning for the occasion an &quot;art critic&quot; who (as
+transpired in the course of his half-page article) had
+sailed his own sixty-footer to Auckland and back. He,
+at least, had met the sea on more intimate terms than
+was possible through Sunday mixed-bathing at Coogee
+and Manley (with occasional ferryboat passages, about
+the limit the others had gone, I reckoned). Said he, in
+speaking of &quot;The Seventh Son of a Seventh Son&quot;: &quot;The
+beat of the eternal sea was behind every slash of the
+brush with which this Franco-American wizard of light
+and colour painted that rolling mountain of water. I
+felt my fingers involuntarily clutching at the spokes of
+the wheel to bring her up to meet the menace of that
+curling crest. I forgot where I was ... I almost felt
+the heave of a deck beneath my feet....&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I rather liked that, I must confess; though perhaps
+it didn&#39;t give me quite the double-barrelled thrill of
+&quot;Heifer&quot; Halligan&#39;s comment when I sent for him to
+pass judgment on that same picture before the paint of
+my finishing touches upon it was dry. A month before,
+as I have already mentioned, I had given the &quot;Heifer&quot;
+a pretty severe pummelling with the four-ounce gloves,
+and, like the good sport he was, to show that there was
+no hard feeling on the score of his battered optics, he
+had volunteered to sail me in his sloop to Tuka-tuva (the
+reef on which Bell lost the <i>Flying Scud</i>, it may be recalled)
+so that I could make some close-range studies
+of hard-running waves at the point of breaking. And,
+just to show that there was no hard feeling on <i>my</i> part
+over the wallop below my belt with which the &quot;Heifer&quot;
+had finally brought the bout to a close, I accepted. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page128" id="page128"></a>[pg&nbsp;128]</span>
+studies had been made&mdash;just a few slashes on oil-cloth
+with a rather useful waterproof paint I had mixed specially
+for &quot;sloppy&quot; stunts like that&mdash;with my shivering
+anatomy lashed to the <i>Wet-Eyed Susy&#39;s</i> bowsprit, while
+the &quot;Heifer&quot; tacked back and forth just beyond the line
+where the pull of the shoaling reef, dragging at their
+bases, let the green-black tops of the combers tumble over
+in a thunderous roar. As he was really taking a good
+deal of a chance of losing his handy little pearler, if
+nothing else, it was only right that the &quot;Heifer&#39;s&quot; request
+for a first look-see at the completed picture should
+have the call.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">He studied it in silence for a minute or two, legs wide
+apart and his bullet head cocked judicially to one side.
+Then his fine teeth were bared in a broad grin and he
+vented a throaty chuckle of amused admiration. Said
+he: &quot;Mister Whitney, that hulkin&#39; ol&#39; lalapalooser there
+looks like he has all the kick behint him of that bally
+wallop on the solar plexus you floored me with the other
+day.&quot; Not even the Sydney <i>Bulletin&#39;s dilletante</i> yachtsman
+could do quite as well as that&mdash;from my standpoint,
+at least. But of course I had a weakness for the Kai
+viewpoint.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Exhibition had been opened early in the week&mdash;the
+usual affair of the kind, &quot;Under the Patronage and
+in the Presence of His Excellency, the Governor General
+and Lady X&mdash;&mdash;,&quot; and a long list of specially invited
+guests. Amiable old Lord X&mdash;&mdash; had made one of the
+happy little speeches for which he was famous. Then
+they had all had tea and a look at the pictures. This
+inevitable formal session out of the way, the show was
+opened to the general public. Under the stimulus of the
+astonishingly enthusiastic press, the public had come
+through beyond all expectations. For the next three days
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page129" id="page129"></a>[pg&nbsp;129]</span>
+the crush at the gallery was, as the <i>Bulletin</i> had it, like a
+&quot;bargain day rush at <i>Morden&#39;s</i>.&quot; On Friday, it was
+advertised, Sir Joseph Preston, R.A., a very distinguished
+English artist visiting in Australia, had consented
+to speak at the Exhibition on &quot;The Painter with
+the New Method and the New Message.&quot; This was the
+day of my arrival in Sydney. It did not occur to me at
+first just who the subject of the discourse was to be.
+When it finally came home to me, I began speeding up
+my transformation process at once. By dint of rushed
+valeting and dressing, I just managed to reach the gallery
+as Sir Joseph was getting under way.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I won&#39;t endeavour to set down his speech, not even in
+outline. It was highly complimentary from first to last&mdash;and
+not even condescending, which was as surprising as
+pleasing when one considered how lofty an eminence Sir
+Joseph occupied in the art world. One thing I was just
+a bit disappointed about, though, was that the speaker
+seemed to assume that the pictures on exhibition represented
+my ultimate expression, the best I could do, or
+could be expected to do; whereas I knew that I had
+hardly got my foot well planted on the first rung of the
+ladder. I regretted without resenting this. I hadn&#39;t
+painted my hopes and ambitions into the pictures, so how
+was Sir Joseph Preston, more than anybody else, to see
+what I was driving at? I rather wanted to tell him about
+it, though. I hadn&#39;t talked with an artist of the old
+boy&#39;s calibre since I was in Paris, and not often there.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was just screwing up my nerve to push in and introduce
+myself, when Benchley pounced upon me with a
+joyous whoop and did the thing as a matter of course.
+Totally oblivious of the widening circle of wondering
+cackle that arose as the news of my unexpected, and not
+undramatic, appearance spread outward through the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page130" id="page130"></a>[pg&nbsp;130]</span>
+jam, I held forth to the beaming Royal Academician on
+the things that had been passing through my mind. The
+great man fired as though he had been of tow and my
+words&mdash;my ideas&mdash;were a torch laid to the inflammable
+mass of him.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Magnificent! Perfectly ripping!&quot; he exclaimed
+with enthusiasm; &quot;but what a shame I didn&#39;t know that
+ten minutes ago so that I could have told them! By
+Jove, I&#39;ll tell them now! Better yet&mdash;jolly good idea;
+<i>you</i> tell them. Just the things you&#39;ve been telling me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Benchley, Crafts and my other sponsors descended
+upon me like a pack of hounds at those words, and the
+first thing I knew I had been hustled up onto their little
+dais, and Sir Joseph was introducing me as &quot;a gentleman
+who can make a few pertinent additions to my late remarks.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I hadn&#39;t been called upon for a speech since I won the
+middle-weight boxing championship of Harvard in my
+Junior year, and speaking was by no means my long
+suit even in those days. I bucked up and went through
+it now though, just as I did on that first occasion. It&#39;s
+no very difficult thing to get away with when you know
+what you want to say&mdash;and have the crowd with you.
+I spoke briefly, but very earnestly&mdash;very much to the
+point, too, I think. When the crowd had quieted down
+a bit, tea was served. The next morning, when I read
+the papers in bed, it was to discover that I had become
+a fully fledged&mdash;or perhaps maned is the proper word&mdash;lion.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In one of those same papers there was an interesting
+item of news about another lion. The special representative
+the <i>Herald</i> had rushed to Townsville immediately
+the news of the <i>Cora Andrews</i> affair had been received,
+wired that the Hon. Hartley Allen, replying from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page131" id="page131"></a>[pg&nbsp;131]</span>
+the Quarantine Station to a note the correspondent had
+addressed him there, announced definitely that it was his
+intention to pay a visit to his old home town of Sydney.
+He would leave by the first steamer sailing after the
+doctors had certified him free of the danger of plague
+infection.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That was good news. The best I could have hoped
+for. It confirmed my growing belief that I was not
+going to have to do much, if any, seeking in order to
+meet my man. And it was a hundred to one that the
+doctor with whom I had talked on the <i>Utupua</i> had told
+Allen of the conversation as soon as the latter came out
+of his long sleep, I was even inclined to the opinion that
+his decision to go south as soon as he could had been
+influenced by a desire to find out once and for all what
+attitude I was going to take toward him. This was all
+to the good. There was no need of my hurrying back to
+Townsville now. I could stay in Sydney and enjoy my
+triumph while watching that of the Hon. Hartley Allen
+develop. With a lighter heart than I had known since
+the rumble of the <i>Cora&#39;s</i> anchor chain awakened me
+on that day of hateful memory in Kai, I tumbled out of
+bed, took a cold bath, and went down to the dining-room
+for breakfast&mdash;the greatest burst of early matutinal
+energy I had shown in years.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The avidity of the interest of the public in the Hon.
+Hartley Allen increased day by day as the time
+approached for the hero to come south. All of the important
+papers had special men on the job in Townsville,
+and every scrap of news bearing the least relation
+to the man of the hour was instantly put on the wires
+and rushed into print. Save for that one announcement
+that he intended visiting Sydney, Allen himself gave out
+nothing. The correspondents had to confine themselves
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page132" id="page132"></a>[pg&nbsp;132]</span>
+to reports of his continued improvement in health, as
+passed out to them by the doctors, and to speculation&mdash;columns
+of it&mdash;as to what effect Allen&#39;s return might be
+expected to have upon racing. His elder brother&mdash;Sir
+James, who was now in England&mdash;had allowed Hartley&#39;s
+stable to run down a good deal after the latter had been
+shipped off to the Islands. There were a few good
+horses left after the best of the string had been sold to
+pay off debts, and these would form a nucleus which
+could not fail to develop quickly into a factor to be
+reckoned with in the meets of next season. There was
+no limit to the discussion of this phase of the affair, Melbourne
+and Sydney racing experts devoting even more
+space to it than the special men in Townsville.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Of the story of the <i>Cora Andrews</i> there was nothing
+new whatever being brought out. If Allen was telling
+the doctors at the Quarantine Station anything, it must
+have been in confidence, for these professed to have
+learned nothing further every time the correspondents
+pressed them for details. The schooner herself, it was
+reported, had broken from her mooring during a gale
+and been driven upon the beach of Cleveland Bay, some
+miles from the town. A hole had been stove in her bow
+and it would be impossible to get her off before considerable
+repairs were carried out. As she had not been
+disinfected since the removal of the plague victims, there
+would probably be some delay about the repairs, especially
+as the question of her ownership was in doubt.
+She had belonged to the man who sailed her in the
+labour-recruiting trade, and he was dead. So was the
+Skipper who had taken her over in the Louisiades. It
+looked like the Hon. Hartley Allen had the most valid
+claim to her, but that was a matter to be adjusted by
+the courts in any event. In the meantime, the schooner,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page133" id="page133"></a>[pg&nbsp;133]</span>
+as she was lying in fairly quiet water, was probably safe
+until the next gale. Thus the papers.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">When Allen finally came out of quarantine it transpired
+that he would have a wait of three days on his
+hands before there was a steamer departing for the south.
+The delay was unavoidable, although an enthusiastic
+Sydney paper had suggested that the Admiral commanding
+the Australian Naval Station should detach a gunboat
+to bring the hero home. Allen, it appeared, had
+actually tried to avoid meeting the newspaper men, and
+consented to do so finally only on the condition that he
+would not be expected to give out anything in the way
+of an interview in respect to his past, present or future.
+As they had no alternative in the matter, the correspondents
+accepted the ultimatum, but only&mdash;as most of
+them confessed&mdash;in the hope of getting it modified when
+action was joined. They were doomed to disappointment.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen received them on the veranda of a house that had
+been put at his disposal by a prominent local shipping
+man&mdash;a detached bungalow in the grounds of the latter&#39;s
+home on the outskirts of the town. They reported him
+looking rather soft&mdash;a good two stone heavier than his
+former riding weight. He was heavily browned from the
+tropical sun, showed a tinge of yellow&mdash;doubtless from
+malaria and <i>dengue</i>,&mdash;and his face was deeply lined
+about the eyes and mouth. He looked to have aged
+rather more than the five years of his absence: but life
+in the Islands was hardly the rest cure most Australians
+fancied it. No, not by a long shot.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Except for his refusal to tell anything whatever of the
+story of how he had brought the plague ship through the
+Great Barrier Reef, Allen had been very courteous and
+agreeable to the pressmen. They all agreed that he was
+in good fettle&mdash;quite full of beans. Indeed, it was Allen
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page134" id="page134"></a>[pg&nbsp;134]</span>
+who did all of the interviewing. Persistently refusing to
+answer any questions about himself, he was avid of interest
+concerning all that had happened in the racing
+world during his absence. What were the real facts
+behind the breakdown of the Colchester filly after she
+had won the Victoria National so handily? Who was
+that colt <i>Ballarat Boy</i> out of?&mdash;the one that had upset
+all the dope in the spring meet at Adelaide. Were Tod
+Sloan and Skeets Martin still piling up wins in England?
+What was the secret of their success? Was there
+any chance of these or any other of the Yank jockeys
+coming to Australia?</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Answering such questions as these for an hour was the
+way that bunch of high-salaried feature writers interviewed
+the Hon. Hartley Allen. And when, as one of
+them put it in somewhat mixed simile, they were
+&quot;pumped dry as a last year&#39;s dope sheet,&quot; the hero announced
+that the interview was over.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Disappointed in their endeavours to pry any pearls
+from the oyster into which Allen (for reasons best
+known to himself) had metamorphosed himself, the correspondents
+made the best of a bad job by playing up
+the modesty of the man they had been sent a thousand
+miles or so to interview. Modest was an adjective that&mdash;in
+the light of what most of them knew of Allen&#39;s past&mdash;it
+hadn&#39;t occurred to any of them to use before. Now,
+however, they made up for lost time. The modest hero
+did this, or the modest hero said that.... There was
+modesty in the way he stroked his chin, in the shrug
+of his shoulders, in the way he crossed and uncrossed
+his legs when sitting. His habit of looking sideways
+when speaking was rated as a sign of modesty; so was
+the trick of stroking his cheroot between thumb and forefinger
+as he smoked. <i>Modest</i>&mdash;<i>hero</i>&mdash;those words became
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page135" id="page135"></a>[pg&nbsp;135]</span>
+permanently wedded in my mind during the week that
+I was reading leaders written with them for an inspiration,
+the report of sermons preached with them as a text.
+I cannot hear the one of them to this day without thinking
+of the other. <i>Modest hero!</i> In the estimation of the
+public &quot;Slant&quot; Allen, whom I had always thought of as
+the most egotistic man I had ever known, remained that
+to the&mdash;until public estimation ceased to interest him.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There was one little item of news telegraphed from
+Townsville which I read with a good deal of grim amusement.
+The day before his departure Allen was given
+some kind of a send-off in the Town Hall. As he was
+riding down the main street on his way to this affair,
+a man ducked under the rope holding the crowd back at
+the curb, rushed at the open carriage and aimed a blow
+at the breast of the hero with a knife. No whit perturbed,
+the latter had coolly deflected the thrust by
+striking up the assailant&#39;s elbow with his left hand.
+Then, seizing the ruffian&#39;s wrist with his right hand, he
+had brought it sharply down on the edge of the carriage
+door, shattering the bones and causing the knife to fall
+from the relaxed fingers to the pavement. Infuriated
+by the dastardly attack, the crowd had set upon the
+would-be assassin, who was only saved from being
+mauled to death through the interference of none other
+than Allen himself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The correspondents were much impressed, not only by
+the behaviour of the generous-hearted hero in intervening
+to save the life of the man who had just tried to take
+his own, but also&mdash;and especially&mdash;by a curious little
+circumstance in connection therewith. It was observed,
+in short, that, while Allen had defended his own body
+most effectually with his bare hands, as soon as he saw
+that the man who had attacked him was on the verge of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page136" id="page136"></a>[pg&nbsp;136]</span>
+being killed by a bloody-minded mob, quite beyond
+police control, he whipped out a revolver and used the
+menace of it to clear a space around the trampled body
+of his late assailant. The correspondents all thought
+that was rather fine; indeed, I was inclined to think so
+myself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen had flatly refused to lodge a complaint against
+the man who had tried so desperately to knife him, and
+even declined to help the police in their attempt to identify
+the fellow. &quot;Just an old Island affair, the big-hearted
+hero had explained with a careless laugh, as he
+turned on his way to receive the Golden Key symbolizing
+the Freedom of the Queen City of Northern Queensland.&quot;
+That was the way the <i>Herald</i> man had it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At the Police Station the prisoner was recognized at
+once as a man named Saunders, who had been convicted
+of a series of bullion robberies in the Kalgoorlie gold
+fields of Western Australia some years previously. Because
+of his diabolical practice of throwing red pepper
+and vitriol to blind his victims, he had gained the sobriquet
+of &quot;The Squid.&quot; He had escaped after serving
+but eighteen months of his twenty-five-year sentence and
+made his way across the &quot;Never-Never&quot; to Port Darwin,
+where all trace of him was lost for the time. He was
+supposed to have slipped away to the Islands. This was
+confirmed a few months later, when a boatload of out-bound
+placer miners were held up and robbed of the
+fruits of their season&#39;s work in the Fly gold fields of
+New Guinea. Even if one of them, who had once been
+in Western Australia, had not identified Saunders, the
+fact that a jar of sulphuric acid had been thrown into
+the midst of the miners would have connected &quot;The
+Squid&quot; with the crime beyond a doubt. Australia had
+but fragmentary record of his later crimes, but he was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page137" id="page137"></a>[pg&nbsp;137]</span>
+known to have been mixed up in a number of pearl
+robberies in and about Thursday Island. He had continued
+to practise his vitriol-throwing trick (varying it
+occasionally with a fiendishly original stunt with some
+native concoction), and was still known as &quot;The Squid.&quot;
+How long he had been lying low in Australia, or why
+he ventured there, he refused to tell; neither would he
+offer any explanation of his savage attack upon the hero
+of the hour. All he had said in the latter connection was:
+&quot;&#39;Slant&#39; &#39;ll twig why I took a flyer at returning the
+pig-sticker to him&mdash;it was his onct.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I understood at once that the root of &quot;The Squid&#39;s&quot;
+grudge against Allen struck back to that affair of the
+old pearl pirate&#39;s missionary-reared daughter&mdash;a copper-haired,
+ivory-browed Amazon of a girl who had become
+one of the most consummate sirens in the pearleries
+after a three-months trip with &quot;Slant&quot; to Singapore
+had broken her in. Amazing story the whole thing,
+from its beginning with the girl&#39;s mother&mdash;a teacher in
+the Gospel Propaganda Society&#39;s school at Thursday
+Island who had fallen afoul of one of &quot;The Squid&#39;s&quot;
+tentacles long before his conviction&mdash;to its ghastly finish,
+when the girl herself settled her accumulated account
+against all mankind with the body and soul of one&mdash;a
+hot-headed lump of a young missionary just out from
+London.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">According to the version current in Kai, Allen had
+not been greatly to blame in the affair with the temperamental
+rack of bones and red braids that the girl
+was when she burst upon the Islands from the Auckland
+convent; but &quot;The Squid&quot; evidently felt that the man
+who had set the snowball (not a very apt metaphor, for
+I never heard the girl compared to anything so frigid)
+rolling was the one to settle with. I had heard of three
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page138" id="page138"></a>[pg&nbsp;138]</span>
+or four rather ingeniously thought-out attempts he had
+made to square the account, all of which, however,
+had failed as a consequence of Allen&#39;s quickness of wit
+and hand in sudden emergency. The knife figuring in
+the Townsville attack, it occurred to me, was probably
+the one the resourceful &quot;Slant&quot; had put through &quot;The
+Squid&#39;s&quot; shoulder at twenty paces a fraction of a second
+before the latter had delivered a flask of red pepper
+from his upraised hand.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I also thought I understood why Allen had bluntly
+refused to make any explanation of the attack. A veritable
+Turk in his relations with women, that Island
+Lothario had also the Turk&#39;s dislike for discussing his
+women in public. When sober, Allen rarely if ever
+boasted about anything. When very drunk, he would
+occasionally toot a horn anent his racing wins; and once,
+when he was all but swamped&mdash;awash to the rails with
+&quot;Three Star&quot;&mdash;I had heard him give a maudlin monologue
+on men he had put away. But I&mdash;and no one else,
+so far as I knew&mdash;had ever heard him talk of the girls
+he had bagged, though the Lord knows there had been
+enough of them. (The nearest he ever came to it was in
+that little joke of his I have mentioned&mdash;the one about
+having &quot;a son and a saddle in every island group in
+the South Pacific,&quot;&mdash;and that was only a sort of delicate
+implication.) His close-mouthedness about women was
+one of a number of little things I couldn&#39;t help but liking
+in the rascal.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Since Allen and Saunders would not talk, and since
+the knife that figured in the affair&mdash;a heavy dirk, with
+a shark&#39;s hide handle and the mark of a Lisbon cutlerer
+on the blade&mdash;could not talk, the ever-baffled Townsville
+correspondents had been able to gather practically nothing
+about what their journalistic noses told them was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page139" id="page139"></a>[pg&nbsp;139]</span>
+a red-hot human interest story. Blocked on that trail,
+they devoted a lot of space to a discussion of the interesting
+revelation of the hero&#39;s Island nickname. More or
+less ingenious theories as to &quot;Why &#39;Slant&#39;?&quot; filled the
+columns of the papers for a number of days. None of
+them was within a mile of the mark. One of the correspondents
+fancied the name had been given Allen
+because of his &quot;aquilinity, his wiry slenderness, so that
+he clove the air like a slant of sunbeams as he rode.&quot;
+Another writer was sure the name was suggested by the
+hero&#39;s peculiar crouching seat&mdash;the slant of his back as
+he urged on his mount. They were quite incapable of
+going beyond Allen&#39;s physical characteristics, or of
+visualizing him save on horseback.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That added another little item to the list of things
+I could have enlightened the press and the public on
+about &quot;Slant&quot; Allen, and, in this particular instance,
+I wouldn&#39;t have minded passing on the facts at once. Indeed,
+I made rather a hit at a Government House
+luncheon one day by telling how the nearing hero (he
+was expected to be landing at Brisbane on the morrow)
+had qualified for his queer nickname. Jackson, who was
+responsible for the title, had confided to me how he came
+to bestow it. There was no story behind it, as some of
+the papers had hinted. Old &quot;Jack,&quot; after having known
+Allen pretty intimately for a couple of years, came to
+the conclusion one day that the lanky Sydney-sider was
+the first man he ever met who persistently and consistently
+kept him guessing. Given a situation, and the
+foxy old highwayman had discovered that he could
+usually tell in advance how any given man would be
+likely to meet it. It was after he had guessed wrong
+about Allen some dozens of times, without once guessing
+right, that Jackson made up his mind that there was no
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page140" id="page140"></a>[pg&nbsp;140]</span>
+forecasting the &quot;slant of his course from the slant of
+the breeze.&quot; And because something in the mellifluous
+sound of the word struck pleasantly on the trader&#39;s ear,
+he began applying the name to the man who had inspired
+it. &quot;No re&#39;l reason for it,&quot; he explained; &quot;but it sure
+do seem to fit &#39;im like a new copper bottom does a
+schooner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Governor General&#39;s Aide-de-camp, who was
+something of a follower of the ponies, confirmed Jackson&#39;s
+opinion and the fitness of the sobriquet. Said the
+gaily uniformed &quot;Galloper&quot;: &quot;The great secret of Allen&#39;s
+astonishing success as a point-to-point rider was his
+amazing faculty for bringing off the unexpected. Once,
+at Launceston, I saw him win on a hundred-to-one shot
+(how he happened to be riding the skate I don&#39;t know)
+by deliberately bolting the course and putting his mount
+full tilt through a thorn thicket. He was in tenth place,
+with a mile to go when he did it, and he won the race
+by a dozen lengths&mdash;his own and the waler&#39;s hide in
+tatters.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Another unexpected win of Allen&#39;s,&quot; he continued
+with the wry grin of a man who speaks of dearly bought
+experience, &quot;was that &#39;Totalisator&#39; coup of his at Adelaide.
+His pals got in on the &#39;Tote&#39; somehow, and&mdash;&quot;
+A warning cough from Lord X&mdash;&mdash; checked the loquacious
+&quot;Galloper&#39;s&quot; tongue in mid-flight, and, with reddening
+gill, he faded away with: &quot;Sorry, sir, but I
+forgot it isn&#39;t quite&mdash;quite the thing to remember that
+little chapter of Hartley Allen&#39;s past. Quite right,
+really. My mistake. Dead sorry, sir....&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There was no doubt that Allen was going to have a
+clean-scored slate to begin writing anew on. I was thinking
+of that, and &quot;Why &#39;Slant&#39;?&quot;, as I walked back to
+the hotel an hour later. &quot;No forecasting the slant of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page141" id="page141"></a>[pg&nbsp;141]</span>
+his course from the slant of the breeze!&quot;... &quot;Faculty
+for bringing off the unexpected.&quot; I hoped that he
+wasn&#39;t going to disappoint me in the matter of bringing
+things to a showdown on his arrival in Sydney. But no....
+My every instinct told me that he would not side-step
+that. So I made all preparations properly to receive
+&quot;Slant&quot; Allen, and, on the day of his triumphant
+home-coming, was waiting for him in my room at the
+<i>Australia</i>, as I have already told.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page142" id="page142"></a>[pg&nbsp;142]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XI<br />
+<small>A HERO&#39;S HOMECOMING</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">It</span> was two o&#39;clock when I began powdering and
+screening the yellow-hued inner lining of my sea
+shells. Subconsciously, I must have set three in my
+mind as the time my caller would come, for it was not
+until that hour that I ceased my absorbingly interesting
+labours and looked at my watch. So far as I can recall,
+I felt no concern one way or the other. I simply noted
+that the hour had gone by without bringing my expected
+visitor, and went back to my work.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As a matter of fact, having just made a most gratifying
+discovery, I was rather glad that the interruption
+had not come. I had isolated a new and wonderful
+colour&mdash;a dark coppery gold that I had yearned for
+every time I saw sunlight filtering through brine onto
+the gently undulating leaves of reef-rooted kelp. Now
+I had it; and it was not an accident&mdash;I could do it again.
+By standing on edge a fragment of one of the big
+bivalves I was experimenting with, I discovered that a
+sharp blow with the side of my pestle caused the thinnest
+of chips to fly from its enamel-like lining. These,
+glassily translucent as they fell, when reduced in the
+mortar gave a warm, almost glowing powder of exactly
+the hue I sought. Now if I could only devise a way of
+mixing it effectively....</p>
+
+<p class="indent">So well were my innermost faculties set to respond to
+that expected knock, that, when it came, not even the
+mazes of exultant speculation in which my discovery had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page143" id="page143"></a>[pg&nbsp;143]</span>
+set my brain&mdash;my outward wits&mdash;to wandering, prevented
+instant ganglionic reaction. I didn&#39;t have to
+think. That had all been done an hour before, and the
+necessary orders given. At the alarm, these had only
+to be carried out as prearranged. My legs and arms
+simply obeyed the directions that had been registered
+for them in some convenient little nerve-knots strung
+along my spinal column. That carried me, stepping
+softly, out of the bathroom, through the bedroom, and
+past the middle of the sitting-room, well beyond the
+direct line of vision of anyone opening the door from
+the hall. It was a position from which I must see
+anyone coming in before he was able to locate me. The
+rest of the order&mdash;carried out simultaneously&mdash;had to
+do with laying the pestle lightly on the bathroom table
+and thrusting the hand that had been wielding it deep
+into the right-hand pocket of my old shooting jacket.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In the second or two that it had taken me to reach
+the middle of the sitting-room from the bathroom, my
+wits had relinquished their rainbow dreams and were
+back on their workaday job. They it was which, now
+the limit of ganglionic action had been reached, stepped
+in and took command. It was not from nervousness that
+I swallowed once and flashed my tongue across my lips
+before speaking. I only wanted to be sure my voice was
+as firm as I knew the resolution directing it to be.
+Speaking sharply, but in a tone not above the ordinary,
+I said: &quot;Come in, Allen!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Among the several little surprises in store for me in
+the course of the next few minutes, not the least came
+when the man on the other side of the door coughed and
+cleared his throat as his hand began to turn the knob.
+I was just telling myself that such palpable symptoms
+of nervousness were very unlike &quot;Slant&quot; Allen to display,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page144" id="page144"></a>[pg&nbsp;144]</span>
+when the door swung inwards and &quot;Slant&quot; Allen
+stepped into the room. Allen, but not the Allen I had
+known. Absolutely nerved to readiness as I was, the
+contrast of this flushed, slightly embarrassed, almost diffident
+young chap and the ruthless, cold-blooded badman
+I had made every preparation&mdash;physical and mental&mdash;to
+meet came nigh to taking me aback. It was like
+clambering up out of a companionway, all set for a
+hurricane sweeping the deck&mdash;and finding it calm. For
+an instant my jaw must have come near to sagging in the
+amazement that swept over me. I pulled myself together
+quickly, though, and if Allen noticed my momentary
+lapse, he gave no sign of it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">He was the first to speak. &quot;So you were expecting
+me?&quot; he said, but not as though greatly surprised.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Ra-<i>ther</i>,&quot; I replied with emphasis. &quot;Look at this!&quot;
+and I pulled out the revolver from my right-hand pocket,
+released the hair-trigger adjustment, slid the safety-catch,
+and laid it on the table by the window. I would
+not have been guilty of such an obvious act of bravado
+had not my preternaturally acute senses told me that, so
+far as Allen was concerned at least, there was not going
+to be any occasion to use the weapon. That feeling persisted
+even when, as Allen turned slightly in the act of
+closing the door, I noticed a very perceptible bulge
+where the flimsy corner of his pongee coat swept his lean
+right flank. The instant he entered the room I knew
+that, whatever motives had brought him there, the intention
+of trying to kill me was not among them. Scarcely
+less strong were my doubts that I would be able to establish
+any valid grounds for killing him. My old sneaking
+liking for certain things about the debonair rascal was
+not dead.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">He grinned appreciatively at the sight of the gun, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page145" id="page145"></a>[pg&nbsp;145]</span>
+then, with a perfunctory &quot;You don&#39;t mind, do you?&quot;
+stepped over and picked it up. I watched him without
+misgivings, my mind still busy adjusting itself to the
+new aspect.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Was that the toy you used the day you put a bullet
+hole through the crown of my new hundred-dollar Payta
+hat?&quot; he asked, fingering the exquisitely turned barrel
+admiringly. &quot;My own fault, of course. I egged you on
+by expressing some doubts of your ability to do it from
+your jacket pocket. This looks like ...&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Same gun&mdash;same jacket&mdash;new pocket,&quot; I cut in laconically;
+adding: &quot;I was prepared to repeat the operation
+just now&mdash;with about half a finger less elevation on
+the muzzle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was the real old Allen grin that opened out as the
+significance of those concluding words sunk home. Not
+the mocking smirk which had curled his lips so much of
+the time, but a good, broad, healthy grin that betokened
+genuine inward enjoyment. The fellow&mdash;I had remarked
+it before&mdash;had a really keen and inclusive sense
+of humour&mdash;even inclusive enough to permit his hearty
+participation in a laugh that was on himself. But that
+irritating sneer (which had died on his lips as a full
+realization of Bell&#39;s bigness in giving him his choice of
+going on the <i>Cora</i> or remaining at Kai came to him)&mdash;that
+sneer, with the amused contempt for all the world it
+connoted, did not reappear. Indeed, I am not sure that
+I ever saw it again. Had there been some inward change
+in the man to dry up the fount of contempt from which
+that ironic smirk rose to his lips? I wasn&#39;t clear on that
+point yet: but certainly he had been profoundly shaken&mdash;deeply
+stirred.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Save for that expansive grin of real amusement, Allen
+made no comment on my implication that I had been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page146" id="page146"></a>[pg&nbsp;146]</span>
+waiting to send a bullet&mdash;a few inches below the crown
+of his hat. &quot;Sweetest balanced little piece of light
+artillery I ever trained,&quot; he remarked inconsequentially,
+holding the revolver at arm&#39;s length and squinting along
+the sights to where his reversed image menaced back
+from the depths of a full-length mirror. He really admired
+the little gun&mdash;I could see that by the way his fist
+closed on the checked vulcanite grip, by the caressing
+touch of his forefinger on the locked trigger.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Made to order by the S. and W. people for my
+father,&quot; I explained, trying to fall in with his mood as
+far as I could. If he had come to talk about revolvers&mdash;well,
+who in Australia knew more about them than I
+did? I continued:</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;There&#39;s two or three of the Governor&#39;s own little
+gadgets on it, and one or two I had added myself. The
+one that I like best is that safety-catch.... Stranger
+can&#39;t release it till he&#39;s been shown how. You never
+can tell who may be picking up a gun that&#39;s left lying
+around, you know. You&#39;ll have to admit it would be
+doubly painful for a man to be plunked with his own
+revolver.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I couldn&#39;t for the life of me have refrained from that
+last little sally, and Allen seemed to enjoy it as much as
+I did. His broadened grin showed an extra tooth or
+two at each end as he relaxed his extended arm. &quot;I
+haven&#39;t the least intention of trying to impose that indignity
+on you,&quot; he laughed. &quot;Besides, you needn&#39;t
+fear that the significance of that sag in your left-hand
+pocket has been lost on me. Had me covered from there
+all the time, didn&#39;t you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;As a matter of fact, I had,&quot; I replied, beginning to
+grin myself; &quot;but this confounded sawed-off <i>Mauser</i>
+automatic has an upkick that makes anything like delicate
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page147" id="page147"></a>[pg&nbsp;147]</span>
+work quite out of the question. I could wing you
+with it from there, no doubt; but the job wouldn&#39;t be a
+pretty one&mdash;nothing that I could take any pride in.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I laid the stubby automatic on the table where the
+other weapon had been, saying that I always did hate the
+drag of a gun in my pocket. Then, letting my glance
+wander to the bulge on Allen&#39;s right hip, I added pointedly:
+&quot;... especially when I can&#39;t see any immediate
+use ahead for it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Either missing the point of that gentle hint, or else
+ignoring it completely, Allen went on playing with the
+little S. &amp; W. Breaking it gently with practised hand,
+he studied with bent head the smooth, easy action of
+the automatic ejector. Just a bit more of a bend, and the
+six cartridges slid noiselessly forth and fell into his hand.
+He commenced shoving them back, one by one. It was
+the last, or the next to the last, of the greasy cylinders
+that slipped from his fingers, struck the floor and rolled
+under the table. I remarked with admiration the magnificent
+swell of the flexed saddle muscles as the thin
+<i>pongee</i> tightened over the bent thighs; the narrow hips,
+the lean, powerful back, the&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Good God!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The voice, hoarse with awe and surprise, was mine;
+but my own mother would hardly have recognized it.
+For an instant my quaking knees almost let me collapse
+to the floor; then my faltering inward control stiffened
+and clapped the brakes on my skidding nerves. By the
+time Allen, startled by my sudden exclamation, straightened
+up from his scramble after the still unretrieved
+cartridge, I had myself fully in hand again. I could not
+be sure whether his flush and quick breathing were from
+surprise or the stooping posture in which he had been.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Did you speak, Whitney?&quot; he asked, after running
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page148" id="page148"></a>[pg&nbsp;148]</span>
+his eyes over the room and assuring himself that no
+one had entered. I held his eyes with my own till I was
+sure my voice was steadied. When I spoke, it was deliberately
+and evenly. &quot;So Rona came back,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The train of lightning mental processes by which I had
+arrived at that astonishing conclusion had not much of
+an edge on Allen&#39;s quick comprehension of what had
+started that train going. For only the briefest instant
+his eyes were blank with surprise. Then, with a look
+of complete understanding, he clapped a hand to the side
+of his neck and began smoothing straight the limp collar
+of his soft silk shirt. The ghost of what would have been
+a sheepish grin flickered up and died away, and to his
+face came something of that half-embarrassed, half-eager
+look that had sat upon it when he entered the
+room, as he said: &quot;Yes, Rona has come back. That was
+one of the things I came to see you about. She&mdash;we&mdash;the
+both of us have a bit of a favour to ask of you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Quite the master of myself now (and of the situation,
+too, I thought), I came back banteringly with: &quot;If it&#39;s
+that red, white and blue neck of yours you want tied
+up, I have one of B. and W.&#39;s little First Aid cases in
+my bag....&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was the shockingly torn and bruised neck that had
+been revealed when Allen&#39;s collar had slipped back as he
+stooped to recover the rolling cartridge that set my swift
+train of thought going. This must have been something
+of the order of it, but electrically rapid of action: Lacerated
+neck&mdash;old Chinaman at Ponape whose neck was
+scratched when Rona ran away from him&mdash;Rona a specialist
+in neck-scratching&mdash;probably scratched Allen&#39;s
+neck (Question&mdash;Was it done in the course of one of the
+attacks she was known to have made upon him on the
+<i>Cora</i>?)&mdash;Could not have been done on the <i>Cora</i>, as they
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page149" id="page149"></a>[pg&nbsp;149]</span>
+had left her over two weeks ago and these half-healed
+scratches were not over five or six days old.&mdash;Hence,
+Rona had scratched Allen&#39;s neck inside of the last week,
+and, therefore, could not have drowned herself in Ross
+Creek a fortnight ago. Conclusion&mdash;Rona has come
+back.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It had taken not over a second or two for my quickened
+mind to run that devious course, and Allen&#39;s must
+have covered a good part of it in even less time. The
+wits of the both of us were keenly on edge. There could
+not but have been a fine display of sparks had he been
+in his wonted aggressive mood. But he had not come
+for fighting, physical or mental, it seemed. He had come
+to ask a favour&mdash;&quot;for the both of us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;<i>For the both of us!</i>&quot; The significance lurking in
+those words had eluded me for a moment in the sudden
+adjustment my mind was called upon to make in coming
+to a realization of the fact that Rona&mdash;the lissome lovely
+Rona&mdash;was not dead&mdash;that the bright flame of her was
+unquenched after all. But: &quot;<i>a favour for the both of
+us!</i>&quot; A sudden chill checked and throttled the thrill
+that had started to flood my being. &quot;<i>A favour for both
+of us!</i>&quot; &quot;So&mdash;Bell dead&mdash;&#39;Slant&#39; Allen takes the girl
+in the end!&quot; I said to myself. Then, the echo of Kai&#39;s
+estimate of Allen&#39;s track strategy: &quot;An easy starter
+but a hell of a finisher, &#39;Slant&#39;. Don&#39;t worry about
+what he&#39;s doing when the starting flag drops; watch
+him head into the stretch.&quot; &quot;... <i>head into the
+stretch</i>,&quot; I repeated to myself. &quot;Then what about the
+finish? Is he already under the wire?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">These thoughts, like the train preceding them, must
+have flashed through my mind very quickly, for it was
+Allen&#39;s voice replying to my badinage about First Aid
+for his lacerated neck that brought me out of them.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page150" id="page150"></a>[pg&nbsp;150]</span>
+&quot;The neck&#39;s doing very well, thank you,&quot; he was saying,
+&quot;considering that its windpipe was closed for all of
+sixty seconds, and that most of the hide was clawed off
+from it all the way round.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That was really very interesting intelligence, but my
+mind, deep in another channel, was quite incapable of
+compassing the significance of it for the moment.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;So you&#39;ve landed the girl after all,&quot; I said woodenly,
+cursing myself inwardly for the gallery play that had
+left both guns beyond my reach. For of course he had
+deliberately put Bell out of the running&mdash;shouldered him
+in the stretch.... Reviving suspicions brought also a
+realization of what it was up to me to do, now that there
+was no longer doubt....</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;That depends very largely upon you.&quot; Allen&#39;s quick
+reply cut short further conjecture.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Depends upon me?&quot; I interrupted incredulously.
+&quot;What do you mean by that? Oh, I see. Now that
+you&#39;ve put Bell out of the way, perhaps you think that
+I, as his closest friend, ought to&mdash;to distribute his estate,
+so to speak. If that is the way you figure it, let me tell
+you that all the distributing you can count on me for
+will take the form of spraying lead over your worthless
+hide. You won&#39;t mind handing me one of those guns,
+will you? I don&#39;t mind which.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It would have been sheer madness&mdash;straight suicide,&mdash;that
+outburst, had Allen been moved by the least desire
+to get me out of his way. I have never been quite able
+to make up my mind as to whether it was my instinctive
+feeling that he had no such desire that prompted me to
+take more leeway than prudence&mdash;nay, the commonest
+motive of self-preservation&mdash;would have dictated; or
+whether I simply lost my head&mdash;let my feelings get away
+with me. It may well have been the latter, for shocks
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page151" id="page151"></a>[pg&nbsp;151]</span>
+had been crowding pretty thick, and it was hardly to
+be expected that the gears of my self-control wouldn&#39;t
+slip a cog now and then under the strain.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen&#39;s brows drew together in a black scowl for a
+brief space, and his eyes contracted and grew hard as
+steel. Then, slowly, the scowl smoothed out, leaving only
+a deep flush behind it. It was not replaced by his former
+look of anxious embarrassment, however. Rather his
+expression was one of a serious, controlled determination.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;That matter of my putting Captain Bell out of the
+way, as you choose to phrase it,&quot; he said sharply, &quot;is
+one of the things I called to talk with you about. Since
+you&#39;ve stated so plainly what you intend to do about
+it&mdash;assuming it&#39;s a fact,&mdash;perhaps it would be in order
+to take it up before&mdash;before the other matter. As for
+these pistols.... Since they&#39;re yours, help yourself
+to both of them.&quot; Stepping back from the table, well
+out of reach of the guns, he added: &quot;But I&#39;d rather
+appreciate it if you could see your way to refraining
+from using them until I&#39;m through with what I&#39;ve got to
+say; after that ...&quot; (he gave his shoulders an indifferent
+shrug) &quot;it&#39;s up to you. Do what you think
+best with them. I don&#39;t want them&mdash;neither one of
+them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Of course not,&quot; I sneered. &quot;Quite naturally, you&#39;d
+prefer to use your own. Quite right, too. Get it out
+of your hip-pocket while you&#39;ve got a chance. That&#39;s
+a new chum&#39;s way of carrying a gun, anyhow. I&#39;m just
+a bit surprised to see a practised killer like Mister
+&#39;Slant&#39; Allen resorting to it. No chance in the world
+to make an even break of it with a man with a gun in
+his side-pocket. Tail of your coat&#39;s always getting mixed
+up with your fingers just when you want to use them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page152" id="page152"></a>[pg&nbsp;152]</span>
+Allen had braced himself after my first taunt came so
+near to getting him going, and this second one&mdash;galling
+as it must have been&mdash;hardly moved him. Only the
+faintest flutter of a corrugation between the brows told
+that another scowl had been repressed. The half-surprised
+tap he gave to the bulge on his hip&mdash;a gesture
+that would most certainly have drawn a shot from me
+had I had a gun in hand&mdash;suggested that he really had
+forgotten that there was anything there. I am positive
+that I could have grabbed a revolver from the table
+and beaten him to it on the draw. A move so naïve on
+the part of an old gunman convinced me, even before
+he had spoken a word, that I had let my feelings send
+me off at half-cock.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I haven&#39;t a pistol in my hip-pocket,&quot; he said evenly.
+&quot;Never did carry one there, and wouldn&#39;t be likely to
+begin it if I was going gunning for a specialist like you.
+You&#39;ll have to take my word for that. Yes, and since
+I&#39;m going to ask you to take my word&mdash;my unsupported
+word&mdash;for a number of other things, it may be in order
+to try to make you believe that my word, when I give
+it to you straight, isn&#39;t quite&mdash;that it isn&#39;t on just the
+same plane with the rest of my doings.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was just a bit surprised that he didn&#39;t take out
+whatever it was that created that bulge in his hip-pocket,
+but hardly reckoned it worth while mentioning. I was
+fully assured that, far from seeking trouble, it was the
+one thing he had steadfastly resolved to avoid. That
+was enough for the moment. He was also about to speak
+of the one thing I was interested in above all others&mdash;the
+doping of Bell. There was every reason why I
+should encourage him to speak of that. The matter of
+Rona would come up in due course. He evidently had
+something to say about her also.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page153" id="page153"></a>[pg&nbsp;153]</span>
+&quot;Sit down,&quot; I said, and extended my cigarette case.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">He declined my fat gold-tipped Egyptians, heavily
+salted with <i>kief</i> (another accursed habit I had picked
+up in Paris), and lighted a slender Sumatra cheroot
+from his own case. It was not as a move of precaution
+(I was through with all pretence of that now) that I set
+the big lounging chair I shoved up for him so that he
+would sit facing the light. I merely wanted to watch his
+face. Yet even that was not necessary to satisfy me of
+his sincerity, at least for the moment. His every tone
+and gesture was sufficient proof of that.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;In the matter of the value of my word....&quot; Allen
+was losing no time in getting to the point. &quot;In the time
+you have spent mooching about the Islands, Whitney,
+you have doubtless heard me referred to by a good many
+hard names, such as pirate, murderer, thief, blackguard,
+jail-bird, crook, and so on without end. You&#39;ve heard
+all of these, haven&#39;t you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;All, and many others,&quot; I assented readily. His
+frankness rather appealed to me just then.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Quite right. Yet I dare say you didn&#39;t happen to
+hear the name of liar included among the number. If
+you did, it was used by some cove who had a grudge
+against me, and didn&#39;t care whether he stuck to facts or
+not. I don&#39;t mean that I haven&#39;t put over a lot of
+crooked deals in my time, nor that I haven&#39;t come out
+with a gratuitous falsehood now and then when it suited
+my purpose. I don&#39;t claim to be a George Washington.
+But I do mean just this: that when I have deliberately
+assured a man that a thing was, or was not so, I was giving
+him the dead straight of it to the best of my knowledge.
+And that&#39;s the way I&#39;m speaking when I tell you
+that I haven&#39;t a revolver on me, and that that dope
+I slipped into Bell&#39;s whisky at Kai had nothing to do
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page154" id="page154"></a>[pg&nbsp;154]</span>
+with his playing out on the voyage. As for the reason
+of that ...&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen frowned slightly and ceased speaking for a few
+seconds. When he resumed it was not to take up the
+thread where he had dropped it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I don&#39;t know whether you&#39;ll have difficulty in believing
+it or not, Whitney,&quot; he went on after a half-dozen
+puffs at his slow-burning cheroot; &quot;but this is the
+first time since I was packed out of Australia five years
+ago that I&#39;ve tried to explain to anyone anything I&#39;ve
+said or done&mdash;tried to make out a case for myself. That
+was simply because I didn&#39;t give a damn whether anyone
+approved of it or not. The reason I am doing it now&mdash;well,
+there are two reasons.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">He puffed quietly for a few moments again, as though
+gathering his thoughts. Then he continued: &quot;The first
+reason is that I owe it to you for the consideration you
+showed in the matter of not telling them at Kai what an
+ass I&#39;d made of myself. That was dead white, Whitney.
+I&#39;ve got to give it you for that. No one but a thoroughbred
+could have held his tongue for five minutes about a
+thing like that, especially seeing you were under no obligations
+of any kind whatever to me. And, for all I can
+learn, you&#39;ve held your tongue for a month. How do I
+know? Well, I know about Kai (the only ones I care
+much about anyway) through a letter Jackson got off to
+me from Samarai&mdash;after he&#39;d delivered you over to old
+&#39;Choppy&#39; Tancred to bring south. Got it the night
+before I left Townsville. It wasn&#39;t much of a literary
+effort, but he managed to say a few things that&mdash;things
+that I knew he wouldn&#39;t have said if you had given them
+the facts&mdash;all the facts about my departure in the <i>Cora</i>.
+As for Australia.... If you had been dishing up any
+inside dope in this nest of old women and busybodies,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page155" id="page155"></a>[pg&nbsp;155]</span>
+no fear that it wouldn&#39;t have come to me before this.
+I know them. Their tongues will waft gossip from Melbourne
+to Port Darwin quicker&#39;n the telegraph. My
+word, don&#39;t I know them!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Quickened puffs registered the bitterness of unpleasant
+memories as Allen fell silent for a brief interval. &quot;I&#39;m
+not fool enough to believe that you kept quiet here out
+of any regard for me,&quot; he went on presently. &quot;That
+wouldn&#39;t be it, for you haven&#39;t any. I don&#39;t blame
+you. As a matter of fact, I don&#39;t seriously care what
+Australia thinks anyway. I&#39;m through with them here
+for good and all. But the Islands are different. The
+rest of my life, such as it is, is going to be lived there,
+and the only men I have ever had any great respect for
+are living there now. So, whatever reason there was behind
+it, Whitney, I&#39;m deeply grateful to you for not
+showing me up in Kai. It was dead white of you.&mdash;I say
+it again. I&#39;ve thought of it a good many times since I
+got Jack&#39;s scrawl, and it was the first thing I intended
+to speak to you about today. Only, my slate got a bit
+upset. That little gun of yours deflected my thoughts,
+and then&mdash;but you saw how I got forced off on another
+tack.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The other reason&quot; (Allen hurried on as though anxious
+to avoid hearing any observations I might feel impelled
+to make on what he had just said) &quot;why I am going to
+the trouble of trying to clear up your suspicions in the
+matter of Bell&#39;s death is because, if I don&#39;t, there will
+be no hope of your granting the request I have come to
+make of you&mdash;and I can&#39;t run any chances of failure
+with that.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I didn&#39;t want to kill Bell, but&mdash;well, it seems that
+I was equal to playing a damn dirty trick to get him
+out of the way. I won&#39;t need to tell you why. I hate
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page156" id="page156"></a>[pg&nbsp;156]</span>
+to drag the girl into it, but it can&#39;t be helped. She must
+have bewitched me, I&#39;m afraid. Not intentionally.
+Quite to the contrary, she never gave me a look. I admired
+Bell&mdash;in spite of his rather standoffish way with
+me&mdash;as much as any man I ever met. That was the
+only reason I held myself in about the girl as long as I
+did. I don&#39;t know just what would have happened if
+the schooner hadn&#39;t come. Chances are, since I was
+getting pretty near the limit of my self-control, I would
+have blown off some other way.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The opportunity which I saw to get rid of Bell in the
+schooner was too great a temptation to be resisted. So
+far as getting him clean away with the <i>Cora</i> was concerned,
+I have only my own hot-headedness to blame
+for failing. I was simply asking for trouble when I
+went prancing down to take over the girl before the
+schooner even had her hook broken out; and I found
+it. No more than I deserved, though.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen paused while the old humorous grin spread over
+his face for a moment. Then: &quot;I trust you won&#39;t mind
+if I don&#39;t go into details about how I came to put my
+head into the noose,&quot; he said, still grinning. &quot;It wasn&#39;t
+very edifying, you know&mdash;from my standpoint, I mean.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;But it would have made no difference even if Bell
+had got away, while the girl and I remained behind on
+the island. She wouldn&#39;t have had anything to do with
+me anyway&mdash;at any rate, not while she had any reason
+to hope that Bell was still alive,&mdash;and probably she
+would have knifed me at the first chance for the part I
+had in getting him away. She would have found the
+chance, too, let me tell you. That girl creates her own
+opportunities&mdash;there&#39;s no holding her once she takes
+the bit in her teeth. What she wants to do, that thing
+she does. And what she wants a man to do for her,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page157" id="page157"></a>[pg&nbsp;157]</span>
+that thing <i>he</i> does. She&#39;ll put through what she&#39;s after
+if she has to go through hell for it&mdash;and no minding
+whom she takes with her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The queer unnerved look on Allen&#39;s face drew my first
+interruption. &quot;So it&#39;s come to that?&quot; was all I said.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Yes, it&#39;s come to that,&quot; he assented, the seriousness
+of his eyes belying the whimsical smile on his lips.
+&quot;But I&#39;ll be returning to that presently.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;About that dope I gave Bell,&quot; he went on&mdash;&quot;it was
+absolutely harmless. I bought the stuff in Macassar a
+few months ago, more out of curiosity than anything else.
+The old Sultan at Ternate had told me about it, and I
+was just a bit interested in its effects. It was pretty
+concentrated, though not a hundredth of the strength of
+the essence from the same plant that Rona took it for&mdash;the
+deadly poison, which has the same pungent smell. It
+was a considerable overdose of the stuff I took one night
+that put me on to the fact that, after a short spell of
+rather pleasant mental stimulation, it would drug a man
+to sleep for an hour or two. Hardly any after-effects
+at all, except a deuce of a thirst for liquor for a few
+days. I had talked about it with Doc Wyndham two
+or three times, and am perfectly certain of what I tell
+you.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It was the only stuff I could lay hands on that promised
+to do the trick. You see, I was afraid that if Bell
+wasn&#39;t drugged, he would become suspicious when I
+failed to return to the schooner, and come to look for
+me&mdash;perhaps even chuck up the stunt entirely. If he
+hadn&#39;t been pretty drunk (much the furthest along I
+ever saw him&mdash;probably on account of the beastly heat&mdash;you
+remember it?) he must have sniffed the half-dozen
+drops I put in his half-emptied glass of whisky while
+he was conning that old chart he had on the wall. It
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page158" id="page158"></a>[pg&nbsp;158]</span>
+was a light dose (I&#39;ve taken twice that much myself),
+and though he went under jolly fast&mdash;due to his being
+so far gone with whisky, probably&mdash;he was up and taking
+command of the schooner inside of an hour. And
+you&#39;ll remember how he was going right on ahead getting
+under way to catch the tide, even though I hadn&#39;t
+returned. The best nerves I ever saw in a man, bar none,
+that chap had. Will of iron and eyes for nothing but the
+thing he set out to do. There was a lot in common between
+him and the girl on that score. No wonder they
+were so strong for each other.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen fell silent again, stroking his cheroot between
+thumb and forefinger&mdash;the habit the correspondents had
+characterized as a sign of modesty. &quot;I hope you won&#39;t
+insist on my telling any more about the voyage than I
+have to in connection with Bell&#39;s death,&quot; he said at last.
+&quot;I hate to speak of it at all. The thing is almost as much
+of a nightmare in memory as it was in fact. You saw
+how things were on the schooner when we got away.
+Well, just picture them getting worse and worse day by
+day for&mdash;how long was it?&mdash;something over a week, I believe,
+but it seemed a lifetime. The whisky I kept bracing
+up with made it a lot easier for me to stand&mdash;kept
+me from going crazy and jumping overboard, as so
+many of the niggers did. But Bell&mdash;he didn&#39;t have
+the whisky&mdash;wouldn&#39;t have it. Yes, he kept up that mad
+joke of his about being a &#39;soba skippa&#39; to the end. That
+was what killed him&mdash;just that, and nothing else. It
+was beyond a being of flesh and blood to do what he set
+himself out to do&mdash;and live. He tried to (my God, how
+he tried!)&mdash;and died.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I never felt such pity for any living thing, unless it
+was old Recoil, my first steeplechaser, when he lived for
+twenty-four hours after staving in his chest against a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page159" id="page159"></a>[pg&nbsp;159]</span>
+stone wall. I was hardly more than a kid then. I lay
+in the straw of his box all that time with his battered,
+bleeding frame, and swore I&#39;d kill the first man that tried
+to shoot him. Then I pulled myself together and did the
+humane job myself. But I couldn&#39;t shoot Bell, and he
+wouldn&#39;t shoot himself. That would have been the easy
+way out (since he had steeled his will against taking another
+drink), but he wouldn&#39;t follow that short-cut either.
+Said he was&mdash;how did he put it?&mdash;&#39;goin&#39; to ride the wata
+wagon all the way to po&#39;t, an&#39; then fall off good and
+plenty.&#39; Some Yankee expression about keeping strict
+teetotal, wasn&#39;t it?</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It got to me worse than the crazy niggers&mdash;watching
+the agony of his mind and body contorting the muscles
+of his face, as he tried to hide what he was going through.
+The girl was a good deal of help to him for the first day
+or two, and he admitted that he was glad she had decided
+to join his &#39;li&#39;l&#39; pa&#39;ty at the last minnit.&#39; But even she
+failed to create a diversion as his cravings for whisky
+became more and more intense, and he seemed to try to
+avoid her as much as he could toward the last&mdash;probably
+because he couldn&#39;t hide his suffering from her. I saw
+that it was killing him&mdash;that he would never last out the
+voyage on the course he was heading,&mdash;and tried hard
+to make him see that it was only reasonable to allow himself
+at least enough whisky to ease off the tension on his
+breaking nerves. But he wouldn&#39;t listen to it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;&#39;I gave it out official,&#39; he said, &#39;that I was goin&#39; to
+keep soba on my next ship, if I eva got one. An&#39; soba&#39;s
+the wo&#39;d.&#39; To put an end to the matter, he turned his
+back on me and went for&#39;ard among the niggers.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;After that I tried to explain to Rona (I had managed
+to get on speaking terms with her as soon as she
+became satisfied that Bell had not been poisoned) how
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page160" id="page160"></a>[pg&nbsp;160]</span>
+things stood, in the hope that she would fall in with a
+plan I had for giving him small doses of whisky with
+the coffee he had taken to drinking with increasing frequency
+as the craving for liquor grew on him. She flew
+into a temper at once, however. Said that, far from helping
+me to give him whisky on the quiet, she would taste
+every cup of coffee after it was poured for him in the
+galley, and then take it to him herself. She ended by
+saying that if I tried that trick she would knife me with
+her own hands: in fact, rather regretted that she hadn&#39;t
+done it when she had a chance at Kai. I couldn&#39;t for the
+life of me see why the girl should take that attitude,
+when it was so plain that whisky was the only thing that
+would pull Bell through; but take it she did, and that
+was the end of it, at least as far as co-operation from her
+was concerned, I mean. That simply left it up to me
+to watch my chances and do the best I could on my own.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Bell had insisted on standing watch-and-watch with
+me from the first, usually, in his own watch, taking the
+wheel himself, probably because it gave him something to
+occupy his mind&mdash;and his hands. (He was beginning
+to tear the skin of the palms of his hands from
+clenching and unclenching his fingers.) What broke
+him finally was discovering that he was no longer
+fit for a trick at the wheel. His eyes went bad
+rapidly under the strain, and it was not long before
+he could not distinguish the readings on the compass
+card. He told me about it at once, but was confident
+he could manage to hold a course by the stars.
+This went on all right as long as it was clear. But one
+night, when it was squally and overcast, he lost the
+&#39;Cross&#39; (which had been giving him a shifting but fairly
+approximate bearing), and fell back on trying to keep
+her a couple of points off the wind. This would have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page161" id="page161"></a>[pg&nbsp;161]</span>
+done all right if the Trade had held from the southeast.
+But it hauled up to east in a squall, and Bell,
+following it around by the &#39;feel&#39; of it on his face, had
+the schooner all but onto the Baluka Reef and shoal at
+daybreak. I let him extricate himself to save his feelings;
+but he knew that both the Bo&#39;sun and I had
+twigged what had happened, and why, and it must have
+been the realization of the fact that he had become quite
+useless in navigating the ship that hastened the final
+collapse.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;He came on the following night for his watch&mdash;the
+&#39;graveyard,&#39; from midnight to four in the morning,&mdash;but
+made no objection when I stuck on at the helm.
+We were closing the tangle of the Barrier Reef by then,
+you see, and it wouldn&#39;t have done to trust the wheel to
+a nigger. In fact, when I went on at eight the previous
+evening, it was practically the beginning of the thirty-six-hour
+trick at the wheel that ended when we
+anchored off Townsville.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;When Bell let me stay on at the wheel at midnight,
+he showed the first voluntary signs of giving in, not in
+the matter of closing his lips to whisky&mdash;nothing could
+affect his decision on that score,&mdash;but to the other alternative.
+I mean that he gave up hope of holding on till
+he had brought his ship to port&mdash;gave up hope of living
+to the end of the voyage. Up to that time he had
+always tried to pass the whole thing off as a sort of a
+joke, running on with patter like that about the &#39;wata
+wagon.&#39; But he dropped all that from the moment I
+refused to give way to him at the wheel.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;&#39;Youah quite right, Allen,&#39; he said in a weary sort
+of voice, and went over and sat down on the rail of the
+cockpit. His voice was hollower still when he spoke
+again, maybe ten minutes later. &#39;Allen,&#39; he croaked,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page162" id="page162"></a>[pg&nbsp;162]</span>
+&#39;I&#39;ve got a hunch I&#39;m not up to pullin&#39; my weight in
+this heah schoona any longa. I&#39;m all in&mdash;no mo&#39;n so
+much ballast. Just a dead drag.&#39;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I didn&#39;t reply to that. I was too much awed&mdash;yes,
+awed&mdash;even to urge him again to take the drink I knew
+would be the saving of his mind&mdash;perhaps his life. He
+didn&#39;t speak again till after I roused him to prevent the
+main boom giving him a crack on the head as I put her
+about. (We were working through a nasty patch of
+broken coral&mdash;the outskirts of the Barrier&mdash;but scant
+seaway and fluky airs.) As he settled back on the
+weather rail of the cockpit he said, speaking very slow as
+though hard put to control his voice: &#39;Allen, I make
+it about two hundred miles to Townsville by youah
+noon position. Say thirty-six to forty hours&#39; sailin&#39;,
+with the wind holdin&#39; up. Do you reckon you an&#39;
+Ranga&mdash;good man, Ranga&mdash;do you reckon you an&#39; he ah
+up to pullin&#39; it off alone? I&#39;m&mdash;damn it all, I&#39;m seem&#39;
+hell-west-an&#39;-crooked just as we hit the dirty navigatin&#39;
+Allen, take my wud fo&#39; it, this soba skippa stunt ain&#39;t
+all it&#39;s cracked up to be&mdash;not by a long shot. I&#39;d rather
+ha&#39; had the plague by a damn sight, Allen.&#39;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;He wouldn&#39;t mention the other alternative&mdash;whisky&mdash;even
+then, and I simply didn&#39;t have the nerve to take
+advantage of the opening and suggest it to him outright.
+But I did what I thought was the best thing under
+the circumstances&mdash;waited for a stretch of open sailing,
+gave the wheel to a nigger, fished up a convenient bottle
+of whisky, and set it down just behind him against the
+cockpit rail. I didn&#39;t speak even then&mdash;just pressed his
+shoulder, tilted the neck of the bottle against his hand
+where it clutched the rail, and went back to the wheel.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I had the feeling (and I still have) that I was doing
+the decent and humane thing, just as I did when I put old
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page163" id="page163"></a>[pg&nbsp;163]</span>
+Recoil out of his misery; though the cases aren&#39;t quite
+parallel of course. But I knew it would force a crisis
+one way or the other, and that was what, in all sincerity,
+I thought was the kindest thing to do. If Bell drank
+(though it well might be that he would go on drinking
+until he fell in a stupor), it would surely save his life.
+What if he did get dead drunk? He wouldn&#39;t be any
+more useless in navigating the schooner than he was already.
+On the other hand, if he still refused to drink,
+the heightened temptation of the handy bottle would
+increase the tension and hasten the collapse of mind and
+body, which was now but a matter of a few hours at the
+outside. I think you&#39;ll agree with me, Whitney, that I
+did the kindest thing possible under the circumstances.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I wouldn&#39;t venture an opinion on that offhand,&quot; I
+temporized; &quot;but, in any event, it&#39;s the thing I would
+undoubtedly have done myself had I been in your place.
+There&#39;s no question in my mind on that point at least.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I&#39;m glad to hear you say that,&quot; he said warmly;
+&quot;especially as there was one person&mdash;a rather important
+person to me&mdash;who didn&#39;t approve of my action.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Bell&#39;s only acknowledgment of what I had done,&quot;
+Allen went on, &quot;was a sort of disjointed muttering.
+&#39;Many thanks, ol&#39; man. Nothin&#39; doin&#39;. Good intentions.
+Soba skippa to the fareyewell!&#39; (I think that was the
+word). He shoved the bottle along out of easy reach, but
+didn&#39;t even make a bluff at throwing it over the side. I
+have an idea that the reason for his restraint on that
+score was due to the fact that he remembered I had told
+him that the supply was running low (I had been putting
+an awful crimp in it), and didn&#39;t want to deprive
+me of it. He was quite considerate enough to think of
+that sort of a thing, even with his senses toppling, as
+they must have been from the beginning of the watch.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page164" id="page164"></a>[pg&nbsp;164]</span>
+&quot;It was a moonless night, and heavily overcast, so
+that I could just make out the blur of Bell&#39;s head and
+shoulders against the deckhouse where he sat hunched
+up on the port rail of the cockpit. But there was a
+crack opening up in the beastly binnacle, and through
+it an inch-wide welt of light slashed diagonally across
+his tortured face. One eye, the side of his nose and half
+of his mouth were sharply lighted up. The rest was a
+shadowy blank. The vivid gash of light, like a magnet,
+kept drawing my gaze away from the compass. That one
+eye, wide and staring, never blinked in the bright beam.
+The nostril, distending and contracting jerkily, was
+red, like that of a horse that has been galloped to the
+point of death. The teeth looked to be clenched through
+the lower lip, and blood was trickling over the lighted
+streak of clean-shaven chin. Not all his sufferings had
+made him miss his morning shave. Almost like a rite
+with him, that was.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Holdover from his Naval life,&quot; I suggested hastily,
+fearful less he should be tempted to digress upon irrelevant
+details.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I don&#39;t know just when it was that the end came,&quot;
+Allen resumed. &quot;I was expecting every moment that
+he would jump up and begin his restless pacings, as he
+had done on previous nights. But at six bells his position
+was still unchanged, and to blot out that beastly slash
+of light across his drawn face I threw a piece of canvas
+over the top and back of the binnacle, so that the beam
+from the crack was cut off. Just as the morning watch
+was called a nasty bit of a squall was threatening to
+bore in and give us a raking, though it finally passed
+astern of us and spun off down to leeward. My hands
+were full for some minutes preparing against the imminent
+onslaught, and it was not until the menace was past
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page165" id="page165"></a>[pg&nbsp;165]</span>
+and I had taken over the wheel from Ranga (who had
+relieved me when I went for&#39;ard to have a squint
+ahead for myself), that it struck me that Bell had
+been paying no attention whatever to all that had been
+going on&mdash;didn&#39;t appear to have shifted at all, in
+fact.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I was just going to call to him to suggest that he go
+below and turn in for a spell, when the nigger on the
+lookout in the bows sung out &#39;breaka&mdash;dead ahead!&#39; It
+was a near thing, but I managed to sheer off and avoid
+grounding on a patch of barely submerged coral, just
+becoming visible in the shimmer of the false dawn. As I
+knew that the main wall of the Great Barrier must be
+close at hand to lee, I was chary of letting her fall off
+very far in that direction. I had just ordered a man
+to stand-by to heave the lead at the first sign of shoaling
+water on the starboard bow, when the tail of my eye
+caught a glimpse of Rona stepping out on deck from the
+cabin companion way. (We had sulphured out the
+Agent&#39;s cabin and made it fairly comfortable for her use.
+It was out of the question her sleeping on deck, on account
+of the incessant squalls.) She headed straight for
+Bell, who was still hunched up on the weather rail of
+the cockpit, the outlines of his face just beginning to
+show in the ashy light of early morning.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;As her hand touched his shoulder she let out a shrill
+squeal and plumped down on her knees beside him. In
+doing this she must have bumped the whisky bottle,
+which had been rolling back and forth on the deck with
+the lurches of the schooner. It was with more of a hiss
+than a scream that she grabbed it up and flung it straight
+for my head. Oh, I should hardly say <i>straight</i>,&quot; Allen
+corrected himself, &quot;for Rona evidently can&#39;t throw any
+better than the run of her white sisters. The bottle
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page166" id="page166"></a>[pg&nbsp;166]</span>
+smashed against the wheel, deluged the cockpit with
+broken glass and one of my last half-dozen quarts of
+whisky. If I had not been pretty sure that Bell was
+already dead, the fact that the smell of the old familiar
+juice welling up from the deck didn&#39;t bring a twitch to
+his nostrils would have been enough to drive it home
+to me.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Without waiting to observe the effects of her throw,
+Rona launched herself right on after the bottle&mdash;only a
+shade better aimed. Unluckily, the cross-cut she took to
+my throat carried her right over the wheel&mdash;and at the
+very instant that the appearance of a second line of foam
+down to leeward confirmed my fears about our desperately
+scant working room. The instinctive lifting of my
+right arm to block the girl&#39;s grab at my face came near
+to bringing disaster. I fended the clutch from my throat
+all right, but the weight of her body falling across the
+wheel tore the spoke from my left hand and threw the
+schooner up into the wind.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Ranga&#39;s quick presence of mind was all that saved
+the situation. Jumping into the cockpit regardless of
+the broken glass cutting his bare feet, he grabbed the
+girl about the waist, disentangled her flying arms and
+legs from the wheel, and smothered her struggles against
+his side. I threw the wheel back an instant before she
+jibed, and then, for two or three seconds, things hung
+in the balance. Finally, very slowly, she filled away on
+the port tack again, and the immediate danger was over.
+Had the schooner gone about, nothing could have saved
+her from running onto the reef. There was not enough
+room left in which to wear her round.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Bell must have given up the fight along toward the
+end of the &#39;graveyard&#39; watch. I heard him muttering
+off and on for a while, but the last coherent words that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page167" id="page167"></a>[pg&nbsp;167]</span>
+came to my ears were, not unfitly: &#39;Nothin&#39; doin&#39;. Soba
+skippa to a fareyewell.&#39;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;That rub with the reef was the nearest squeak we
+had&mdash;though I can&#39;t say that I remember much about the
+navigation that took us through the Barrier and on to
+Townsville. Drunken man&#39;s luck doubtless. I was sure
+drunk, and no mistake, though both my legs and my head
+were grinding right along to the finish&mdash;only ceased
+functioning when there was nothing more to do.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The girl&mdash;when Ranga let her go again&mdash;went back
+and settled down by Bell&#39;s body. Wouldn&#39;t let anyone
+come near it. Only left it on the two or three further
+occasions that she took to fly at my throat when she
+thought I wasn&#39;t looking. I didn&#39;t want to lock her up
+(it was inviting the plague to force her to stay &#39;tween
+decks for too long), but managed to get around the difficulty
+finally by having one of the crew stand-by to push
+in and absorb the impact whenever she made a break in
+my direction. She gave up trying after that. Seemed
+to loathe the touch of a nigger. But with Ranga it was
+different. She grew quiet as soon as he picked her up&mdash;something
+like a kid with its nurse.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The big fellow was wonderful, by the way. Always
+doing the right thing without waiting for an order, always
+cool and quiet, always good-natured. Spent his
+spare time sitting on the taffrail and peeping to the sea-gulls
+on a queer little Malay flute he always carried in
+his belt&mdash;some kind of hollow stem, full of little wooden
+balls that gave a weird sort of ripple to the notes. First
+and last, Ranga was the man to whom the bulk of the
+credit was due for taking the schooner through. I still
+feel a bit guilty that I didn&#39;t divide the whisky with
+him. But perhaps it was best to stow it where I
+did.... You never know how a yellow man or a black
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page168" id="page168"></a>[pg&nbsp;168]</span>
+man will react to the stuff. It&#39;s hard enough guessing
+with a white man sometimes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen smiled whimsically as he lighted a fresh cheroot.
+He was through with the worst of the story and seemed
+a good deal relieved. It was plain enough that he spoke
+the truth when he said that the memory of it was still
+a nightmare, and that he hated to have to speak of it.
+He said a few words more in explanation of why he had
+not buried Bell at sea, which appeared to have been
+mainly because he was afraid the girl would have followed
+the body over the side. He had no misgivings
+about keeping it aboard, he said, as he was quite certain
+that it carried no plague infection. He mentioned incidentally,
+that they had found a lot of stick brimstone
+among the stores, and that the thorough smudging they
+gave the after quarters with this was probably responsible
+for the fact that the plague had not reappeared
+there. It had been impossible to devise a way to disinfect
+the big &#39;midships hold where the labour recruits
+were housed, on account of the more or less crazy condition
+of all of the niggers.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen looked at his watch, but went on with his story
+as though in no particular hurry. &quot;You&#39;re doubtless
+impatient to hear about the girl&#39;s turning up again,&quot; he
+said. &quot;You&#39;ve already heard of the rather remarkable
+escape she made from the Quarantine Station&mdash;Butler,
+one of the doctors, mentioned that he told you about it on
+your steamer. At the Station it was the theory that the
+girl had broken out so that she could kill herself on
+Bell&#39;s grave&mdash;that she was more or less off her head anyhow.
+That was a mistake, though a natural one. She
+had just one thing in view when she clambered out of the
+mad cell and over the wall: that was to lie low until I
+came out and then, watching her chance, try to make a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page169" id="page169"></a>[pg&nbsp;169]</span>
+better job of polishing me off than she had done on the
+schooner. She realized that they were on their guard
+against her at the Station, and that she might be kept
+under restraint indefinitely, or at least until I was out
+and gone beyond her reach.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Her mind was working well enough to make her
+reckon that that Chinese shawl (which everyone would
+have noted) was the one garment she had that could not
+fail to be recognized. So&mdash;it must have been something
+of a wrench for her&mdash;she left it on the bank of Ross Creek
+and went to seek a hiding place.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Luck was with her in the search. Locating the native
+quarter after wandering for a while, she circulated
+around until she came upon the signs&mdash;in Hindustani, I
+fancy&mdash;in front of the shack of an old East Indian drug
+seller and money changer. How she got around him I
+don&#39;t know; but at any rate she persuaded him to keep
+her there until I was out of quarantine. She even contrived
+to get the old rascal to spy out the refuge I had
+flown to&mdash;a bungalow just out of town, where I figured
+I would be a bit quieter than at the hotel. Then she
+took a hand in the game herself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It was on the second night after I came out, and I
+had turned in early. I had taken no precautions of any
+kind against attack. Never have bothered much with
+that kind of thing. The doors and windows were wide
+open. I had a servant&mdash;a Chino,&mdash;but he was sleeping
+in his own hut in the rear of the grounds.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It was the window she came in by, though she could
+just as well have used the door. I was more than half
+awake (hadn&#39;t been sleeping very well any of the time
+since my two-day snooze after landing from the
+schooner), lying on my back under the mosquito net,
+with no covers over me. It was probably her intention
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page170" id="page170"></a>[pg&nbsp;170]</span>
+to slip up quietly and get her hands under the net before
+disturbing me. She had no knife, by the way.
+They had taken that little Malay dagger away after she
+had tried to stick me at the Quarantine Station. As she
+would have had no difficulty in raising another through
+old Ratu Lal had she wanted it, I take it that she felt
+confident enough of doing the job with her hands. No
+idle dream that, either; you know something of the
+strength of them.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I sat up in bed in a dazed sort of way as her shadow
+darkened the window. (There was a bit of a moon,
+shining on that side of the house.) It must have been
+my movement under the netting that made her change
+her plan. Very naturally, she counted on my shooting
+first and asking questions afterwards. It was the rational
+and proper thing to do, and it is probably what
+I would have done had my pistol been handy. But, not
+dreaming of an attack (this was the day before old
+&#39;Squid&#39; Saunders turned up and took a jab at me), my
+gun was in my coat pocket. I have always carried it
+there&mdash;when I had a coat on&mdash;ever since I saw your
+little exhibition of pocket gunnery at Kai,&quot; he added
+with a humorous smile.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;As I was saying, the stir I made under the mosquito
+net forced the girl to speed up her schedule a bit. You
+saw the jump she made the time she caught up the
+schooner at Kai. Well, it must have been about that
+same kind of a spring over again. She never touched
+the floor between the low window ledge and my bed.
+Landed right on my chest, bringing down the net under
+her weight, and went to my throat with an instinct as
+sure as that of a fighting bulldog. She was choking me
+right through the net before I really knew what had
+happened.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page171" id="page171"></a>[pg&nbsp;171]</span>
+&quot;Of course, taking it for granted that she was dead, I
+didn&#39;t have the ghost of an idea it was Rona who was
+sprawling on my chest and shutting off my wind with
+steel fingers that seemed closing in to meet at the base
+of my brain. I didn&#39;t even know that it was a woman.
+In fact, the deadly pressure of that grip argued all the
+other way&mdash;that I was being throttled by a man, and a
+deucedly powerful one at that. If I did any speculating
+at all, I probably figured it as some kind of a thieving
+stunt. But a man fighting for his life&mdash;and that is
+precisely what I was doing&mdash;doesn&#39;t waste much time in
+conjecture. My immediate problem was a simple one.
+If that grip wasn&#39;t broken inside of a minute, it might
+stay there forever as far as my shaking it off was concerned.
+I had been choked before, and also done a bit
+of choking on my own account; so I knew to within a
+few seconds how long it is before the head of a man
+whose wind is shut off begins to reel.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Still quite the master of myself, I tried on, very deliberately,
+the best thing I knew for breaking a strangle
+grip&mdash;that simple little <i>jujutsu</i> trick of thrusting your
+arms between those of the man choking you, and then
+throwing back your shoulders and expanding your chest.
+Stiffening the chest muscles, I mean&mdash;of course you
+can&#39;t expand it with air while your windpipe is closed.
+That never fails if you are both on your feet, and will
+sometimes work even when you are on your back. Here
+the tangle of the net blocked the up-thrust of my arms,
+and I failed to get enough leverage to break the hold on
+my neck.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Then I tried my next best bet&mdash;that of turning over
+and over and sort of unwinding the grip on your throat.
+I was a shade less confident now. Time was getting
+short. I did some jolly active wriggling in trying to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page172" id="page172"></a>[pg&nbsp;172]</span>
+work along far enough to roll over the side of the bed,
+but again it was the net that defeated my effort. I
+was getting a good deal peeved with that bally canopy;
+and yet, in the end, it was the very thing that got me
+clear.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Nine times out of ten a man being held down and
+choked by another man&mdash;that is, if the choker knows
+his job&mdash;has no chance of doubling up in a ball and
+kicking his assailant off by straightening out his legs.
+If the man choking you flattens his body closely enough
+against yours, you simply haven&#39;t the room to start
+doubling your knees. My assailant knew his business
+right enough, but the folds of the net (some of the corners
+of which were still clinging to its frame), prevented
+his flattening in close to my legs. The sag of the woven
+bamboo bed springs also gave me a few inches of leeway.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;There was nothing deliberate or confident in the jerk
+with which I began drawing my knees up against my
+chest. I had already failed twice with what I rated as
+decidedly better bets than that one, and the time limit
+was nearly up. My head was already beginning to
+swim. It was neck or nothing this heat. The sheer
+desperation of my effort won out for it. The push of my
+knees against the chest of the incubus did not lift it
+quite enough to break its hold, but it did enable me to
+squirm my right foot up and get it firmly planted in
+the pit of the creature&#39;s stomach. Then, with all the
+strength left in me, I straightened out in a terrific kicking
+push.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;In reverse, the flight of the muscular body that had
+been holding me down must have been fully equal to that
+opening jump from the window. Indeed, I am almost
+sure that it hit the further wall before it did the floor.
+The hold on my neck was the only point of contact that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page173" id="page173"></a>[pg&nbsp;173]</span>
+did not break readily, and there the result was&mdash;as you
+saw a moment ago. As those steel-claw fingers would
+not give an inch, they simply ripped out through the
+flesh. I can consider myself dead lucky that they didn&#39;t
+hook onto my windpipe or jugular. Both of them would
+have come right along with all the flesh and hide those
+unrelaxing talons took with them.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It didn&#39;t occur to me for a few moments that I might
+have knocked out my assailant, and I was a good deal
+surprised when he neither returned to the attack nor
+made any break to escape. The laboured gasping in the
+darkness on the other side of the room quickly told me
+the reason, however. I had knocked the wind out of him
+with my mighty kick. I knew that spasmodic gasping
+for air meant that I wasn&#39;t going to be greatly troubled
+for a minute or two at least, so took my time about
+fumbling for my automatic and lighting the lamp.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;A bit dazzled by the light for a moment, I took
+the lanky yellow figure huddled up against the wall to be
+a Hindu coolie. The thin legs and arms were like those
+of the East Indian indentured labourers of the sugar
+plantations, and the two or three yards of white cloth
+trailing off along the floor suggested a Madrassi waist
+and shoulder rag. Presently&mdash;for that one rumpled
+wrapping was all she had worn&mdash;I saw that it was a
+woman; and then&mdash;but as a matter of fact I think that
+the girl spoke before I recognized her face.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;&#39;&quot;Slant,&quot;&#39; she piped out in that bird-like chirrup
+of hers; &#39;&quot;Slant,&quot; I guess I make a meestake. &#39;Scuse
+me, ple-ese, &quot;Slant.&quot;&#39;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Could you beat that for cheek? Trying to tear a
+man&#39;s throat out one minute, and asking him to &#39;ple-ese
+&#39;scuse&#39; her for it the next. And what do you think of
+a man who would tumble for it, especially after the way
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page174" id="page174"></a>[pg&nbsp;174]</span>
+she had made me jump through and roll over at Kai?
+But that&#39;s Rona; yes, and that&#39;s me. I tumbled, and&mdash;I
+may as well admit it&mdash;I am still tumbling.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Having the girl turn up like that&mdash;after I had been
+thinking of her as dead for a week or two&mdash;didn&#39;t give
+me quite the shock it would have if that voice had come
+out of the darkness without my seeing her first. It was a
+deuce of a surprise even as it was; but, when all is said
+and done, a pleasant one, in spite of the rather startling
+way she chose to&mdash;to re-materialize. I was glad to find
+that she was alive, whether it meant anything more to
+me than that or not.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;We didn&#39;t talk much that night&mdash;there wasn&#39;t much
+talk left in either of us as a matter of fact. Rona continued
+to croak and hiccup, while my own swollen vocal
+chords smothered every other word I tried to get past
+them. I managed to assure Rona that I quite understood
+her feelings against me (though I didn&#39;t entirely,
+and don&#39;t yet), and begged her to give me a chance to
+explain the way Bell had come to his finish. She admitted
+that she had begun to believe that she might have
+been hasty in her decision and action, and said she would
+be glad to hear what I had to say. She told me where she
+was in hiding and asked me to come there in the morning;
+also to do what I could to square her with the
+quarantine authorities for breaking out of the Station
+ahead of time, and on no account to let anything happen
+to old Ratu Lal for giving her refuge. She seemed to
+take it as a matter of course that I would do these things.
+You&#39;d have thought I was some sort of a <i>mayordomo</i>
+taking orders.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It was not very late and, luckily, the bungalow
+(which Ralston had occupied himself at times) had a
+telephone. I ordered a closed carriage sent out, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page175" id="page175"></a>[pg&nbsp;175]</span>
+also got the Quarantine Station and arranged for one
+of the doctors&mdash;Butler, the chap you talked with on the
+steamer&mdash;to come to the landing and wait for me to
+pick him up. They had been very decent to me at the
+Station, and I wanted to avoid having to explain things
+to a strange doctor.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Rona tied my neck up for me&mdash;very handily, too&mdash;and
+when the carriage came I bundled her in and gave
+the driver the direction which carried him along the
+edge of the &#39;foreign quarter.&#39; I dropped her at a corner
+not far from Ratu Lal&#39;s joint, promising to look in on
+her early the next morning. Butler was waiting for me
+at the landing when I got there, and I told him about
+Rona&#39;s coming to life, and its sequel, as we drove back
+to the bungalow. After he had dressed my neck I told
+him what I wanted him to try to do for me and sent him
+back to the landing, where his boat had hung on for him.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Rona was looking a bit white about the gills when
+I called the next morning, and complained that her
+stomach &#39;got mad&#39; every time she sent food down to it.
+I told her that she still had the best of me, as I didn&#39;t
+expect to be able to get any food down to my stomach
+for a couple of days yet. That seemed rather to buck her
+up, and she had a good laugh over it. Then we got down
+to business, and had an hour&#39;s yarn in the drug-scented
+quiet of old Ratu Lal&#39;s back room.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;As my Malay is fairly good, we talked without difficulty.
+I told her more or less what I have just told you
+about Bell and why I had given him the whisky. She
+said, rather grudgingly, that she thought she could
+understand why I had done as I did. Then I said a
+few things about&mdash;well, about my personal feelings
+toward her. Finally, I asked her point-blank if she
+would go back to the Islands with me. Told her she
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page176" id="page176"></a>[pg&nbsp;176]</span>
+could live anywhere she wanted, and in any way that
+she wanted. I didn&#39;t say that I was willing to marry
+her, because (since, if she has any religion at all, it&#39;s
+Hindu or Mohammedan) I felt that would make no difference
+to her one way or the other.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Am I really willing to marry her?&quot; (It was the lift
+of my eyebrows that suggested the query to Allen, for I
+did not speak.) &quot;Well, yes, I think I am, if she made
+that a condition. But I don&#39;t think the question is one
+likely to arise.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The girl took in the whole thing without giving away
+by word or look how it impressed her. When I had
+finished, she coolly suggested that I run along and square
+matters up with the quarantine people about her and
+Ratu Lal. She added that she would be obliged if I&#39;d
+look up her Chinese shawl for her. She also started to
+speak about her dagger, but changed her mind and said
+to let that go for the present. As for what I&#39;d been telling
+her.... Well, perhaps if I could see my way to
+dropping in again toward evening she might have an
+answer for me. High and haughty as a Sultana, she was,
+sitting cross-legged on a mat and pulling away at one
+of Ratu Lal&#39;s big &#39;hubble-bubbles.&#39;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I went to the Quarantine Station straightaway, and,
+in spite of the red tape tangling up a thing of that kind,
+managed to get them to agree to discharging the girl
+without anything more than a perfunctory call from a
+doctor to certify her free of plague. That done, the rest
+was easy. I told the story&mdash;omitting, of course, the
+girl&#39;s attack upon me&mdash;at the Police Station, and they
+agreed not to arrest Ratu Lal as long as the quarantine
+authorities were satisfied and lodged no complaint
+against him. They said they were only too glad of a
+chance to do me a favour. Then I got them to let me
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page177" id="page177"></a>[pg&nbsp;177]</span>
+have the shawl, and begged them to keep the news of the
+girl&#39;s turning up quiet as long as they could.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;&#39;Squid&#39; Saunders&#39;s little diversion that afternoon
+gave the pressmen something else to take up their minds,
+and the matter of the missing girl was forgotten, at
+least for the remainder of my time in Townsville. The
+fact that she did not drown herself must have leaked
+out since, but they probably haven&#39;t been enough interested
+in it&mdash;now that the hunt has followed me here&mdash;to
+wire it south.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;When I broke away from the official reception committee
+and dropped in on Rona at the end of the afternoon&mdash;impatient
+enough, I can tell you&mdash;she gave no
+sign that the matter I had come for an answer about was
+in her mind at all. She grabbed the Chinese shawl out
+of my hand with a yelp of delight, but almost dissolved
+in tears when she saw how the embroidery had been
+smudged and ruffled in her scrambles over trees and
+walls and ditches the night she escaped from the Quarantine
+Station. You may remember that it was a big peacock
+that was embroidered on the shawl&mdash;pretty nearly
+life-size&mdash;rather a fine piece of work, it always struck me.
+Well, ignoring me entirely, she spread that old peacock
+out over her breast&mdash;something in the way she used to
+display it when she wore the shawl in Kai&mdash;and began
+chirping and crooning and muttering to it like a dove
+to its nestlings. She would nuzzle into the plumage,
+smoothing the ruffled feathers with her lips, just like she
+was the old peacock preening himself. Every little bit of
+torn floss she would try to put back where it came from.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Stiff with funk, I sat quiet until she had gone all
+over the moulting old bird, but when she started in working
+down from his crest again, I thought it was time to
+remind her of my presence. I had never sat around
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page178" id="page178"></a>[pg&nbsp;178]</span>
+waiting on anybody like that before, Whitney; even my
+old nurse couldn&#39;t make me do it. So I cut in and told
+her that I had arranged things at the Quarantine Station&mdash;that
+she wouldn&#39;t need to go there again; also that
+old Ratu Lal need not worry any longer about a visit
+from the Police. Incidentally, I mentioned that I was
+making him a present of ten pounds to show my appreciation
+of his consideration in not claiming the reward
+offered for her.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;She took no notice of anything I said. Just went on
+crooning and preening and stroking down the ruffled
+feathers, giving a little sob every now and then as she
+came to a place where they were badly mussed up. Then
+I went off on another tack, saying that I knew of a shop
+in the town that carried Chinese embroideries, and suggesting
+it was possible a skilled needle-worker might
+be found there competent to undertake the restoration
+of the bird&#39;s damaged plumage. She deigned to cock up
+an ear to listen to that, but her only reply was a disconsolate
+shake of the head, as though anything like
+proper restoration was a matter beyond all hope.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;That quieted me for a while, but after twirling my
+thumbs through ten or fifteen minutes more nuzzling
+and crooning, my patience gave out. I jumped up to
+the accompaniment of a good lively string of oaths, and
+asked her point-blank if she had made up her mind about
+the matter we had been speaking of in the morning. She
+broke into a ripple of smiles at that, and cooed sweetly:
+&#39;Ye-es, I think &#39;bout that plenty, &quot;Slant.&quot;&#39; Then she
+slipped into voluble Malay and laid down a perfectly
+simple and direct proposal, on the fulfilment of the conditions
+of which she was willing to return to the Islands
+with me. It was not what I had expected,&mdash;not what
+anyone would have dreamed of expecting under the circumstances;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page179" id="page179"></a>[pg&nbsp;179]</span>
+yet ridiculously easy of fulfilment in the
+event a certain third party fell in with the idea. That
+third party is you, Whitney. That&#39;s the main thing I
+have come to see you about. Everything is up to you
+now. Perhaps that will make it easier for you to understand
+why I rattled on for an hour or more in the hope
+of putting myself right with you about Bell. I&#39;ve never
+tried to justify myself with any living man before, and
+probably will never do it again. But it had to be done
+this time, Whitney, and I hope I&#39;ve been successful.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">My nod might have meant almost anything, but I was
+not unwilling that Allen should interpret it in his favour.
+As a matter of fact, he had convinced me wholly that&mdash;after
+the abortive attempt at drugging in Kai&mdash;he had
+played straight with Bell. As for Rona&mdash;well, if he
+was also ready to play straight with her (and he had
+just about convinced me on that point, too), what was
+it to me? If she could forget Bell so easily, it was her
+own affair. If Allen were trying to carry her off against
+her will&mdash;that would be a different matter of course.
+But he was not. Plainly it was the girl herself who held
+the whip hand. The whole thing was a bit obscure yet,
+but what Allen had still to say might do something to
+clear it up. Without committing myself by more than
+that one nod, I waited for him to go on.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page180" id="page180"></a>[pg&nbsp;180]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XII<br />
+<small>A BAD MAN&#39;S PLEA</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">The</span> expression of nervous anxiety I had noticed
+several times since he came was on Allen&#39;s face
+again as he started to speak. &quot;It&#39;s a queer
+enough proposition,&quot; he began. &quot;You see, it&#39;s
+like ...&quot; He hesitated, stopped, got up and walked
+to the window, where he stood for a few moments,
+frowning and biting the end of his cheroot. Suddenly
+he turned to me with: &quot;Whitney, what do you say to a
+bit of a turn in the fresh air? I&#39;ve been talking more
+than I&#39;m used to, and this stuffy room of yours is getting
+on my nerves. We might walk out through the
+gardens to the Domain. I can tell you all that I have
+to tell out there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I did not need to look at my watch to know that it was
+getting on toward five o&#39;clock. Only the absorbing interest
+of Allen&#39;s narrative had prevented my becoming
+conscious of that fact before. My own nerves were less
+under control now, and the inevitable end-of-the-afternoon
+restlessness was surging strong upon me. But I
+was anxious to hear Allen out, and no reason occurred
+to me why it should not be in the open air. If there
+was any decision to be arrived at, that could be made
+on the morrow, or whenever I felt up to it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Right-o, Allen,&quot; I cried; &quot;I&#39;ll be glad to get out
+myself. I shall want to be back in about half an hour
+though.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page181" id="page181"></a>[pg&nbsp;181]</span>
+I was grateful for his restraint in not greeting
+that last with an indulgent smile, for I knew that
+he fully understood what it was that focussed my
+interest upon five o&#39;clock. It was very evident that the
+man had retained all the finer instincts of a gentleman,
+little opportunity that he had had to exercise them in
+the last five years.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I got my hat and stick, and, feeling sure I would have
+no use for them, put both the revolver and the automatic
+pistol into the drawer of the table upon which
+they had been lying. I was rather glad of the chance to
+show Allen that I had confidence in him to that extent
+anyhow.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Anxious to avoid recognition, Allen pulled on a pair
+of dark spectacles and drew the brim of his Panama low
+down over his forehead. Turning out of crowded Pitt
+Street, he removed the spectacles, and as we passed the
+entrance of the Botanical Gardens took off his hat and
+fanned his brow with it as he walked. He had not spoken
+so far, but with the deep breath he inhaled as he felt
+the springy turf underfoot his restraint passed from
+him.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It&#39;s a great relief to get clear of those damn walls
+and pavements,&quot; he said fervently, opening his coat to
+let the cool breath from the Bay strike his chest. &quot;I
+can&#39;t get used to them again. I&#39;ve been free of them
+too long now. But I&#39;m finished with them for good,
+I hope.&quot; Then, as we came out upon a broad path:
+&quot;Bear away to the left, if you don&#39;t mind. I want to
+take a squint at that bunch of palms as we pass.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As we came abreast of a big bed packed with a riot of
+dense tropical growths, he pulled up and appeared to be
+searching for something. &quot;Ah, there she is!&quot; he ejaculated
+presently, and pushed in close to a queer little
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page182" id="page182"></a>[pg&nbsp;182]</span>
+dwarf palm, which straggled drunkenly on a half-dozen
+spindling legs set something like those of a camera
+tripod. Pulling up the stamped metal marker, he gave it
+a quick glance and then handed it to me with a grin.
+&quot;The fruits of my first and only dip into botanical
+research,&quot; he remarked. &quot;What do you think
+of it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;<i>Pandanus Bensoni Allensis</i>,&quot; I read in large letters,
+and below: &quot;Habitat: Portuguese Timor. Very rare.
+The only other catalogued specimen is in the Royal
+Dutch Gardens at Buitenzorg, Java.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;So that <i>Allensis</i> stands for you, does it?&quot; I said, not
+a little impressed, as I handed him back the metal disc.
+Then added: &quot;And racing and polo cups weren&#39;t the
+only objects you collected.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The merest accident,&quot; he replied. &quot;I had always
+liked plants and flowers, ever since my nurse used to
+wheel me down this very walk in my pram. I suppose
+that gave me an interest in the tropical growths of the
+Islands, after they packed me off there. I thought this
+little fellow looked a bit on the unusual when I chanced
+upon it one morning in a low valley back of Deli; so I
+dug it up and shipped it to Sydney direct on the China
+Line steamer, which touches in there. It turned out to be
+a real find. Benson of Kew Gardens, the great authority
+on tropical palms, described it, and tacked my name on
+as the discoverer. The old cove&#39;s letter contained the
+only kind words addressed to me from the outside world
+in the last five years. And now look at them ...&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had come to expect that note of bitterness in Allen&#39;s
+voice every time he spoke of the past, and especially
+of his &quot;transportation&quot; to the Islands. He evidently
+thought that he had been badly treated; too badly for
+even the present wave of frantic adulation to make atonement.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page183" id="page183"></a>[pg&nbsp;183]</span>
+He was through with it for good. Several little
+things he had let drop indicated that.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The incident of the palm was interesting in throwing
+an illuminative crosslight on the gentler human side of
+a man who had generally been rated as without either
+gentleness or humanity. So, also, was the very evident
+appeal to Allen&#39;s sense of natural beauty made by the
+matchless panorama of the Bay as it unfolded to us from
+the far end of the point.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">We had skirted the Naval anchorage of Farm Cove,
+picked our way along the path below the ledges where
+benighted &quot;sundowners&quot; were wont to boil their
+&quot;billys&quot; and spread their &quot;blueys&quot; in the shallow wave-worn
+caves, and climbed up through the gums to the
+rocky lookout on the outermost tip of the sharply-jutting
+point. The clocks in the town behind us began
+chiming the quarters heralding the hour of five, and
+presently, on the first of the heavier strokes, the flotilla of
+trans-bay ferry-boats slid from their slips at the inner
+curve of the horseshoe of the Circular Quay and
+&quot;fanned&quot; out on their divergent courses to points on
+the opposite side of Port Jackson.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;That sight has never failed to quicken my pulses
+from the time I used to wait and watch for it as a kid
+down to today,&quot; Allen said with almost a thrill in his
+voice. &quot;It is the one picture that has remained clearest
+in my mind all these years I&#39;ve been&mdash;shut out from it.
+Did you ever read Henry Lawson&#39;s lines to &#39;Sydney-Side,&#39;
+written from somewhere in the West, I believe?
+Something like this they go:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&quot;&#39;Oh, there never dawned a morning in the long and lonely days,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">But I thought I saw the ferries streaming out across the bays&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And as fresh and fair in fancy did the picture rise again</span><br />
+<span class="i2">As the sunrise flushed the city from Woollahra to Balmain:</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page184" id="page184"></a>[pg&nbsp;184]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&quot;&#39;And the sunny water frothing round the liners black and red,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And the coastal schooners working by the loom of Bradley&#39;s Head;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And the whistles and the sirens that re-echo far and wide</span><br />
+<span class="i2">All the light and life and beauty that belong to Sydney-Side.&#39;&quot;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;A sentimentalist, too,&quot; I muttered to myself, the
+surprise of that revelation checking for a few moments
+the rising tide of my absinthe-hunger.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen led the way back to where a flat ledge of rock
+made a rough natural seat. &quot;&#39;Lady Macquarie&#39;s
+Chair,&#39;&quot; he explained, motioning me to sit down.
+&quot;Named from the wife of a former Governor who was
+supposed to slip away out here and enjoy the view. The
+Domain runs right back behind the Government House,
+you know. I always used to mooch along out here for a
+look-see every time I got a chance, partly for the fine
+prospect of the Bay and partly for the comprehensive
+visualization it permitted of what I might call &#39;The Rise
+and Fall of the House of Allen.&#39;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Haven&#39;t you an expression in the States to the effect
+that it&#39;s &#39;three generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves&#39;?
+Well, here in Australia we put the same
+natural law of evolution in the form of a conundrum
+and answer. It goes: &#39;How long does it take
+for an arrow to become a boomerang?&#39; The answer
+varies, but for the &#39;House of Allen&#39; it is: &#39;Four generations.&#39;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The arrow, you understand, is the &#39;Broad Arrow&#39;
+that marked the transported convicts, while the boomerang
+merely suggests something that rises, circles and
+returns to the point of departure. Well, from this place
+where we sit I can trace the full circle of the &#39;arrow-cum
+boomerang-cum arrow&#39; of the Allen quiver. Look! I&#39;ll
+show you. Follow me closely.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page185" id="page185"></a>[pg&nbsp;185]</span>
+&quot;Over there,&quot; he said, pointing seaward and easterly,
+&quot;are the Heads, in through which sailed the brig bearing
+Jim (alias &#39;Crab&#39;) Allen, convict, with a few hundred
+more of the scum of London, to the shores of
+Australia. That is, I&#39;ve always liked to fancy my distinguished
+progenitor sailed in through the Heads,
+though it&#39;s quite possible that the brig beat around
+into Botany Bay direct. Now&quot; (he pointed westerly to
+where the Paramatta wound out of sight between green
+hills) &quot;at the end of that deep cove over there is the
+slaughter house where the convict&#39;s son, James Allen,
+dealt in hides and hoofs and horns and laid the foundation
+of the family fortune, the fortune that wasn&#39;t seriously
+dented when the convict&#39;s grandson gave a
+hundred thousand pounds to a drought-relief fund and
+drew down a Baronetcy. That big red-brick pile among
+the trees on Darling Point&quot; (Allen was pointing east
+again) &quot;is the mansion of the late Sir James Allen,
+Bart., and now owned by his eldest son, the New South
+Wales Agent in London. Old Sir James&#39; second son,
+Hartley, was born in the south wing of that unsightly
+heap of red bricks.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;And here&quot; (this time he turned and pointed south
+where a sharp dagger-blade of inlet plunged deep into
+the heart of Sydney&#39;s lowest slums) &quot;is Wooloomooloo,
+where young Hartley Allen, descending from the soft
+refinements of Darling Point, found his level, organized
+his own &#39;push&#39; of rock-throwing, head-smashing
+larrikins and completed the social circle. The cycle of
+metamorphosis had begun its round. I was the throwback,
+Whitney. Old &#39;Crab&#39; Allen, the transported convict
+of Houndsditch, lived again in young Hartley Allen,
+whom most people thought of as a racing man and polo
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page186" id="page186"></a>[pg&nbsp;186]</span>
+player, but who had all the natural qualifications of an
+out-and-out crook.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I can trace all of my little moral obliquities, Whitney,
+back to old &#39;Crab,&#39; and, everything considered, I
+think he would rate me as rather a credit to his name,
+whatever contempt he might have had for my comparatively
+law-abiding father and grandfather, to say nothing
+of my pillar-of-the-state elder brother. &#39;Crab&#39; was
+transported as a consequence of his persistent disregard
+of his fellow townsmen&#39;s rights to their lives, wives and
+silver plate. I&mdash;well, I never did care much for silver
+plate.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">All this would have been intensely interesting to me an
+hour earlier, but now the fervour of my longing for my
+&quot;<i>solitude à trois</i>&quot; (as I was wont to call my séance with
+the long green bottle and the glass of cracked ice) was
+getting beyond control. The flowing lines of the reaches
+of cove and inlet glowing in the slanting light of the declining
+sun were becoming jerky and jagged and intershot
+with dazzling little spurts of light like one thinks
+he sees after receiving a crack on the head. The evening
+breeze lapped clammily about my chest and I fumbled
+clumsily with the buttons of my coat, trying to shut out
+the chill.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I ought to have been back at the hotel before this,&quot;
+I mumbled, getting to my feet. &quot;You had something
+more to tell me, hadn&#39;t you? You can do it as we walk
+back. I&#39;ve got to be going now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">By this time I wasn&#39;t in a state to observe things very
+carefully. Undoubtedly (as I&#39;ve thought it over since)
+Allen had been stalling to gain time and screw his nerve
+up to advancing the plan he had in mind. This being
+so, it must have jarred him a bit to have me call the turn
+so suddenly. I don&#39;t remember whether his face showed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page187" id="page187"></a>[pg&nbsp;187]</span>
+consternation or not. The one thing I recall was the
+quick movement of his hand to that hump on his right
+hip.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I did not recoil an inch. I am sure of that, for I felt
+no apprehension. I was beyond apprehension&mdash;save over
+delay. But Allen&#39;s hand came back empty. &quot;I&#39;ll tell
+you at once,&quot; he said brokenly. &quot;But please sit down.
+Don&#39;t go just yet. We&#39;ll have to come to a decision
+straightaway.&quot; Then, seeing I was turning to go: &quot;It&#39;s
+just this: Rona wants you to paint her picture&mdash;on the
+schooner&mdash;the <i>Cora</i>. Wants a picture done of the whole
+layout&mdash;ship, Bell, her, me, Ranga, niggers, everything.
+Says she&#39;ll pose for it on the schooner. Says I must
+pose too. Seems to be bitten with the idea of perpetuating
+the event for posterity, or something of the kind.
+Crazy scheme, but she&#39;s set her heart on it. Says when
+it&#39;s done, if she likes it, she may go back to the Islands
+with me. Nothing certain for me, but it&#39;s a chance and
+I&#39;ve got to make the most of it. Will you do it, Whitney?
+She says you&#39;ve always wanted to paint her picture,
+and now she&#39;s all for it. You won&#39;t turn it down,
+Whitney?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The incongruity of &quot;Slant&quot; Allen in the rôle of a plaintive
+pleader struck me with scarcely less astonishment
+than his strange and unexpected request. I was, however,
+totally unfit to cogitate upon either just then.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I&#39;ll think it over and let you know tomorrow,&quot; I said
+dully. &quot;Got to go now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;It has to be decided here and now, once and for all,&quot;
+Allen answered firmly. &quot;Here!&mdash;&quot; This time there was
+no hesitation in the movement of his hand to the hip-pocket
+hump. When it came back it was holding a fat
+stubby flask&mdash;one of the thermos type, just coming into
+general use at that time.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page188" id="page188"></a>[pg&nbsp;188]</span>
+&quot;I know what&#39;s calling you away, Whitney,&quot; he said
+steadily, unscrewing the top of the flask and pouring
+into it a bright green liquid with a familiar smell and
+sparkle. &quot;On the off chance that we might be detained
+beyond the hour when you&#39;re used to depending upon it,
+I had this cooled at the Marble Bar&mdash;old hangout of
+mine&mdash;and brought it along with me. Don&#39;t use the
+stuff myself, but I know the hooks it throws into a man
+who does use it. Drink hearty!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">He handed me both the brimming screw-top and the
+flask itself. The contents of the former might have been
+drugged heavily enough to kill a horse for all I cared.
+It was absinthe beyond a doubt, and cold enough to frost
+the outside of the little nickled cup that held it. I gulped
+it down hungrily; replenished and repeated. The third
+cup I drank less greedily, letting my eyes rove slowly
+where the jerkily jagged zigzags of hill and headland
+and foreshore were smoothing into a softer fluency of
+contour. Sipping the fourth cup, I unbuttoned my coat
+to give more intimacy to the caress of the milk-warm
+evening breeze.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Not bad stuff, Allen,&quot; I breathed at last. &quot;Very
+good of you to think of it. What was it you wanted me
+to do just now?&quot; Five minutes later I had promised to
+meet &quot;Slant&quot; Allen at the railway station in time to
+catch the nine-thirty train for Brisbane, en route Townsville.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It appeared that Rona&#39;s ultimatum had stipulated that
+Allen was to be back in Townsville with me, ready to
+begin arranging for the picture, inside of ten days. The
+only northbound boat, the <i>Waga Tiri</i>, which would arrive
+within the limit, had already left Sydney but could
+be overtaken at Brisbane by entraining at once. Allen
+had booked sleepers for the express and wired for cabins
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page189" id="page189"></a>[pg&nbsp;189]</span>
+on the steamer before he called on me at the <i>Australia</i>.
+There was nothing left to do but throw together what
+things I wanted and get to the station.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was rather a wrench, checking myself after getting
+all poised for flight with the &quot;Green Lady,&quot; but not so
+hard as it would have been had I really &quot;got off the
+ground.&quot; The contents of Allen&#39;s flask were hardly
+more than a strong bracer. Once I got back to the
+hotel and into my packing, it was easy going, especially
+as my enthusiasm was mounting for the work ahead.
+To have Rona for a model at last! And for such a
+picture!</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The dramatic appeal of the thing grew on me with
+every passing minute. It was not, to be sure, quite the
+kind of a work I was best prepared to do. With my ambition
+to become a marine painter, I had gone in more for
+colour than for anatomy and drawing; but I was still
+confident that I could make good with anything that
+gripped my imagination strongly. And &quot;The Saving
+of the Black-birder&quot; (I had already given it a tentative
+name) fairly took me by the throat. I would not fail
+with it. Nay, more, I would triumph. Perhaps&mdash;why
+not?&mdash;Paris! Yes, &quot;The Black-birder&quot; should open a
+short-cut to my goal. The rails beneath the wheels of the
+speeding Brisbane Express were clicking <i>black-bir-der</i>&mdash;<i>black-bir-der</i>
+when I dropped off to sleep that night somewhere
+along toward the Queensland boundary.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That the morrow should bring some reaction from this
+fine frenzy was inevitable, but it was a comparatively
+slight one. That Allen had deliberately planned to draw
+me away and take advantage of my weakness for absinthe
+to gain my intervention in his favour was evident enough.
+Indeed, the consummate manner in which he turned the
+trick argued an almost pathological intimacy with the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page190" id="page190"></a>[pg&nbsp;190]</span>
+reaction of the insidiously subtle essence of wormwood
+upon the human brain. But I did not hold this heavily
+against him. It was plain that he had only done it to
+play safe in a matter respecting which he did not dare
+to take any unnecessary chances of failure. I could not
+but admit to myself that I would probably have fallen
+in with the plan ultimately in any event. There was
+no disloyalty to my friend in making him (as I intended
+to do) the central figure in a picture that I hoped would
+become famous in two hemispheres. On the contrary,
+what greater tribute was there I could pay to his memory?
+If Rona cared to flaunt that memory by going off
+to the Islands with Allen, it was her own kettle of fish.
+Besides, she had not gone yet; didn&#39;t even appear to have
+committed herself definitely in the matter.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">To minimize explanations and the possibility of complications,
+Allen and I had agreed to defer wiring our
+Sydney friends of our departure until after we were
+aboard the <i>Waga Tiri</i> in Moreton Bay. His message to
+the Chairman of the Reception Committee, and mine to
+Benchley at my Exposition, went ashore on the tender
+that brought us off, and the steamer was under way before
+they could have been put upon the wires. It was
+not until the next northbound boat brought the Sydney
+papers to Townsville that we learned what a wave of
+surprise and speculation had been started by our joint
+hegira.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In the course of the voyage Allen told me some few
+further details of developments in Townsville. Before his
+departure he had managed to induce Rona, for her own
+comfort, to move her headquarters from Ratu Lal&#39;s joint
+to the Medical Mission of the London Bible Society. The
+head surgeon of the Mission he characterized as &quot;a good
+old sport&quot; he had knocked up against in the Straits and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page191" id="page191"></a>[pg&nbsp;191]</span>
+the Dutch Indies. He was just like an ordinary missionary
+to look at, but redeemed in &quot;Slant&#39;s&quot; eyes by a
+real love of horses, and even&mdash;very much on the quiet&mdash;a
+shrewd interest in racing. &quot;It&#39;s in his blood. He
+can&#39;t help it,&quot; Allen explained laconically but comprehensively.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Explicit instructions had been left at the Mission
+that Rona was not to be worried about her spiritual future.
+She was to be just a &quot;straight boarder&quot; until
+Allen&#39;s return. She was well provided with money, as
+he had seen to having everything Bell had with him at
+the time of his death deposited to her account at a local
+bank. This had included eighty gold sovereigns, found
+in a money-belt around Bell&#39;s waist, and some hundreds
+of Chilean silver <i>pesos</i> he had brought off to the <i>Cora</i> in
+a canvas sack.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Ranga had been put up at the Sailors&#39; Home. There
+had been a flat refusal to receive him at first, on account
+of his colour, but this was promptly withdrawn when it
+was found the request came from Allen, whom the town
+was going pretty strong on delighting to honour just
+at that juncture. Allen, who seemed very fond of the
+big fellow, also saw that the latter was comfortably provided
+with money.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen did not speak again of the proposed picture until
+the steamer was nosing up to her buoy in Cleveland Bay.
+Then, after inquiring if I had everything I needed to go
+ahead with, he intimated that he would probably find
+Rona fretting to get things under way. &quot;She seemed to
+have some wild sort of an idea,&quot; he said, &quot;that the whole
+thing would be done on the schooner&mdash;that we all might
+move out there, bag and baggage, and make it our head-quarters
+until the picture was completed. She even
+wanted me to go out to that plague-rotten wreck with her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page192" id="page192"></a>[pg&nbsp;192]</span>
+and look the ground over before I left. I had no time
+for it, of course, and am jolly glad I didn&#39;t. Can&#39;t
+see what the good of it would have been anyhow. I
+was hoping I had seen the last of the damned hulk,
+though I suppose I can stick it for an hour or two in a
+pinch. I fail to see what she&#39;s driving at, but whatever
+it is you may as well make up your mind that she will
+have her way about it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I assured him that the picture would probably be
+mostly studio work as far as he was concerned, though I
+myself might want to sketch a few details on the
+schooner. It might save time, however, I suggested, if
+the whole lot of us went aboard before I began work so
+I could figure out a tentative grouping and get a general
+idea of the composition. Then I could make notes and
+sketches of whatever parts of the schooner would be
+included, and be ready to work on the individual figures
+as soon as I rigged up a studio.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page193" id="page193"></a>[pg&nbsp;193]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII<br />
+<small>THE SCENE OF THE FINAL DRAMA</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">We</span> spent the night at the hotel and went together
+to call on Rona at the Mission the
+following morning. The change in the girl
+was startling, far too great to be accounted for by the
+baggy Mother Hubbard that had replaced the close-clinging
+<i>sarongs</i> and <i>sulus</i> in which I had grown accustomed
+to seeing her at Kai. Her face was thinner and
+the former peach-like bloom of her cheeks had given
+way to a dusky sallowness. The curve of her lips had
+flattened&mdash;and hardened; hard, too, was the fixed stare
+of her great sloe eyes. To a stranger the pucker of
+concentration between her eyebrows might almost have
+suggested sullenness. The lines about her eyes and mouth,
+which spoke to me of suffering, might have seemed to
+another as stamped there by hate. She was still beautiful,
+but in a new way. It was a wild, fluttered sort
+of loveliness that haunted rather than allured. The
+woman before me could never &quot;sit Buddha,&quot; I told
+myself; those dreamy spells of repose had not punctuated
+her present life with intervals of Oriental peacefulness.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Decidedly reserved in her manner toward Allen, Rona
+tried to be warm in her greeting to me, but quickly
+showed signs of restraint and embarrassment. She became
+even more ill at ease when &quot;Slant,&quot; after genial
+old Dr. Oakes invited him out to see a new saddle horse
+that had just arrived from Singapore, excused himself
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page194" id="page194"></a>[pg&nbsp;194]</span>
+and left us alone. She sheered off so sharply from my
+first mention of the name of Bell, and became so palpably
+nervous at a couple of attempts I made to lead round to
+him by degrees, that I gave up trying to induce her to
+speak of him out of sheer pity. Even my inquiry after
+the health of &quot;Peeky&quot; of the embroidered shawl drew
+only a weary little smile and a sad shake of her riotous
+tumble of blue-black hair.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">She was ready enough to talk about the picture, though
+even in that connection I was at once conscious of a lack
+of real enthusiasm on her part. She seemed anxious to
+get it started, however, and said she supposed we would
+be going to live on the schooner in a day or two. She
+even confessed to having worried a good deal for fear the
+<i>Cora</i> would be broken up by a storm before the picture
+was made. When I told her that we would not need to
+live on the schooner, and perhaps would not have to make
+more than one or two short visits to it, she appeared a
+good deal put out for a few moments. She scowled
+angrily and started to speak; then thought better of it,
+bit her lip and held her tongue. She appeared a bit
+mollified when I said we would make our first visit, to
+plan the picture, just as soon as the quarantine people
+would disinfect the schooner for us. (That this had not
+been done yet I had already learned through &#39;phoning to
+the Station the night before.) She observed impatiently
+that she thought disinfection was a needless precaution,
+and I had to explain that it was not a matter of precaution
+at all on our part; that it was against the law for
+anyone to board a ship that had carried plague until it
+was disinfected, and that if we tried it on the <i>Cora</i> the
+whole lot of us would probably be clapped in jail and
+quarantined afterwards.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">She softened a little as I got up to go, and her &quot;Next
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page195" id="page195"></a>[pg&nbsp;195]</span>
+time I show you &#39;Peekie,&#39; Whit-nee&mdash;&#39;Peekie&#39; is a
+ver-ee sick bird,&quot; sounded almost like old times. The
+hand she gave me was hot and dry but unshaking, and
+the almost cutting grip of it tense with nervous force.
+I noticed that her finger nails, though trimmed closer
+than of old and no longer stained, were still of unusual
+length.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I found Allen, his face flushed with enthusiasm, putting
+the doctor&#39;s new colt up and down the sward before
+the Mission chapel in sharp bursts of terrific speed.
+The animal, Oakes explained to me, had been given to
+him by a petty Rajah of the Federated Malay States
+as a token of his appreciation of the doctor&#39;s success
+in removing a troublesome appendix from a favourite
+dancing girl some months previously. It was a chunky
+bay gelding, only his small head, full neck and a certain
+trimness of hock bearing out Oakes&#39; claim that he
+was out of a Mameluke imported direct from Bassorah
+by the Sultan of Johore. For the rest he favoured his
+Timor dam, and looked built for endurance and handiness
+rather than speed. The instant Allen was on his
+back, however, his sure instinct told him that the powerful
+little beast had swiftness as well as staying powers,
+and he was already itching to put his judgment to the
+test. A week later, having quietly entered him in the
+race of the day&mdash;the Planters&#39; Handicap&mdash;at the Townsville
+midsummer meet, he rode the gelding himself and
+gave the local betting public the worst jolt in North
+Queensland track annals by winning at two-hundred-to-one.
+Every pound that the wily Allen cleaned up on
+the race went to build the good Doctor Oakes, shortly
+transferred to Fiji, the largest and best equipped Medical
+Mission in all of Polynesia. The full story of what
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page196" id="page196"></a>[pg&nbsp;196]</span>
+the winning of that race meant to the game old missionary
+with the sporting blood has yet to be written.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">My plan of visiting the <i>Cora</i> to make a preliminary
+study of the &quot;Black-birder&quot; met with an unexpected
+check. The quarantine people had readily consented to
+give the schooner a rough disinfection, one that would
+make it quite safe for us to board her as long as we kept
+clear of the holds, which would require more drastic
+treatment. Before the formaldehyde squad got away,
+however, several cases of smallpox were reported in
+the native quarter, and all the available disinfecting
+apparatus was called upon for use there. It would be at
+least a week or ten days, we were told, before an outfit
+would be free for the <i>Cora</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Personally, I didn&#39;t mind the delay in the least; for
+one reason, because Rona&#39;s strange mood had quenched
+my initial surge of ardour for the picture, and, for
+another, because I had still to find a suitable place in
+which to work. Allen seemed to be worrying very little
+over the forced wait. &quot;I&#39;ve laid my bets to win or lose,
+and I&#39;ll be there to cash in after the finish,&quot; he said
+philosophically. He spent most of the time in the saddle,
+getting out mornings at daybreak to give the &quot;Missionary
+Colt&quot; (as he called the Oakes gelding) workouts
+on the quiet. As far as I could observe, he saw very
+little of Rona.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was the girl who really chafed under the inaction
+of waiting. Two or three times she sent for me to urge
+that we disregard the quarantine regulations and go off
+to the schooner. Allen mentioned that she had also
+begged him to take her out for a look-see at the <i>Cora</i> on
+the quiet. How she spent her time I did not know.
+Oakes told me that she went out for long walks every
+day, sometimes going toward the hills and sometimes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page197" id="page197"></a>[pg&nbsp;197]</span>
+along the shore. I found freshly picked tiger-lilies on
+Bell&#39;s grave the day I visited it, and it occurred to me
+that the gathering of these might have furnished the
+motive for the solitary walks. But if she was still
+devoted to Bell&#39;s memory, why wouldn&#39;t she speak of
+him?&mdash;and why the plan to go off to the Islands with
+Allen? The girl&#39;s conduct was quite beyond my understanding.
+That was one thing I was sure of, at least.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Meanwhile I went ahead looking for a place I could
+turn into a studio. It had been Allen&#39;s idea that the
+suburban bungalow he occupied after coming out of
+quarantine would be suitable, but I was compelled to
+veto it on account of the poor light&mdash;a consequence of
+the dense tropical growth surrounding it. The same difficulty&mdash;light&mdash;ruled
+out a number of other attractive
+places that were offered me, and I was about to close
+with a rather squalid little shack near the beach as a
+last resort, when Allen got wind of a temporarily vacant
+house on a big sugar estate, some miles from town.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">This little gem of a hillside bungalow had been built
+by the sugar people for a sub-overseer of the plantation,
+who had gone to Melbourne to meet and marry a girl
+from home. As the lucky chap had been given a three-months
+holiday for a honeymoon in New Zealand, the
+local manager of the sugar company decided that there
+could be no objection to my occupying the nest in the
+interim; in fact, he was sure his directors would be
+highly honoured to have their property used by so distinguished
+an artist, and for so laudable a purpose.
+He hoped I would not hesitate to call upon him for help
+at any time. He would see to it that the servants already
+hired against the return of Borton and his bride reported
+at once, and that Borton&#39;s trap and saddle horses were
+placed at my immediate disposal.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page198" id="page198"></a>[pg&nbsp;198]</span>
+I was greatly pleased with my find for a number of
+reasons besides the fact that it had a large and well-lighted
+living-room that could be made all I could ask
+to work in. Not the least of these was its location. Several
+hundred feet above the sea, its wide verandas caught
+cool currents of the Trade wind that the sultry lower
+levels never knew. Infinitely refreshing, too&mdash;both in
+fact and in suggestion,&mdash;I found the splendid stream
+which circled close under the rear wall, forming, where
+a mossy ledge reared a natural dam, a deep, clear pool to
+which I could jump from my bedroom window. The revitalizing
+effect of an early morning plunge, I had found
+by long experience, was beyond comparison the best
+antidote against the insidious absinthe poisoning paralyzing
+body and brain at the end of the night.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A couple of hundred yards further down the stream
+took a swift run through a verdant tunnel of fern fronds
+and overhanging palm leaves, before it leaped in a fine
+compact spout of green and white over the verge of a
+creeper-clad cliff, to a lucent hyacinth-lined basin thirty
+feet below. From there, quieter of mood and mind
+after its hillside gambols, it meandered by pleasant
+reaches across a broad belt of shimmering sugar cane,
+beyond which it disappeared in tangled growth of
+primeval bush. By dark ways and devious, broadening
+and deepening in the lower levels, it finally lost itself
+in the mangrove swamp that fringed the sea fifteen miles
+to the northward.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I mention this stream particularly because of the
+part it was destined to play in the final act of the drama
+of the <i>Cora Andrews</i>. For a similar reason it may be
+in order to say a few words about the great flume, which
+took off from the stream at the pool below the waterfall
+and led down to the big central sugar mill on the shore
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page199" id="page199"></a>[pg&nbsp;199]</span>
+of the first deeply indented bay north of Townsville.
+It was built, following the successful Hawaiian practice,
+for the purpose of floating the cut cane from the fields
+to the mill, a method which, wherever the natural conditions
+were suited to it, had proved both cheaper and
+more expeditious than the old system of transporting the
+succulent stalks by tramway and bullock carts.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The flume itself was built of imported Oregon pine
+planks, and was carried on a trestle of rough-hewn blue-gum
+and <i>jarra</i> trunks. In section, the box of the flume
+was about four feet wide by three feet deep. The water
+it carried&mdash;about a quarter of the normal flow of the
+stream that fed it&mdash;varied in depth according to its
+velocity. The latter, of course, depended upon the grade
+of the flume, this varying from two or three per cent. in
+the broad upper valley to all of fifteen per cent. in a
+couple of short steep pitches near the coast.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was interested in this flume from the first time I saw
+it. In the course of a visit to Hawaii some years previously,
+I had found no end of sport in what was called
+&quot;sugar-fluming&quot;&mdash;riding from the mountainside plantations
+down to the mills seated on a water-propelled
+bundle of sugar-cane. On my inquiring of the local manager
+if the highly diverting stunt was practicable here,
+he had answered with a most emphatic negative. &quot;You
+could go down the flume all right,&quot; he said, &quot;but the
+volume of water is so great that you could not stop yourself
+by holding to the sides even where the grades are the
+slightest. On the sharp inclines, where the flume runs
+down to the mill, a team of bullocks couldn&#39;t hold you
+back. Only one man ever tried the feat deliberately,
+and we were picking fragments of him out of the <i>bagasse</i>
+for a month. Also spoiled a lot of sugar&mdash;everything
+from the juice in the vats to the unfinished article in the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page200" id="page200"></a>[pg&nbsp;200]</span>
+centrifugals had to be thrown away. Same thing has
+had to be done on the several occasions coolies have fallen
+into the flume while at work. Jolly costly accidents
+for the company. I hope that you&#39;re not contemplating....&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I hastened to assure him that, after what he had told
+me, I most certainly had ceased any contemplations I
+might have allowed myself to indulge in up to then.
+Still I couldn&#39;t help picturing in my mind what sport
+could be got out of the thing if only some sort of buffer
+were rigged up at the lower end. That prompted me, a
+day or two after I was settled in the bungalow and while
+time was still hanging on my hands, to put my horse
+down the bridle-path along the flume when I went out
+for a ride in the cool of the afternoon. After that I
+lost all interest in &quot;sugar-fluming&quot; as a sport. It was
+just conceivable that a man of great strength and agility
+might stop himself by gripping the sides of the flume at
+several points in the first five or six miles, but from
+where the sharp descent to the coast began I was inclined
+to agree with the manager&#39;s statement, that the drag of
+a man&#39;s body in the pull of the racing stream would
+take a team of bullocks off their feet.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I dismounted and leaned over the edge of the flume
+where it ran through a narrow cut in the rock at the
+brow of the great basaltic cliff that followed the curve
+of the beach of the bay. This was the upper end of the
+first of the two sharp drops and the water, which was
+running within a foot of the top of the flume a hundred
+yards above, and here flattened down to a scant six inches
+in the bottom, grey-green and solid like a great endless
+belt of flying steel. The butt of my riding-whip was all
+but jerked from my hand as I touched it lightly to the
+speeding water, and a curving fan of spray was projected
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page201" id="page201"></a>[pg&nbsp;201]</span>
+up into my face and over the sides. The evidence
+of such a solidity of kick in running water seemed almost
+beyond belief, until I recalled having heard how a jet
+escaping from the pressure pipe of a hydro-electric
+plant somewhere in the American West had penetrated a
+man&#39;s body, cleanly, like an arrow.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">My desire to ride the flume died then and there,
+though even yet I couldn&#39;t help regretting that there
+wasn&#39;t a level stretch above the jump-off, where a man
+could check his headway and crawl out. It would have
+been rattling good sport down to there, but beyond&mdash;sheer
+suicide. There was, it is true, a couple of hundred
+yards of perhaps five per cent. grade between the
+first steep pitch over the edge of the cliff, and a second
+one, even steeper, that seemed to run almost directly
+upon the roaring, churning mass of cane-crushing machinery
+that began at the upper end of the big mill.
+Even there the water was lightning-swift, however,
+so that a man, once over the edge of the first pitch, looked
+to be less than a thousand-to-one shot in bringing up
+before going on into the second. And that would have
+been&mdash;how was it the manager put it?&mdash;more &quot;spoiled
+sugar&quot;&mdash;another &quot;jolly costly accident for the company.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The bridle-path I had been following continued on
+along the flume to the mill, but, desiring to strike the
+main highway to Townsville as quickly as possible, I
+put my sure-footed little Timor mare down what appeared
+to be an abandoned road graded into the face of
+the cliff. When I finally came out in the rear of what
+was plainly the remains of an ancient water-driven cane-crushing
+mill, I realized that the old grade by which I
+had descended must have been the bullock-cart road
+from the plantation. The mill was a picturesque old
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page202" id="page202"></a>[pg&nbsp;202]</span>
+ruin, with its mossy water-wheel, crumbling roof and
+sprawling pier, and I made mental note of the lovely
+little cove as a place well worth returning to with paintbox
+and easel when opportunity offered.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Returning through the town, I had the good luck to be
+hailed from the sidewalk by my bluff old friend, Captain
+&quot;Choppy&quot; Tancred. He was southbound with the <i>Utupua</i>
+again, he said, but she was going to go to drydock
+immediately on arrival in Sydney and he was going to
+command the <i>Mambare</i>&mdash;a new steamer just turned out
+on the Clyde for the company&mdash;and start north the following
+day. It was hard luck missing his week at home
+with the wife and nippers at Manley, but his promotion
+to a ship on the Singapore run was some consolation.
+He would be back in Townsville again in a little over a
+week, and, as he had a lot of sugar to load for the Straits,
+hoped to have the time for a good yarn with me. It
+must have been more from habit than anything else (for
+the old boy should have read enough about me in the
+papers by this time to be convinced that I was not a
+fugitive from justice), that he repeated his injunction
+that I must not fail to let him know if there was ever
+anything he could do for me&mdash;&quot;ye&#39;ll ken wha&#39; I mean,
+lad.&quot; And, equally from habit, I assured him that I
+&quot;kenned wha&#39;,&quot; and would not fail to call upon him in
+my extremity.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As I had nothing but what I had brought with me on
+the steamer to move, and as the house was practically
+ready for occupancy, I was comfortably settled in my
+hillside bungalow at the end of the third day after our
+arrival from the south. A Chinese cook and house-boy,
+a Hindu groom, a couple of New Hebridean blacks as
+roustabouts, and Ranga as general factotum, gave me
+a very tidy and self-contained establishment. Ranga
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page203" id="page203"></a>[pg&nbsp;203]</span>
+I had taken to at once. He was quick-minded and quick-handed,
+extremely good-natured, and ready to do anything
+at any time of the day or night. I resolved to
+keep him with me indefinitely as a personal servant&mdash;that
+is, if it fell in with his own inclinations after he
+had given me a fair trial.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I made a number of rather successful studies of Ranga
+by way of getting my hand in again, and that suggested
+that it might be profitable to put in the days of waiting
+by trying what could be done along the same lines
+with the others who were to figure in the picture. Allen,
+although busy with his secret training of the Oakes colt
+(all unknown even to the good missionary, by the way, who
+thought that &quot;Slant&quot; was merely borrowing the gelding
+for his morning ride), found time to come up and give
+me several sittings. It was easy to see that he hated the
+whole thing, and was only going through with it as a part
+of the bargain with Rona. The latter, after promising
+me faithfully to come, was reported missing on all of the
+three occasions I sent the trap for her. As her whim
+was at the bottom of the whole mad plan, I was not a
+little mystified at the girl&#39;s action. Also, as it was she
+whom I was most anxious to do full justice to in the
+picture, I was a good deal annoyed. Allen had no explanation
+or excuse to offer for her, saying the girl had
+him pocketed at every turn anyhow, but volunteered
+to try and round her up for me himself as soon as the
+Planters&#39; Handicap was out of the way, and he had a
+bit more time on his hands. For all of his light way of
+speaking, I knew that he was as hard hit as ever, and had
+thrown himself into the training of the &quot;Missionary
+Colt&quot; only to give him something else to think about.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Two unostentatious acts of kindness on the part of
+Allen in the course of the week which followed added
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page204" id="page204"></a>[pg&nbsp;204]</span>
+fresh refulgency to his halo of popularity. Townsville
+had gone madder than ever about him following his sudden
+and unexpected return from the south, and the
+same appeared to be true of the rest of the country. In
+all sincerity, he had tried to do both of the things I
+have referred to strictly on the quiet, and that they
+became public was only a consequence of the zeal of the
+fresh army of &quot;war correspondents&quot; that had been
+rushed north again to camp upon the hero&#39;s trail.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">One of Allen&#39;s little kindnesses was an appeal, in his
+own name, to the Governor of Western Australia to have
+dismissed the proceedings that had been instituted to
+bring &quot;Squid&quot; Saunders back to be locked up for the
+twenty-three and a half years which still remained to be
+served of his original twenty-five-year sentence. This
+appeal was accompanied by a promise to send the ex-convict,
+immediately he was released, back to the Islands
+at Allen&#39;s expense.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Doubtless the momentary magic of Allen&#39;s name had
+something to do with the Westralian Governor&#39;s complaisance.
+In any event, &quot;Squid&quot; Saunders was out of
+jail and off as a first-class passenger on one of the
+Solomon Island boats inside of a week. Allen, the correspondents
+were not long in learning, had bought the
+ticket, footed all of the very sizable telegraph bills,
+and given the purser of the steamer a hundred pounds
+in gold to be handed to &quot;Squid&quot; when he was disembarked
+at Bougainville. The correspondents, long
+baulked of any real &quot;Allen stuff,&quot; went to that story
+like hungry hounds.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But scarcely was the &quot;Squid&quot; Saunders story onto the
+wires before it was followed by the news of Allen&#39;s astonishing
+win of the Planters&#39; Handicap with the rank
+outsider, Yusuf, at two-hundred-to-one. That win was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page205" id="page205"></a>[pg&nbsp;205]</span>
+spectacular enough in itself, but when, on the heels of it,
+was flashed the word that not only the thousand-guinea
+purse hung up for the race, but approximately twenty-five
+hundred pounds paid to Allen by the &quot;tote&quot; as well,
+had been donated to the owner of Yusuf to forward the
+realization of his long-cherished dream&mdash;the erection of
+a modern medical mission in Fiji&mdash;the climax was
+capped. Australia echoed anew with acclaim of the
+&quot;philanthropist hero&quot; (it was now), and press and pulpit
+moralized and maundered afresh on the Hon.
+Hartley Allen&#39;s goodness of heart and greatness of soul.
+The clamour of the people of the country to see their
+idol in the flesh fused the Townsville wires from every
+direction. It was all very well that the incomparable
+heroism of the saving of the <i>Cora Andrews</i> should be
+perpetuated upon canvas, but why should the pushful
+American artist drag the hero off before his own people
+had a chance to do him homage? Let the artist rise to the
+occasion with a display of that famous &quot;Yankee hustle&quot;
+they had heard so much about and get the job over
+&quot;right quick.&quot; It was the man himself they wanted;
+let the picture wait if it couldn&#39;t be finished straightaway!</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page206" id="page206"></a>[pg&nbsp;206]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV<br />
+<small>HELL&#39;S HATCHES OFF</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">That</span> may give some hint of the state of mind of
+Australians when, waiting on the tip-toe of expectancy
+for word of the next dashing act of their
+hero, they received a message of quite another tenor.
+It was the Sydney <i>Herald</i> man who sent the message
+that swept the country like the blast of a hurricane. He
+wired just the bare facts and no more. His imagination,
+even his reasoning faculties, as he confessed in a
+later dispatch, were numbed for the moment, temporarily
+paralyzed by the staggering shock of the horror he had
+looked upon.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The Hon. Hartley Allen was found at an early
+hour this morning&quot; (ran the telegram) &quot;bound, gagged
+and lashed to the wheel of the schooner <i>Cora Andrews</i>,
+which has been aground for some time at a lonely spot
+on the beach of Cleveland Bay, several miles north of
+Townsville. Allen, who was taken to the General Hospital
+as soon as he was brought back to town, is a raving
+maniac and not expected to live out the day. From
+information in the hands of the police, there is no doubt
+that the worse-than-assassin was the ex-convict, &#39;Squid&#39;
+Saunders, recently released from jail and deported to the
+Solomons through Allen&#39;s generous efforts on his behalf.
+He is known to have escaped from his northbound
+steamer at Cairns, stolen a fishing sloop, and is believed
+to have headed back to Townsville to carry out the dastardly
+act his disordered brain has evidently nursed for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page207" id="page207"></a>[pg&nbsp;207]</span>
+years. As the police seem likely to yield to the popular
+pressure to employ bloodhounds in running down the
+fugitive, his capture is probably the matter of but a few
+hours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was a fairly sane, reasonable-reading dispatch, that.
+None but a man who had felt his blood turn to ice-water
+at the sight the <i>Herald</i> man had looked upon that morning
+could appreciate how much credit he deserved for
+stating the facts so coherently. For myself, at the moment
+the launch brought us back from the <i>Cora</i> and put
+us ashore at the landing, I would have been incapable
+of writing my own name correctly. There was only one
+thing I could do&mdash;nay, would have had to try to do if
+the world had been disintegrating beneath my feet&mdash;and
+I did it. That is why so much of the next thirty-six
+hours is a blank in my mind.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="indent">It was on a Saturday that Allen had made his spectacular
+killing in winning the Planters&#39; Handicap, and
+on Sunday afternoon, to escape the importunities of
+Townsville generally and the correspondents in particular,
+he had ridden up to pay me a visit at my hillside
+bungalow. I had missed the race (through another appointment
+for a sitting with Rona, which, like the others,
+she had failed to keep), and so took the occasion to get
+some account of it at first-hand from Allen. He was in
+high spirits over his success, but rather inclined to be
+put out with the impulsive Oakes for breaking down in
+church that morning and proclaiming to all and sundry
+the real source of the thirty-five hundred and odd pounds
+that had fallen at his feet like manna from the skies.
+What had come nearest to flooring Melanesia&#39;s leading
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page208" id="page208"></a>[pg&nbsp;208]</span>
+bad man, I think, was that the missionary had publicly
+announced his intention of naming the new medical mission
+at Suva after the donor!</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen also, somewhat to my surprise, was not averse
+to speaking of the &quot;Squid&quot; Saunders episode. &quot;The
+only redeeming thing about the old ruffian,&quot; he observed,
+&quot;is his affection for that girl of his&mdash;the red-haired one,
+I mean&mdash;the black-and-tans don&#39;t signify. Rather a
+remarkable girl, that one, Whitney. She was one of the
+kind that must either soar to the high places or wallow
+in the low ones, and I&#39;ve been sorrier than I can tell that
+I was slated to&mdash;well, not to start her winging for the
+heights exactly. I really wasn&#39;t a lot to blame in
+the matter, but&mdash;that isn&#39;t either here or there. Old
+&#39;Squid&#39; <i>thinks</i> I was, and will go on thinking so till
+his dying day&mdash;or mine. I tried to get the old reprobate
+to call it quits when I shipped him off the other day.
+Do you think he would? No fear. Not the &#39;Squid.&#39; Indeed,
+considering the bother I had wangling him out of
+serving that Kalgoorlie sentence of his, he was rather
+nasty. He asked me if I was trying to buy him off for
+fear he&#39;d get me in the end. There wasn&#39;t much I could
+say to that under the circumstances, so I just let him go.
+Now the purser of the <i>Nawarika</i> wires me from Cooktown
+to say that the &#39;Squid&#39; slipped ashore at Cairns
+and failed to show up again before sailing time. Purser
+says he still has the hundred quid I gave him to slip
+Saunders when they put him off in the Solomons. I
+have turned the wire over to the police, but have asked
+them to sit tight unless Saunders shows up in this section
+again. I hate to drag the old fire-eater into a new
+mess, especially after all the trouble I had getting him
+out of the old one. So I hope he won&#39;t be fool enough
+to come mooching south again. Don&#39;t suppose he will,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page209" id="page209"></a>[pg&nbsp;209]</span>
+but&mdash;I&#39;ll be keeping an eye lifting just the same against
+the loom of a vitriol bomb on the weather skyline.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen tapped his coat significantly at those last words,
+and that reminded him that there were two or three little
+things about &quot;pocket-gunnery&quot; he wanted me to coach
+him up on. Nailing a foot-square of discarded canvas
+to the swelling bole of a bottle tree down by the stream,
+we put in a half-hour of &quot;by-and-large&quot; practice at it.
+Allen, thanks to his natural gift for judging distance
+and angle, proved a very apt pupil.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">By way of return for his gunnery lesson, &quot;Slant&quot;
+volunteered to show me a few tricks of knife-throwing,
+in which he was reputed to have no equal in the Islands.
+&quot;I&#39;m about as much of a walking arsenal as you were
+the time you waited for me at the <i>Australia</i>, Whitney,&quot;
+he said with a grin, as he produced a broad-bladed dagger
+from a sheath slung unobtrusively on his right hip.
+&quot;This knife, by the way,&quot; he went on, tilting it lightly
+across his forefinger, &quot;is balanced especially for throwing.
+They are made in Lisbon, mostly for export to
+Brazil I understand, where they seem to go in for that
+kind of stunt a good bit. I bought it from the skipper
+of a Portuguese gunboat at Deli, who also taught me the
+principles of chucking it. First and last, I&#39;ve had a lot
+of sport out of practising with it, and have an idea I
+would have an even break with the <i>Capitano</i> himself
+when my hand&#39;s in. I was very grateful to old &#39;Squid&#39;
+for handing it back to me the other day. I only hope
+he won&#39;t be forcing me to pass it on to him again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen&#39;s skill with the wicked-bladed <i>facon</i> was decidedly
+impressive. If anything, he was a shade more
+accurate in planting the point of it than I was with a
+bullet from my pocket. Little luck as I had in throwing
+it, I was quite as fascinated with the appearance and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page210" id="page210"></a>[pg&nbsp;210]</span>
+&quot;feel&quot; of the formidable weapon as Allen had been with
+my target revolver in Sydney. &quot;I trust you won&#39;t have
+to part with it again, to Saunders or anyone else,&quot; I
+said as I handed it back to him.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Before he mounted for his ride back to town, I mentioned
+to Allen that Rona had left me in the lurch again
+the day before, and intimated that, unless she began to
+show more interest in the picture, I would have to consider
+packing up and going back to Sydney. As a matter
+of fact, the girl&#39;s perversity had already been responsible
+for effectually dampening down my first flush of enthusiasm,
+and I began seriously to doubt my ability to make
+a success of the picture when the way was clear to work
+at it. Allen begged me not to be discouraged, and assured
+me again that he would look up Rona himself on
+the morrow and see if he couldn&#39;t get some line on what
+she was sulking about. He also said he would see if the
+quarantine people couldn&#39;t be prodded along to get at
+the job of disinfecting the <i>Cora</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Rona still failed to show up on the following day, and
+in the evening I was unable to get &#39;phone connection
+with Allen&#39;s bungalow in an endeavour to learn if he had
+seen her. Dr. Butler, whom I got on the wire at the
+Quarantine Station, said that Allen had rung them up
+that morning, urging them to get a move on with the
+<i>Cora</i>. They had told him that they were planning to
+send a squad off before the end of the week. As word
+had just come to them, however, that men were seen
+climbing over the schooner that afternoon, they had decided
+to clean up the job in the morning. As long as the
+ship remained in her present condition, he said, she
+would continue a possible spreader of disease. She
+should have been attended to before. If I cared to go
+off with them, he added, he would pick me up at the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page211" id="page211"></a>[pg&nbsp;211]</span>
+landing at eight o&#39;clock. I thanked him and told him
+I would be glad of the chance to look things over before
+going to work.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I drove down early in the morning, taking Ranga with
+me on the chance that Allen and Rona might care to go
+off and plan a tentative grouping. A black boy cutting
+weeds with a sickle in front of Allen&#39;s bungalow told
+me that &quot;white marster stop townside&quot; for the night
+and had not yet returned. At the Mission I found Oakes
+a good deal perturbed. The day before, he said, Allen
+had called just after lunch, talked with Rona a few
+minutes, and then borrowed Yusuf and gone off for a
+ride. He had not returned at dusk, but during the
+night the horse, dangling a broken bridle rein, had come
+galloping back to his stable. The missionary was fearful
+the rider had been thrown and stunned, and had
+been lying all night on the road. He had sent out boys
+to search soon after daylight. He was not sanguine of
+an early report from them, as Allen on his rides always
+avoided the metalled main highways to save his horse&#39;s
+feet. No, Yusuf&#39;s knees showed no signs of his having
+stumbled. He was as sure-footed as a goat and as gentle
+as a kitten. Not in the least given to shying or bolting.
+Besides, the colt wasn&#39;t foaled that could unseat Hartley
+Allen. Of course, he must have struck his head against
+a low-hanging limb in galloping some bush path, but that
+was unlikely. Hartley had his wits too much on the alert
+to be caught like that. He was beginning to be just a bit
+suspicious of foul play. Had I heard that &quot;Squid&quot;
+Saunders had left his steamer at Cairns and was believed
+to have sailed south in a stolen fishing-boat? He was
+just about to call up the Police Station and tell them of
+Allen&#39;s disappearance when I came.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Rona had been off on one of her long walks the previous
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page212" id="page212"></a>[pg&nbsp;212]</span>
+afternoon, Oakes said in answer to my inquiry, and
+was not yet up. He had spoken with her through her
+window, just after Yusuf came back, in the hope that
+she might be able to give him some hint of the road
+Allen had taken. The latter had not mentioned where
+he was going, she said. She herself had been &quot;away
+inland&quot;&mdash;Oakes had encountered her on his weekly
+round through the plantation villages. She was a tireless
+walker, and very restless&mdash;altogether a strange character.
+I did not disturb the girl, as I reckoned there
+was no use in taking her off to the schooner until Allen
+was along to talk our plans over.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It would have seemed that this word of Allen&#39;s disappearance,
+taken in conjunction with the fact that men
+had been seen on the wreck of the <i>Cora</i> the previous
+day, might have given me just a shade of preparation
+for what I saw as I followed Butler and the <i>Herald</i> man
+over the schooner&#39;s side an hour later. But it was not so,
+probably because my mental faculties were at their dullest
+at so (for me) unwontedly early an hour. If the
+news had come to me in the afternoon, possibly I would
+have traced some connection between the two events,
+and so have been at least slightly braced and stiffened
+for the coming shock. As it was, I bumped into it all
+unset, and the staggering impact of it came near to bowling
+me over.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It had been Dr. Butler&#39;s theory, propounded as the
+launch put away from the landing, that the figures descried
+on the <i>Cora</i> the afternoon before were those of
+blacks or coolies, attracted to the hulk by the hope of
+loot. As a matter of fact, he said, they would doubtless
+have made quite a haul, as nothing but the ship&#39;s papers
+had been taken ashore on the day of her arrival. Considerable
+&quot;trade&quot; and all of the personal effects of her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page213" id="page213"></a>[pg&nbsp;213]</span>
+former officers had been left for removal after disinfection.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As we came out into the bay the coast to the northward
+began to open up, and presently the wreck of the <i>Cora</i>,
+heeled sharply to port with the foremast over the bows,
+became visible against the deep green of the mangroves
+a couple of miles distant. Butler studied the hulk closely
+through his glasses as we closed it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Looks as though I had another guess coming,&quot; he
+remarked finally, lowering the binoculars with a puzzled
+air. &quot;Someone aboard her now. Seems to be jiggering
+the wheel. Can&#39;t be a pirate stunt, can it? Wouldn&#39;t
+be possible to drop a petrol engine into her, block up the
+hole and get off to the Islands on the quiet? But of
+course not. That&#39;s a drydock job&mdash;&#39;count of the propeller
+and shaft.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At a quarter of a mile he raised his glasses again.
+&quot;Chap at the wheel&#39;s the only man in sight,&quot; he reported.
+&quot;He don&#39;t seem to have spotted us yet. Must
+be deaf, not to hear the explosions of our exhaust. Ah,
+perhaps that accounts for it! He&#39;s an old cove&mdash;big
+shock of white hair. &#39;Bout time he was getting his
+helmet on, though, with this sun beginning to bore into
+the back of his neck. Ahoy, there!...&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But there was no reply. The lone white-haired figure
+was still jiggering at the wheel when the launch, nosing
+in cautiously in the up-boil of reversed propellers, slid
+past the <i>Cora&#39;s</i> stern and the loom of her counter cut it
+off from our view.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A moss-shiny Jacob&#39;s Ladder hung over the starboard
+side amidships, where a section of the &quot;nigger-wire&quot;
+had been cut away, doubtless when the labour-recruits
+were disembarked. Butler climbed up first, then the
+<i>Herald</i> man (who had come off on the Doctor&#39;s invitation
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page214" id="page214"></a>[pg&nbsp;214]</span>
+to see the ship made famous by the great exploit
+of the Hon. Hartley Allen), and then myself. Butler
+lingered at the ladder for a few moments, giving
+orders to his men about bringing the disinfecting paraphernalia
+aboard; so it was given to the newspaper man
+to be the first to go aft and discover that the moving,
+gibbering white-haired wretch lashed to the wheel of the
+schooner represented the sum total of the mental and
+physical remnants of the man whose doings he had been
+detailed to chronicle.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The horrified reporter uttered no sound&mdash;simply froze
+and stood rooted to the deck in amazed consternation. It
+was as though the basilisk stare of the maniac&#39;s eyes had
+turned the flesh and blood of his rangy frame to stone.
+When he stirred finally, it was to tip-toe softly back
+two or three paces to where I, in turn, had frozen in my
+tracks. It was his hand on my shoulder and his white
+face thrust close to mine that broke my own trance. Then
+the both of us must have retreated another step or two,
+until we bumped into Butler, similarly petrified with
+horror.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I am almost certain that not one of the three of us
+made any outcry, or even uttered a word, so paralyzing
+was the effect of the apparition at the wheel. The first
+sound I definitely recall as breaking in upon those muffled
+mowings from the cockpit was a booming gasp as
+Ranga&#39;s mighty chest sucked in a lungful of air, and
+then the big Malay&#39;s quiet &quot;&#39;Scuse me, Tuan,&quot; as he
+started to shove past between me and the deckhouse.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The yellow giant had seen too many men, white and
+black, lose their minds and their lives on that reeking old
+schooner to let the snapping of one more brain, or the
+parting of one more life-line, ruffle unduly his solid Oriental
+composure. He had been fond of Allen, however,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page215" id="page215"></a>[pg&nbsp;215]</span>
+and I could see that he was shaken, though not, like the
+rest of us, unnerved. There was a rumble of concern and
+anxiety even in that respectful &quot;&#39;Scuse me, Tuan,&quot; as
+he started to push past the blockade the cowering forms
+of three lesser men had made in the narrow passage.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Ranga&#39;s steadiness was good for the rest of us. Butler
+checked the Malay with upraised hand and, muttering
+something about his duty as a doctor, started aft, the
+<i>Herald</i> man and I pushing in his wake. If it had been
+possible for the fear-distorted features of the wreck of
+&quot;Slant&quot; Allen to express extremer terror, that heightened
+degree was registered when Butler extended his
+opened clasp-knife to begin severing the lashings. I have
+no wish to attempt to describe that hell-haunted face.
+Indeed, there will be scant need of my doing so, for there
+can be few readers of this record who are not already
+familiar with its tortured lineaments. It seared itself
+into my brain with a white heat of intensity that left no
+room for any other image. At the moment it seemed as
+though it must be blazoned there as long as my body was
+quick with the spark of life, or at least until my reason
+recoiled at the horror of it and tottered from its throne.
+A little later, when the dread face itself had been hidden
+from my sight, a light seemed suddenly to flash out in
+the distance, and in groping toward it I found relief.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The ghastly shadow of the Hon. Hartley Allen
+was standing wedged in between the wheel and the binnacle-stand,
+his wrists lashed to the spokes of the former
+and a maze of tangled line binding his knees to the latter.
+The lashing was a length cut from the taffrail-log-line,
+another piece of which had been used to secure a gag of
+wadded oakum. The only wound visible (save for the
+wrists chafed through to the white cords of their tendons
+in his desperate tuggings to tear free) was a half-inch-wide
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page216" id="page216"></a>[pg&nbsp;216]</span>
+incision on the right inner side of the neck, evidently
+made by the point of a knife pressed in close to
+the swell of the jugular vein. As this cut was hardly
+more than a deep prick, it seemed probable that the
+knife had been used, not to inflict injury, but rather to
+compel the victim to remain quiet while he was being
+secured.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As the wrist lashings fell away, Allen lurched savagely
+forward with a throaty &quot;g-rrr&quot; and did his best
+to claw Butler&#39;s throat with his fingers. His strength
+was spent by his night-long struggles, however, and
+Ranga easily smothered the attack in the crook of his
+interposed arm. The removal of the gag did not, as
+might have been expected from the way the chest had
+been labouring, release a frantic scream. The passages
+of the throat, although the neck revealed no evidences
+of having been choked&mdash;recently, that is,&mdash;appeared to
+be swollen almost shut. The windpipe would carry air
+to the lungs, but every effort to expel it violently seemed
+to clap a sort of automatic muffler on the vocal chords.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen collapsed limply into Ranga&#39;s arms when his leg
+lashings had been cut, but he would not swoon. The
+dread of the damned continued to stream from his staring
+and unbelievably dilated eyes; those hoarse heavings
+of throat-throttled shrieks continued to issue from his
+gaping mouth; every time a hand or foot was freed, he
+continued to strike or kick with it to the limit of his
+pitifully drained strength.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Butler said that the only hope of saving the man&#39;s
+mind, and probably his life as well, was to rush him to
+the hospital and put him under an opiate as quickly as
+possible. Ranga picked up the tortured body carefully,
+as he might have handled a struggling kitten, and passed
+it down to the launch. Butler had the forethought to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page217" id="page217"></a>[pg&nbsp;217]</span>
+have us all sprayed with the disinfectant before we went
+over the side, so as to minimize the chances of our carrying
+off any plague germs.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Just as the launch was about to shove off, Ranga
+begged the coxswain to hold on for a moment, and went
+clambering back up the latter. He ran aft, picked up
+something from the deck, and came back tucking his
+little Malay flute into the waistband of his dungarees.
+He had dropped it in the cockpit, he explained.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">About all I can recall of the run back to the landing
+was the interminable number of times the <i>Herald</i> man
+insisted on telling us that he had been talking to Hartley
+Allen all the while the latter had been shifting into his
+jockey togs for the Planters&#39; Handicap, and of how Butler,
+each time, replied: &quot;And he slept in my pajamas all
+the time he was in quarantine.&quot; Possibly I said equally
+trivial things; but I don&#39;t recall them. I was conscious
+of a great pity for the plight of the man for whom I had
+come to have a genuine liking, and a dull sort of wonder
+as to how the tragedy might have happened and who was
+responsible for it. But the haunting horror of that fear-stricken
+face hung like a curtain in front of my mind,
+dimming or blanking everything behind it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At Butler&#39;s suggestion, he&mdash;with Ranga to help&mdash;took
+a carriage at the landing and drove direct to the hospital
+with Allen, while the <i>Herald</i> man and I went in my trap
+to the Police Station to report to the Chief. The latter
+had recently come to his present job from Charters
+Towers, where he had made something of a name for himself
+by breaking up a gang of outlaws who had long been
+doing pretty much as they pleased in that rough and
+ready bonanza town. He was a chap of great determination,
+energy and courage, but of little subtlety&mdash;rather
+the type of a Western American sheriff than a city police
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page218" id="page218"></a>[pg&nbsp;218]</span>
+chief. I had met him at the Club two or three times,
+and liked him for his steady eye and open straightforwardness.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Chief was a little impatient at the <i>Herald</i> man&#39;s
+repetitions of the togs-shifting episode, and possibly also
+of my own wooden silence; but he got to the salient facts
+readily, and was no less forward with his deductions
+therefrom.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;&#39;Squid&#39; Saunders beyond a doubt,&quot; he pronounced
+decisively. &quot;His sloop was sighted twice between here
+and Cairns, the last time only fifty miles to the north&#39;ard.
+He could have landed night before last easy. Any of the
+lagoons running back into the Caradarra Swamp would
+hide his sloop. That would have given him all day yesterday
+to scout for Allen. Why the schooner I don&#39;t
+quite twig. But the &#39;Squid&#39; was always adding devilish
+little embroideries to his jobs, and leaving a man to rot
+on a plague ship has all of his ear-marks. Never mind,
+I&#39;ve had two launches patrolling the north coast for him
+since yesterday morning. He must have landed before
+they got there. But they&#39;ll nab him if he pulls out with
+the sloop again, and if he doesn&#39;t, <i>I&#39;ll</i> nab him. I hate
+to do it with a white man, but I&#39;m going to put Rawdon&#39;s
+&#39;nigger-chasers&#39; on his trail. I&#39;ve got &#39;Squid&#39;s&#39;
+old suit of clothes&mdash;the one he threw away when Allen
+bought him a new outfit&mdash;stowed away here, and I fancy
+a sniff of it will be enough to put them on the scent
+with. If I don&#39;t miss my guess, Mr. &#39;Squid&#39; Saunders
+will be enjoying our bed and board again before another
+twenty-four hours has gone by.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Chief dropped his professional manner for a few
+moments as we arose to go. &quot;Allen was a good friend of
+yours, Mr. Whitney,&quot; he said, laying a kindly grip on
+my shoulder. &quot;I don&#39;t wonder that you&#39;re a bit dazed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page219" id="page219"></a>[pg&nbsp;219]</span>
+by the thing. Rather puts a damper on the picture, I&#39;m
+afraid. Going up the hill now, are you? Good&mdash;a bit
+of a rest will steady you no end. Ring up this evening
+and we&#39;ll give you the news. It won&#39;t be long before we
+have our man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The <i>Herald</i> man, with the Chief&#39;s approval, rushed off
+to the telegraph office to dispatch his wire. I drove
+round to the hospital to pick up Ranga and inquire for
+news of Allen. Butler came down to see me in the
+reception-room and reported that it had taken an astonishing
+quantity of morphine to have any effect upon the
+patient, but that he was at last beginning to grow quieter.
+His heart action was very irregular and there was no
+saying yet what turn things might take. He asked me to
+let Ranga remain at the hospital for a day or two. They
+were short of orderlies as a consequence of the smallpox
+epidemic, and the big Malay was a very useful attendant
+on account of his strength, quietness and good
+sense. As they were trying to avoid the necessity of
+putting Allen in a strait-jacket, they wanted someone
+in the room able to handle him if he became violent again
+on coming out from his opiate. I told him to keep Ranga
+as long as he was needed.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page220" id="page220"></a>[pg&nbsp;220]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XV<br />
+<small>THE FACE</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">The</span> Chief of Police&#39;s allusion to the picture had
+started a nebulous idea in my head, but it took it
+several hours to crystallize. Driving alone up
+the hill, my mind gravitated dully to the matter of the
+identity of the perpetrator of the unspeakable outrage.
+I found myself speculating as to whether or not the Chief
+of Police, had he known of Rona&#39;s previous attacks upon
+Allen, would have been as ready as he was to attribute
+the guilt to &quot;Squid&quot; Saunders. And would he&mdash;had he
+known of them&mdash;been able to trace any connection between
+Rona&#39;s repeated attempts to induce Allen to go off
+to the schooner with her and the fact that the crime had
+been committed there? And didn&#39;t it look just a little
+as though Rona&#39;s whole strange plan for having a picture
+painted was only a subterfuge to open the way for a
+carefully plotted revenge? And yet, if she had done all
+this, she surely must have had&mdash;or thought she had&mdash;a
+good reason for doing it. But had not Oakes established
+a clear alibi for the girl when he met her &quot;away
+inland&quot; the same afternoon men had been reported to
+have been seen on the schooner? Probably, but not certainly.
+Oakes himself had said that she was &quot;a great
+walker&quot; and &quot;very restless.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was conceivable that the girl might have doubled
+back and waylaid Allen on the road. Or perhaps she
+had met him by appointment. He had admitted that
+he was becoming increasingly subject to her will. But
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page221" id="page221"></a>[pg&nbsp;221]</span>
+how could she have induced him to go off to the schooner,
+and how had they gone? No boat had been sighted along
+the beach (we had looked for one through Butler&#39;s
+glasses on our return to the landing), and none was
+reported missing from the harbour. The Chief had inquired
+on that latter point while we were with him at
+the Station.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">And how had Rona, or anyone else for that matter,
+been able to get the better of such a man as Allen, fully
+armed and on the alert as I knew him to have been, and
+noted for his resourcefulness in emergency? That train
+of thought reminded me that we had found no arms on
+Allen when we released him. His right coat-pocket was
+empty, and so was the knife-sheath on his right hip. But
+his pocketbook, containing a considerable amount in
+notes, had not been taken.... It was all too much for
+my tired brain, which, ready enough to suggest questions,
+was quite incapable of grappling with them.
+When I drove into the home clearing I was wondering
+whether the broken glass I had noticed in the bottom
+of the cockpit was that from the whisky bottle Allen
+had told me Rona had thrown at him the morning Bell
+gave up the fight.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was horribly tired, both in mind and body, and hoped
+that, with a glass or two of absinthe to relax my nerves,
+I might be able to sleep at least through the heat of the
+noonday. Shifting into my pajamas,&mdash;after telling
+Suey, my China boy, that I would not want lunch and
+not to disturb me until I sent for him,&mdash;I crawled under
+the mosquito-net and tried to drop off. But it was no
+use. No sooner would I begin to doze than the expiring
+images of my thoughts would shuffle up and sharpen
+with a steel-clicking suddenness into the dread likeness
+of The Face, with its dilated eyes boring me to the spine.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page222" id="page222"></a>[pg&nbsp;222]</span>
+At the end of a couple of hours of fevered tossing, I
+gave it up, threw off my pajamas, stepped to the low
+back-window ledge and took a header into the cool green
+pool below. The Face dissolved as the thrill of the refreshing
+embrace of the water ran through my blood,
+but only to return when, after donning a fresh suit of
+drills, I began a restless pacing of the floor of the big
+living-room&mdash;my studio. Always it flashed a pace or two
+ahead of me, floating backward as I advanced upon it
+and swinging with me at the end of the room. I could
+not wheel swiftly enough to lose it, and it made no difference
+whether my eyes were opened or closed. I tried
+it both ways.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was in the course of an experimental lap I was trying
+with my hands over my eyes that I bumped into the
+big rectangle of canvas I had prepared in advance
+against the day I should be ready to start work on
+&quot;The Saving of the Black-birder.&quot; Ten seconds later
+I was pawing over my colours with feverish haste. The
+idea swimming in my head had crystallized. It was, in
+effect: <i>Put The Face on canvas and it will cease to haunt
+and harrow your mind</i>. That sounded reasonable. Certainly
+The Face couldn&#39;t be in two places at once, and
+if I once got it anchored to the canvas I could cover it
+up when I wanted to get away from it. It would all
+depend upon how faithfully I did my work, something
+told me. If the face on the canvas was a replica of
+the other to a hair, to a line, to the fear in the hell-haunted
+eyes, then the phantom face would enter into it
+and become subject to my control. If not&mdash;then I would
+never know sleep nor peace while I continued to live.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">No artist can ever have approached a task under empire
+of the flaming intensity I threw into this one. I was
+painting to save my reason, perhaps my life. That is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page223" id="page223"></a>[pg&nbsp;223]</span>
+not a figure of speech. I mean it quite literally, for I am
+convinced to this day that I stumbled upon the only
+path that would have led me clear of complete mental
+and physical collapse.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There was a rather remarkable coincidence in connection
+with the way I started to work. Nothing told me
+that those first nervous slashes of my brush signalized
+the beginning of a picture the fame of which was destined
+to reach the outposts of the civilized world before the
+year was out. All thought of &quot;The Black-birder&quot; was
+erased from my mind. I had no idea of a picture in my
+head. I was not even beginning to work upon a figure.
+I was only conscious that I was going to put all I had
+into the task of reproducing&mdash;recreating, if that were
+possible&mdash;with coloured pigments a phantom of my
+brain&mdash;a face&mdash;The Face.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had no thought, I say, of beginning a picture. I
+sketched nothing in, not even the outline of the haunting
+shadow I was going to try to capture. A very few
+minutes after I began squeezing out colours onto my
+palette I was smearing them upon a patch of the big
+six-feet-by-ten expanse of woven cotton in front of me.
+The coincidence I have mentioned became apparent
+some weeks later, when I discovered that, of all the sixty
+square feet of canvas before me, the something less than
+one square foot upon which I concentrated my paint
+and energies for the next thirty hours chanced to be in
+exactly the place it <i>had</i> to be for the result of my effort
+to assume its proper place in a somewhat intricate composition.
+I will tell of that in due course.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Save for the strain of the terrible tension under which
+I worked, the task to which I had set myself proved absolutely
+the simplest I ever attempted. It seemed that I
+could not go wrong. It was not like painting a face
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page224" id="page224"></a>[pg&nbsp;224]</span>
+from memory, nor yet like painting one from a model.
+It was more like colouring a photograph, for the image,
+terrible as life, was right there on the canvas at the end
+of my arm. At first, as I tried to visualize it at shorter
+range than the five or six feet at which it had been floating,
+it was a bit hazy; but presently my intense concentration
+of mind had its reward. The dreadful phantom drew
+nearer, increased in detail, and finally sharpened into
+clear focus at the tip of my brush. After that I became
+just a meticulously faithful retoucher, working in a
+trance.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was toward the middle of the afternoon when Suey
+came in to ask if I was going to be home for dinner.
+He was becoming used to my queer ways, and, when I
+failed to take any notice of his reiterated query, came
+over and touched me on the shoulder. I &quot;came out&quot;
+with a start, but gathered my wits quickly. I told Suey
+that I should probably be working steadily for the next
+day or two and would want nothing to eat until I was
+finished. If he would bring me a bowl of cracked ice
+every hour and see that no one was allowed in to bother
+me, it would be all I should want of him. He replied
+with a laconic &quot;Can do,&quot; and backed out toward the
+kitchen as though I had asked for curry-and-rice for
+dinner, or ordered something else equally rational and
+matter-of-fact.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I settled back into my spell of tranced concentration
+with scarcely an effort, working swiftly and surely, with
+never a pause. The &quot;drawing&quot; was all done for me,
+and even in the matter of colours there was no hesitation.
+Exactly the proper shade or tint drew my brush
+like a magnet; and always it was applied with telling
+effect.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The sunset shadows of the western hills were driving
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page225" id="page225"></a>[pg&nbsp;225]</span>
+their black wedges across the satiny sheen of the light-flickering
+levels of the waving sugar-cane when I became
+aware that a sound I had been conscious of for some
+time had suddenly changed and intensified. If my mind
+had tried to catalogue the clear notes that had been
+floating in through the north window, it was probably
+to credit them to a certain bell-bird friend of mine who
+was in the habit of ringing his vesper chimes from a
+leafy chapel in the big bottle tree toward the end of the
+afternoon. But there was nothing bird-like in the quick
+staccato of eager yelps that had been responsible for
+bringing me, with ears and interest a-cock, out of my
+trance. &quot;Dogs closing in for a kill,&quot; I muttered to myself,
+realizing that it had been the distant baying of
+hounds on a hot scent that I had confused with the more
+imminent chiming of my Austral bell-ringing neighbour.
+The sounds came from a long way off&mdash;probably from
+somewhere in the dense bush beyond the farther borders
+of the cane fields. It was a northerly hauling of the wind
+that brought them down to me so clearly. The air had
+been charged and electric all day, and the breaking up
+of the trade wind indicated that a hurricane was mustering
+its forces somewhere up among the Islands. I had
+not looked at the barometer on the veranda, but knew
+that it must be registering a considerable fall.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The crack of a single shot drifted down the wind as
+the yelping reached its climax. Then all was quiet in
+the distance, with only an occasional cackling guffaw of
+a &quot;laughing jackass&quot; ripping across the silence that
+brooded nearer at hand. I didn&#39;t know what there was
+to hunt in that particular neck of Queensland, but
+thought it might be kangaroos or dingoes. It wasn&#39;t of
+enough interest to waste time in speculating upon it,
+just then in any event.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page226" id="page226"></a>[pg&nbsp;226]</span>
+Daylight had given way to twilight, and twilight to
+moonlight, before I stopped work again, this time to respond
+to an insistent ringing of the telephone bell.
+Oakes&#39; deep voice came excitedly over the wire. &quot;I
+thought you would be interested to know that Rawdon&#39;s
+dogs tracked down &#39;Squid&#39; Saunders this afternoon,&quot; it
+said. &quot;He has just been brought in. Bullet through
+his shoulder, but not a serious wound. The report went
+around that he had confessed to the attack on Hartley
+Allen, and the town went wild. Only the Chief&#39;s nerve
+prevented a lynching, and there may be trouble yet.
+Never saw the people so excited.&quot; In response to my
+inquiry about Allen, Oakes said that he had been drugged
+to sleep early in the afternoon, and that there was no
+use trying to forecast what turn things would take until
+he came out.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;That clears Rona, at any rate,&quot; was my thought as
+I drained a glass of iced absinthe and picked up my
+brush again. I found it just a shade harder materializing
+The Face than it had been at first, but managed it
+at the end of a minute or two of close concentration.
+Save for an occasional pause for a sip of absinthe, I
+worked steadily on through the night.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="indent">To make clear what transpired the following day, it
+will be well to set down at this point a few things which
+I only learned in a conversation with the Chief of
+Police after the last act of the drama was played to a
+finish and the curtain rung down. Contrary to the understanding
+of Dr. Oakes, and all the rest of the people of
+Townsville with the exception of the Chief of Police and
+a couple of his assistants, &quot;Squid&quot; Saunders had <i>not</i>
+confessed. From what he <i>had</i> said in the presence of
+all his captors, however, it was easy to see how the story
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page227" id="page227"></a>[pg&nbsp;227]</span>
+had originated. He admitted quite freely to Rawdon,
+after the latter had called off his dogs and was lending
+a hand to plug up the puncture in &quot;Squid&#39;s&quot; shoulder,
+that his one purpose in returning had been to settle his
+account with &quot;Slant&quot; Allen. He also said that he would
+rather be strung up straightaway than to be sent back to
+West Australia and begin, at sixty, serving out a twenty-odd-year
+sentence.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That was about all Saunders said at the time of his
+capture, but later, after expressing himself to the Chief
+of Police to similar effect, he went a little further. He
+averred frankly that curiosity had always been one of
+his most pronounced characteristics, and, while he entertained
+only the kindliest feelings for whoever it was that
+had been responsible for tying up &quot;Slant&quot; Allen and
+leaving him alone to meditate upon his past, he couldn&#39;t
+help wondering about the identity of a man able to pull
+off such a cleverly thought-out and executed piece of
+business. Might he not suggest to the Chief that the
+latter try to find some trifle that this bright-minded and
+quick-handed cove had left behind on the schooner, and
+see if those sharp-nosed&mdash;yes, and sharp-teethed&mdash;dogs
+of his couldn&#39;t be put on the owner&#39;s trail. They appeared
+a very likely lot of hounds, especially that big
+black-and-tan brute with a chewed ear, who had broken
+away from the ruck and fastened his teeth in the
+&quot;Squid&#39;s&quot; calf.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">This all struck the straightforward, open-minded
+Chief as entirely reasonable. It was only fair to Saunders,
+too, and since saving him from the mob that afternoon
+the Chief had come to take a sort of proprietary
+interest in his prisoner. Going off to the schooner in
+the morning he found a small fragment of red rag in the
+cockpit, which, though it was greasy and dirty, did not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page228" id="page228"></a>[pg&nbsp;228]</span>
+show signs of exposure to the weather, and must, therefore,
+have been left comparatively recently. It was a
+six-by-eight-inch piece of flowered red calico, of the kind
+used by the natives of all parts of the South Seas for
+waist-cloths. Even if he wasn&#39;t able to locate the particular
+<i>sulu</i> from which it was torn, the Chief reckoned
+that it would give the dogs something to go by.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Rawdon&#39;s &quot;nigger-chasers&quot; were of a foxhound-bloodhound
+cross that the old ex-bushranger had bred
+especially for the purpose of chivvying down runaway
+blacks from the sugar plantations. The swart sextette
+displayed a very encouraging interest in the greasy rag
+the Chief brought them to sniff; so much so, indeed,
+that they were far from drained of enthusiasm at the
+end of a bootless day&#39;s nosing up and down the coast
+for tracks that gave back the same ingratiating aroma.
+It looked quite good enough to warrant going on with
+the game the following morning, Rawdon pronounced,
+as he started back on foot for his kennels on the southwest
+outskirts of town. (The old chap had some kind
+of a theory about its being destructive to a hound&#39;s
+keeness to tote him around on wheels: also, he had stumbled
+upon many trails where he least expected them, even
+in the town.)</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Rawdon was striding a couple of blocks ahead of his
+two helpers when, crossing the town end of the main
+westerly highway to the hills, the dog he was holding in
+leash&mdash;the big black-and-tan with the chewed ear, by far
+his keenest-nosed hound&mdash;broke away and set off up the
+side of the road in full cry. As there was no hope of
+trying to overtake him on foot, Rawdon waited for the
+other dogs to come up and catch the scent, cautioning his
+men to hold them well in leash and not to hurry until
+he rejoined them. Then he ran back a quarter of a mile
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page229" id="page229"></a>[pg&nbsp;229]</span>
+to the Police Station to summon the Chief and get a
+horse.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">This was about seven o&#39;clock in the evening of Wednesday,
+the day after we had found Hartley Allen bound
+to the wheel of the <i>Cora Andrews</i>.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="indent">At the moment the big black-and-tan hound tore his
+leash out of Rawdon&#39;s hand and started to burn up the
+footpath beside the westerly hill road, I had been streaking
+a small patch of canvas with coloured pigments for
+something like thirty hours in a desperate endeavour to
+drive a phantom out of my brain. I was near to the end
+of my labours and&mdash;I could sense it already&mdash;close to
+victory. I had made a hard fight for it and I deserved
+to win. Using absinthe sparingly&mdash;as a fuel and a food
+rather than as a stimulant&mdash;and drawing upon my nerves
+for everything the drug would not provide, I had kept
+going steadily and was finishing strong.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There had been but one interruption since the night
+before. Early in the forenoon Captain &quot;Choppy&quot; Tancred
+had called up to say that he had brought his new
+command to anchor in the harbour the previous evening,
+and that, as he had a good twenty-four hours&#39; loading to
+do, he hoped that we could find time to foregather for
+a bit of a yarn in the course of the day. Would I come
+down and have lunch with him at the hotel, or would he
+drive up to me? He would rather prefer the former,
+as the barometer was down and he ought to remain where
+he could get off to his ship in a hurry if it came on to
+blow. I made the best excuse my wandering wits could
+frame, and hung up. The old boy&#39;s voluble protests were
+still clicking in the receiver as I returned it to its hook.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had a hard time materializing my &quot;model&quot; again
+after that break, and it was fifteen or twenty minutes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page230" id="page230"></a>[pg&nbsp;230]</span>
+before I was sure enough of it to resume work. For a
+while, in the back of my brain, there was a flutter of
+apprehension that old &quot;Choppy&quot; would take it into his
+head to come up anyhow, and I was desperately afraid
+that I might not be able to &quot;connect&quot; again after another
+interruption&mdash;that I would fail to focus The Face
+at the one moment of all when I most needed it. There
+would have been comfort in that thought twenty-four
+hours earlier, but by now a desire to finish the portrait
+for its own sake seemed to have entered into me.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But my fears were groundless. &quot;Choppy&quot; was properly
+rebuffed, and had no intention of poking in where
+he &quot;wasna weelcom&#39;.&quot; (He told me so himself later.)
+There was no further interruption, save the negligible
+one of Suey and the cracked ice, sharp on every hour.
+As the sunset faded and the twilight flooded the valley
+with luminous purple mist, I was finished&mdash;or nearly
+finished. The Face was all but complete on the canvas
+now, and all but erased from my brain. It had taken an
+intense effort of concentration to hold it while I put the
+last touch on that writhen lip, as it curled back in a snarl
+from the bared teeth. But I did it. And now&mdash;just a
+stroke in that whorl of iris to accentuate the abnormal
+dilation, to fix the horror in that ghastly stare! Slowly
+the image sharpened in my brain. Again the fear-haunted
+eyes held my own. Now! I was just darting
+my delicately poised brush forward when the sound of
+voices from the veranda arrested the colour-daubed tip
+a hair short of the blurring eye its touch would have
+made a hopeless smudge. &quot;Maskey&mdash;no can do!&quot; came
+in Suey&#39;s brusque <i>pidgin</i>; and then, following a sudden
+scuffle and the sharp click of the latch, a familiar chirrup
+floated to my ears. &quot;Let me in, Whit-nee! Hur-ree,
+ple-ese, Whit-nee!&quot; was what it said.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page231" id="page231"></a>[pg&nbsp;231]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI<br />
+<small>A SUDDEN VISITOR</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">As</span> a rider reins in his stumbling horse, so did I rein
+in my stumbling nerves. It was now or never, I
+told myself. If those final touches were not given
+before I stirred from my tracks, they would never be
+given. I closed my eyes and my ears&mdash;not with my hands
+but by a sheer effort of will&mdash;and then, inch by inch, as
+though I were dragging it by the throat, brought the
+phantom prototype back and forced it to merge with the
+face on the canvas. The tip of my brush flashed twice,
+thrice. Then I relaxed the tentacles of my will, and as
+the phantom face, receding, blurred to blankness, it left
+behind, where a wisp of green-smeared camel&#39;s hair had
+touched the canvas, an expression of hell-haunted terror
+streaming from the unnaturally dilated eyes of the <i>completed</i>
+picture-face.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was breathing heavily, like a coolie who throws down
+his back-breaking burden at the end of a hard climb,
+when I tossed aside my brush and palette, but no wretch
+of a human pack-mule ever knew the depth of relief that
+was mine. A carrier could only experience the physical
+satisfaction of feeling his back was freed of a load: mine
+was the spiritual ecstasy of knocking off the shackles
+that had threatened to bind my soul. And now I was
+free to rush to the arms of the &quot;Green Lady&quot;! No
+more need of rationing my absinthe. I spilled the remaining
+contents of the bottle at my elbow in the bowl
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page232" id="page232"></a>[pg&nbsp;232]</span>
+of half-melted cracked ice, and wolfed it greedily over
+the tilted brim.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Ple-ese, Whit-nee, I have the great hur-ree.&quot; Again
+came the click-clack of the imprisoned latch and the thud
+of a knee or shoulder against the door.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;One moment, Rona!&quot; Steadied and alert, I set down
+the emptied bowl, threw a hastily-snatched couch-cover
+over the canvas so that the space upon which I had
+worked was hidden, and stepped to the door. Already
+I felt the exaltation and relief of having banished the
+dread phantom. And the picture face on the canvas&mdash;how
+easy it was to blot out! The hanging corner of an
+old steamer-rug....</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Rona pushed in eagerly as I swung back the door,
+Suey relaxing his restraining grip and backing away
+noiselessly at my reassuring nod. All the old verve
+showed in the girl&#39;s high-flung head and flashing eye.
+Sullenness, depression, sadness alike were gone, replaced
+by an air of eagerness, of suppressed excitement. She
+was still wearing the baggy <i>holakau</i> the lady missionaries
+had wished upon her, but with it&mdash;looped over her
+breasts and under her shoulders <i>sarong</i>-fashion&mdash;was the
+peacock shawl, outlining softly the lithe curves of shoulder
+and hip and flowing clingingly in folds of amber and
+scintillant opalescence below her knees.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Whit-nee, I come to make the good-bye,&quot; she gushed
+cooingly, catching her breath. &quot;Tonight I take boat go
+Seengapo. Whit-nee, I come here to tell you I ver-ree
+sor-ree I make you troubl&#39; &#39;bout the pick-yur. I tella
+you lie, Whit-nee. I cannot&mdash;make&mdash;the pick-yur. Bel-la,
+he say&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At that instant a strange thing happened. Two or
+three times since she entered the room, Rona&#39;s eyes,
+as though drawn there irresistibly, had wandered from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page233" id="page233"></a>[pg&nbsp;233]</span>
+mine to what could have appeared to her no more than
+a corner of plaid rug hanging over a broad blank of
+tightly stretched canvas. She had done this again as she
+started to speak, and it was a slight widening of her eyes
+that caused me to turn and follow her glance. The
+hastily-flung rug was slowly slipping back off the easel.
+The fringed corner hanging down in front was rising.
+Possibly a draught from the open door had started the
+movement, or perhaps the swishing blows a wind-lashed
+tree was dealing the side of the house. Whatever was
+the cause, the effect was that of an invisible hand slowly
+drawing up a curtain.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Rona&#39;s tongue framed the sentence that was in her
+mind, but the words came brokenly as her puzzled wonderment
+increased. As her double-syllabled rendition of
+Bell&#39;s name fell from her lips the accelerating slide of
+the curtain quickened to a run, and, with a flirt of
+green fringe, the masking corner disappeared over the
+top of the frame. The Face&mdash;&quot;Slant&quot; Allen&#39;s hell-haunted
+face, tortured and terrible&mdash;glared out at her
+from the broad white field of the canvas.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There was sheer amazement in the down-drop of the
+girl&#39;s lean jaw and a suggestion of terror in the gasp
+with which she filled her deflated lungs. But the piercing
+&quot;<i>ey-yu</i>&quot; with which that air was forced out again
+was a battle-cry. Fortunately, I was standing a couple
+of paces nearer the canvas than was she; but even with
+that handicap in my favour it was a near squeak. I
+caught the gleam of a flashing blade and a quick grab
+sunk my crooked fingers deep into the flesh of a thrusting
+arm. Hurling the arrested figure back toward the
+door, I stooped and picked up a knife&mdash;that beautifully
+balanced Portuguese throwing-knife that Allen and I
+had been flinging at the swelling bole of the big bottle-tree
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page234" id="page234"></a>[pg&nbsp;234]</span>
+the previous Sunday. To this day I do not know
+whether Rona thought she was attacking a reincarnation
+or a ghost, or was only bent on destroying an uncannily
+life-like portrait that awakened savage memories.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I swished the fallen rug from under the easel and
+rehung it&mdash;evenly this time&mdash;before turning to confront
+Rona, where she was readjusting&mdash;with raised elbows
+and twinkling thumbs&mdash;the hitch of the peacock shawl in
+the opposite corner of the room. She had scrambled to
+her feet again, but gave no sign of returning to the attack.
+Her eyes were snapping with anger and excitement,
+but I did not have the feeling that she entertained
+any especial personal resentment against me for the
+rough handling I had given her.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;So it was you after all,&quot; I said slowly, fingering the
+tapering blade of the tell-tale knife.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Her lips moved as though in reply, but if she said
+anything coherent it was drowned in the roar of a sudden
+gust of wind that buffetted the bungalow at that
+moment. I turned to the girl again after closing the
+north windows. Her eyes were fixed on vacancy now,
+and her head, with the clean-cut chin slightly elevated,
+was turned sideways in an attitude of listening. As the
+banging of the trees died down my own duller tympana
+registered a new vibration&mdash;and yet not quite new&mdash;something
+that I had heard very recently. Ah, now I
+had it! The baying of a hound, very near and very
+eager. A red-hot scent beyond doubt, I told myself.
+But why were Rawdon&#39;s &quot;nigger-chasers&quot; running at
+that hour, and into the teeth of a rising hurricane?
+There was questioning in both our glances as the girl&#39;s
+eyes met mine, but in hers certainly no hint of fear.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Before either of us spoke a firm, quick step sounded
+from the back of the house, and a moment later, following
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page235" id="page235"></a>[pg&nbsp;235]</span>
+a light tap on the door, Ranga entered from my
+bedroom. If he was surprised at Rona&#39;s presence, or at
+her somewhat dishevelled appearance, he gave no sign
+of it. Nor was there about me&mdash;now that I was holding
+the knife behind my back&mdash;anything to suggest to the
+Malay that he had stumbled upon a situation in the least
+out of the normal.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Tuan &quot;Slant&quot; was sleeping heavily, he said, and so
+he had snatched the opportunity to come up for some
+of his own Borneo tobacco and a change of clothes. They
+had nothing in the hospital large enough for him. Tuan
+&quot;Slant&quot; was growing stronger in body, but&mdash;he finished
+by tapping his temple and shaking his head dubiously.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A heavier broadside of the gathering storm shook the
+house again, this time sending a shudder through its
+stout frame and wringing a vibrant <i>ping</i> from the
+tautened &quot;hurricane cables&quot; that guyed its windward
+corners. Out of the heart of that blast came the bell-mouthed
+baying of the nearing hound. He was still
+sounding his clear bugle notes as he swung in through
+the gate from the road, but down the driveway, with the
+incense of the burning trail conjuring visions of an
+imminent quarry in his brain, he began tearing his throat
+with harsh, savage yelps of eagerness. I was looking
+for his charge to come against the closed front door,
+but a sudden shower of claw-spurned gravel rat-a-tat-ing
+against the glass of the French windows told that he had
+wheeled in his tracks and was circling to the rear of
+the house. A yell and a clatter of saucepans from the
+kitchen, a scramble of slipping claws upon the hardwood
+floor of the back hallway, and in from the open
+door of my bedroom&mdash;drooling-fanged, bloody-eyed and
+bloody-minded&mdash;came dashing that black bolt of canine
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page236" id="page236"></a>[pg&nbsp;236]</span>
+fury, closing on his cornered quarry for the death-grapple.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Ranga, on entering, had moved a step or two aside
+from the door, a survival doubtless of his training at
+sea, where an idle man blocking a companionway or a
+ladder is liable to be taught manners by a rap on the
+head. Rona was still in the corner to which I had hurled
+her. I was at the opposite corner, near the big canvas
+and twenty feet or more from the girl. The flying hound
+tried to check himself at the doorway, but the polished
+floor gave him no grip for his claws. Down on his
+haunches, with forefeet poked rigidly ahead, he slid the
+full width of the room, tobogganing on a smooth-running
+Samoan mat for the last half of the distance.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">With the certainty of Rona&#39;s guilt fixed in my mind
+by her possession of Allen&#39;s knife, I had no doubt, from
+the moment the hound&#39;s baying indicated it had turned
+into the clearing, that it was hot on her trail. But even
+so, the brute&#39;s entry by the bedroom door had been so
+unexpected and so swift that I had not stirred from
+my tracks to the girl&#39;s defence when the snarling animal,
+shooting across the room, brought up against the wall
+close beside her. Even Ranga, leaping forward instantly
+as he had, was scarcely past the middle of the floor when
+the beast regained its balance and bearings almost at the
+girl&#39;s feet. Drawing back into the angle of the walls and
+crouching low like a cornered cat, Rona awaited the attack,
+while Ranga, barehanded, and I with the throwing-knife
+rushed in to her aid. Without an instant&#39;s hesitation,
+the savage beast spun to a full right-about and,
+brushing the girl&#39;s advanced knee as though it was no
+more than the piano stool, launched itself full at the
+throat of the yellow man.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Ranga&#39;s counter was swift, sure and terrible. He
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page237" id="page237"></a>[pg&nbsp;237]</span>
+might have been fighting bloodhounds barehanded from
+childhood, for all the surprise and dismay he showed at
+the sudden attack. Where my own instinct (if I had not
+tried to side-step the charge completely) would have
+been to grapple for the brute&#39;s throat from beneath, he
+simply struck&mdash;or rather grabbed&mdash;down from above.
+The impact crushed the snarling beast to the floor, but
+when Ranga raised his arm again he was gripping his
+struggling canine adversary by the scruff of the neck.
+Or rather, I thought it was the scruff. In reality his
+grip was a bit more inclusive.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Holding the floundering black form at arm&#39;s length
+with no more effort than if it had been a terrier, Ranga
+suddenly tightened his hold. I saw the hound&#39;s red-lidded
+eyes grow slant and elongated like a Chinaman&#39;s
+as the skin of its scalp was drawn backward in the relentless
+vise closing from behind; then a grinding snick
+cut short an unearthly scream of pain, and the hound
+was dangling limp and lifeless with a crumpled spine at
+the end of a gibbet of knotted yellow muscle. Ranga
+tossed lightly aside what a moment before had been a
+flying bolt of wrath, and where the great head doubled
+under against a flowered chintz window-curtain I saw the
+sprawling outline of a tooth-torn ear, doubtless the scar
+of a fight with a luckier ending.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In its strangely terrible tenseness, the electrically
+charged silence that succeeded has no parallel in my
+experience. Not a word was spoken. The only sound
+was the banging of the wind-wrenched trees against the
+house and the nearing mutter of the thunder in the
+north. The significance of the fact that it was Ranga
+the dog had been trailing was lost upon neither Rona
+nor me, nor yet upon the big Malay himself. The latter
+met my questioning glance steadily for a moment, but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page238" id="page238"></a>[pg&nbsp;238]</span>
+it was the girl&#39;s piercing stare of fierce concentration that
+drew and held his troubled black eyes. While one might
+have counted fifty those two stood and (as I have since
+understood) communed with eye and mind. It was a
+sudden thunder-clap that broke the connection and
+checked the interflow of thought. Ranga had not winced
+at the blinding flash and close-following crash, but Rona&#39;s
+higher strung nerves fluttered for an instant, and the
+wire was down. But Ranga&#39;s words indicated that the
+message was about complete.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Yes, I did it, Tuan,&quot; he said quietly, turning toward
+me as though answering my unspoken question. &quot;It had
+to be, Tuan, and&mdash;yes, I did it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was not until afterwards I recalled that it was to
+Rona I addressed my protest. &quot;But &#39;Slant&#39; swore to
+me that he did not kill Bell; that he was in no way
+responsible for his death, first or last.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A spasm of passion twisted the girl&#39;s face to the seeming
+of an ape&#39;s as she caught the drift of my words,
+and her reply was almost a scream. &quot;Not ke-el Bel-la?
+&#39;Slan&#39; do worse than ke-el. He&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The chorus of the leashed pack that checked her words
+came from so close at hand that it made itself heard
+above the now unbroken roar of the storm. There was
+the clang of shod hoofs on a metalled road, too, and I
+thought I could distinguish the shouts of men. The
+hunt was closing in for the kill.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I think I go now, Tuan. I like the better to fight
+outside.&quot; Ranga&#39;s voice was as quiet and controlled as
+when he had told me the news from the hospital a few
+minutes before; but there was the lust of battle in his
+flashing eyes, eagerness for action in the quick heave of
+his chest.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There was no time to debate and decide the question as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page239" id="page239"></a>[pg&nbsp;239]</span>
+to who had committed the outrage upon Hartley Allen,
+or of what justification there might have been for it. One
+thing only was clear to me, and that was that I was not
+going to throw either Rona or Ranga to the dogs&mdash;no,
+nor to the law either&mdash;if there was any way of avoiding
+it. My mind&mdash;as was always the case when I had fasted
+long and drunk absinthe sparingly&mdash;worked with lightning
+swiftness.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Don&#39;t fight unless you have to,&quot; I said, stepping
+closer to Ranga as the wind and thunder threatened to
+drown my voice. &quot;Follow down the stream over the
+falls. Jump won&#39;t hurt you&mdash;plenty of water at the
+bottom. That&#39;ll throw off the dogs. Then follow the
+path by the flume down to the sea. The rain&#39;ll kill
+your trail for the dogs. It ought to be starting any
+minute now. Wait for me on the pier by the old
+sugar mill. I&#39;ll come for you in a boat as soon as I
+can.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Baring his teeth in a quick grin of comprehension,
+the big fellow wheeled and started for the front door.
+I caught his arm and checked him just in time. &quot;This
+way!&quot; I shouted. &quot;Through my bedroom window.
+Beat it! <i>Lekas!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Again that intelligent tooth-flash of understanding.
+Ranga&#39;s foreshortened bulk was making a blurred blot
+against the blue-green lightning flash playing across the
+rear bedroom window as I turned to answer a heavy
+banging at the front door. Everything considered, I
+have always felt that I got away fairly well with the
+situation with which I now found myself confronted.
+It was Harpool, the Chief of Police, who staggered into
+the room, bracing back against the push of the still rising
+wind. The flutter of the lightning revealed two or
+three horses in the driveway, and three or four men
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page240" id="page240"></a>[pg&nbsp;240]</span>
+following a bunch of howling dogs around the corner
+of the house.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was on the point of opening up at the Chief with a
+facetious sally about the way he was sending his hounds
+around to frighten my lady visitors, when I chanced to
+glance to the corner where Rona had been, and lo&mdash;I
+had no lady visitor! The girl was gone, but whether
+under the couch or out of one of the windows I could
+not guess. So I only gaped rather stupidly and said
+nothing, leaving the Chief to open the attack. I was
+glad the face on the canvas was covered, and only wished
+there had been time to throw something over the crumpled
+remnants of the big black-and-tan.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I am quite satisfied it isn&#39;t you we want, Mr. Whitney,&quot;
+Harpool began, with a shade of embarrassment,
+I thought. &quot;But the fact remains that Rawdon&#39;s hounds
+have followed a live scent straight to this house, and I
+have every reason to believe they are on the trail of the
+man who tied up Hartley Allen. Perhaps you can
+explain&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I think I can,&quot; I cut in, anxious to gain time for
+the fugitive, but realizing that no end would be served
+by trying to conceal his identity. &quot;You&#39;re right that it
+was a hot scent. Just a few degrees too hot for your
+canine deputy there in the corner. It&#39;s the end of <i>his</i>
+trail, I&#39;m afraid.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Chief strode over to the limp corpse and turned
+it with his foot. &quot;Who killed this hound?&quot; he demanded
+angrily, regarding me suspiciously for the first time.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Not I, Chief,&quot; I replied jauntily; &quot;but can&#39;t you
+guess? You can see for yourself that he hasn&#39;t been
+shot&mdash;or clubbed&mdash;or poisoned. Well, then&mdash;look at that
+neck. Do you know of more than one man in these
+parts capable of snapping a bloodhound&#39;s spine between
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page241" id="page241"></a>[pg&nbsp;241]</span>
+his thumb and forefinger?&quot; (I added that little thumb-and-forefinger
+touch with malice aforethought, for I
+wanted to impress upon Harpool&mdash;for whatever it might
+be worth&mdash;that it was no old broken-down of a &quot;Squid&quot;
+Saunders that he was going to try to run to earth out
+there in the darkness.)</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Chief&#39;s honest eyes opened with amazement as
+the answer dawned upon him. &quot;You don&#39;t mean the
+big Malay?&quot; he ejaculated incredulously. &quot;Why, he has
+been tending Allen like a sister for two days. Everyone
+in the hospital has been speaking about his devotion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;No other,&quot; I answered. &quot;Ranga came up from the
+hospital less than half an hour ago to get a shift of
+togs. Five minutes later that hound came tearing in
+through the back entrance and flew at his throat&mdash;right
+here in my studio. You see the result. That fellow can
+drop a horse with his fist&mdash;a dog is no more than a flea
+to him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I can hardly believe it,&quot; said the Chief, shaking his
+head; &quot;but the fact remains that if the hound went for
+him, he&#39;s our man. I hope we won&#39;t have to shoot
+him.... But Rawdon will never stand by and see his
+dogs pinched out like that. This fellow was his best
+hound by a mile. Drive him crazy when he finds it&#39;s
+been dished. Gawd, that neck might have been run over
+by a steam tram! What in hell&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">A bedlam of howls and yells and savage oaths rising
+from the rear of the house at this juncture broke in upon
+the Chief and caused him to bolt on the double through
+the door of the corridor leading to the kitchen. The
+unearthly racket, with the rattle of pistol shots spattering
+through it, made me certain that Ranga had run
+afoul of the hunt at his first jump. Shuddering at the
+thought of the terrible fight that must ensue, I pushed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page242" id="page242"></a>[pg&nbsp;242]</span>
+on after Harpool, reaching the further end of the corridor
+just in time to catch his reeling form as he staggered
+back from a bullet that had burned his scalp the
+instant he opened the kitchen door. Astride the sill of a
+kicked-in window sat old Rawdon, his bearded face distorted
+with fury and pain, coughing, sneezing, cursing,
+and firing impartially at all parts of the long, low room.
+Under the sink, almost at Rawdon&#39;s feet but quite out of
+pistol range, crouched Suey, blinking blandly and rubbing
+his almond eyes. He it was who was the author of
+an unpremeditated diversion which was the only thing
+in the world that prevented Ranga being nabbed at the
+outset.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The late black-and-tan, in following Ranga&#39;s trail, had
+entered the kitchen by snapping his way through the
+light screen door. To prevent his lines being thus penetrated
+a second time, the foxy Celestial, when he heard
+the main pack rallying to the attack, closed and bolted
+the heavy outside door of his domain and, with a little
+surprise packet in his hand, took station beside the little
+swinging window above the sink. Waiting with true
+Oriental restraint till the clamouring enemy was compactly
+bunched upon the porch outside, Suey gently
+raised the screen and emptied the contents of a can of red
+pepper into their midst. The paprika appeared to have
+been pretty fairly divided between three of the most oncoming
+of the dogs and their equally forward master.
+The hounds quit for the night, then and there, but the
+old bushranger&#39;s fighting spirit urged him on to make
+the best stand he could with his automatic. Considering
+the way he was being racked with coughs and sneezes,
+and that he only blazed away at the creak of an opening
+door his streaming eyes could not locate, his shot that
+welcomed the Chief was by no means uncreditable. It
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page243" id="page243"></a>[pg&nbsp;243]</span>
+cut a neat furrow through Harpool&#39;s stubby pompadour
+and even drew a drop or two of blood.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Chief&#39;s fervent swearing stayed Rawdon&#39;s murderous
+hand just as he had finished fumbling a fresh
+clip of cartridges into his emptied &quot;thirty-eight&quot; and
+was about to start fusillading anew. Roaring mad as he
+was, his first thought was for the dogs. &quot;Get a wet rag
+round the muzzles o&#39; Dingo an&#39; Jackaroo &#39;fore you let
+&#39;em inter this &#39;ell &#39;ole,&quot; he growled between sneezes.
+&quot;Our bloke&#39;s somew&#39;ere in this &#39;ere &#39;ouse,&quot; he went on,
+laving his smarting eyes at the water-tap of the sink
+above Suey&#39;s jack-knifed form. &quot;Don&#39;t let &#39;im slope
+by the front door, Chief, now we&#39;ve got &#39;im in &#39;is &#39;ole.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Sloped already,&quot; snapped Harpool laconically, adding
+that most of the sloping had been done while Rawdon
+was setting his dogs on a &quot;bally Chink cook.&quot; In a
+few terse sentences the Chief explained the way things
+stood, giving it as his opinion that their man would be
+trying to follow the stream right across the plantation
+and down through the belt of bush to the mangrove
+swamps. The loss of the big black-and-tan was so great
+a calamity for the old bushranger that it had the effect
+of sobering rather than further exciting him. His red
+rage burned white and flamed inwardly rather than outwardly.
+&quot;I&#39;ll know &#39;ow to even up for &#39;im killin&#39;
+Starlight w&#39;en I gets that bloody wombat in a patch o&#39;
+dry bush. Nice bit o&#39; a torch that greasy &#39;ulk o&#39; &#39;im&#39;ll
+make. Come along! We&#39;ll &#39;ave a better chance o&#39; makin&#39;
+a quick bag if we get &#39;im in sight &#39;fore the rain
+starts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">There were still left two dogs with undamaged
+&quot;noses.&quot; Fearful that these, if they took the bridle-path
+down the right side of the creek, might pick up
+Ranga&#39;s trail where he would have left the stream at the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page244" id="page244"></a>[pg&nbsp;244]</span>
+pool, I made bold to suggest a plan calculated to carry
+them wide of that danger point. &quot;Why don&#39;t you
+ford here,&quot; I said, &quot;and push straight across the plantation
+to the end of the big loop the stream makes round
+the nigger village? Your man will be all of an hour
+making that point if he wades by the stream. You can
+make it through the cane in twenty minutes and be waiting
+there to bag him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Chief was inclined to favour the plan&mdash;until
+Rawdon cut in sarcastically with: &quot;An&#39; wot&#39;s to pervent
+the bloody bloke&#39;s givin&#39; us the slip a &#39;undred
+times &#39;tween &#39;ere an&#39; there? One hound down each side
+o&#39; the stream&mdash;that&#39;s the only way to be sure o&#39; clappin&#39;
+our &#39;ooks inter &#39;im.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That was sound reasoning of course&mdash;from Rawdon&#39;s
+standpoint,&mdash;and I didn&#39;t dare urge my plan any further.
+Ten minutes later, when a sudden eager baying
+came down the wind from the direction of the waterfall,
+I felt sure my worst fears were realized. It was, therefore,
+with only the faintest hopes of success, that I pulled
+myself together to take the first step in making good my
+promise to pick up Ranga at the pier of the old sugar
+mill.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The priceless Suey had crawled out from under the
+sink as the sounds of the hunt grew faint, and turned
+to tidying the kitchen as though cleaning up after a pack
+of bloodhounds was just a pleasant little incidental of
+the day&#39;s work. When I ordered him to get me out a
+fresh bottle of absinthe he did not even forget the
+cracked ice. I told him I should probably be away for
+most of the night, and that if Rona showed up in the
+interim to see that she was made comfortable till my return.
+&quot;All lightee girl-ee. Otha fell-ee too much peppa
+can have,&quot; he said decisively. I told him to do what he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page245" id="page245"></a>[pg&nbsp;245]</span>
+liked to Rawdon, but to give the Chief a shake-down if
+he asked for it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Quaffing a couple of glasses of raw absinthe, I filled
+a flask, pulled on a pair of riding-boots and a raincoat,
+and pushed out onto the veranda. The wind had not
+increased greatly in force, but the lightning and thunder
+were flashing and crashing almost simultaneously overhead,
+and the first big drops of rain were beginning to
+spatter. The moon was hidden behind a dense pall of
+black cloud, so that it was by the incessant flicker of the
+lightning that I sized up the three saddle-horses tied at
+the side of the driveway and picked the rangy waler of
+the Chief as the likeliest rough-weather beast. I had no
+compunction to taking him, as the bunch would be breaking
+away anyhow as soon as the sagging bottom of the
+cloud overhead dropped its contents on them. I preferred
+not to have my own saddle-horse left standing in
+the town if it could be avoided. There would be enough
+tell-tale posts on the course I was going to try to negotiate
+without deliberately planting another one.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The cane fields in the valley were glistening with the
+opening volleys of the rain as I spurred across the clearing,
+stabbing the night with silver gleams in the lightning
+flashes as the bayonets of massed troops throw off
+the rays of the sun. The wind was behind me as far as
+the main road; then side-on, but broken by the wall of
+the thick-growing trees. I put the waler at top speed,
+anxious to cover all the distance possible while the footing
+was good. I was halfway to town before the storm
+let go in real earnest, and from then on it was about as
+much of a swim as a ride, especially after the hillsides
+began to spill off on the lower levels. My mount was a
+sensible beast, evidently no stranger to tropical cloudbursts.
+He took the initiative readily when I ceased
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page246" id="page246"></a>[pg&nbsp;246]</span>
+to urge him, and kept plugging right on through the
+storm at a good steady business-like jog. Nothing but
+my good fortune in getting a jump on the rain prevented
+my going out in this first lap of my race, as all
+of the four bridges I had to cross must have washed
+away within a very few minutes from the time I put
+them behind me. Indeed, one of the two horses I had
+left in the driveway, after both had broken away as I
+had anticipated, was drowned in trying to flounder
+through an open crossing.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The worst of the terrific downpour was over as I rode
+into the town, but the wind&mdash;as was to be expected&mdash;was
+blowing with increased force. Everyone had been
+driven indoors by the rain, so that it was in an empty
+street I dismounted and left my horse, knowing that he
+would be pawing at his own stable door within a very
+few minutes. The rest of the way to the landing I
+covered on foot. As I had feared, the creek was empty
+of launches. I would have to see what could be done
+at the Burns, Phillip offices, which, busy with manifests
+and other odds and ends of business incident to an imminent
+steamer sailing, were still lighted up. It was an
+alternative I was very reluctant to resort to, as I had
+been hoping that my visit to Captain Tancred might be
+managed on the quiet. Just as I turned to go a red light,
+bobbing past the outer end of the jetty, caught the tail
+of my eye, and, on the off chance that it might be a craft
+I could hire, I held on at the steps. Smartly handled
+in the nasty cross-lop, a small but powerful steam launch
+bumped in alongside the landing stage.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Can I get you to take me off to the <i>Mambare</i>?&quot; I
+demanded of the uniformed youth who came bounding
+up the steps.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Glad to do it, sir. This is her launch,&quot; was the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page247" id="page247"></a>[pg&nbsp;247]</span>
+cheery reply. &quot;Just in for clearance papers. Be back
+in a jiffy. Climb aboard and make yourself comfy in the
+cabin.&quot; Then, as an apparent afterthought: &quot;You&#39;re
+sailing with us, aren&#39;t you? Can&#39;t take off visitors at
+this hour. No way to get back. Getting under way at
+midnight.&quot; He had so little doubt that I was a belated
+passenger, perhaps delayed by the rain, that my
+nod was quite sufficient to reassure him. Five minutes
+later we were shoving off for the run back to the line
+of lights where the <i>Mambare</i> tugged at her moorings.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The sea was white with foam outside the jetties, but
+with waves and wind almost dead astern the sturdy little
+launch made very comfortable weather of it. It was
+by no means as bad as it had been coming in, said the
+young officer, who turned out to be a freight clerk. As
+the gangway was already raised and the launch had to
+come in anyway, we remained aboard her and were
+hoisted right up and swung in to the chocks on the
+<i>Mambare&#39;s</i> boat-deck. My companion hurried at once to
+his office to go over his pouch of papers, while I, locating
+it without asking anyone for directions, went forward
+to the Captain&#39;s cabin under the bridge.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The faint shadow of constraint on Captain Tancred&#39;s
+face as I entered disappeared the instant his ready mind
+divined I had come to him for help. &quot;So they&#39;re after
+ye at last, lad,&quot; he said, sympathy and satisfaction
+queerly blended in his deep voice. &quot;Weel, noo, tell me
+a&#39; aboot it. I ken we&#39;ll be findin&#39; a way oot for
+ye.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I told him all that he needed to know as quickly as
+possible, making a point, however, of omitting to state
+that the man I wanted him to smuggle away to the
+Islands had confessed to committing the outrage upon
+Hartley Allen. &quot;Slant&quot; was an old friend of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page248" id="page248"></a>[pg&nbsp;248]</span>
+&quot;Choppy&#39;s,&quot; and I felt sure that the latter, far from
+being a witting party to helping the man who had attacked
+him escape from justice, would undoubtedly lend
+every aid to placing him where he would receive his just
+deserts. Luckily, the quixotic old Scot was not a man
+to ask searching questions. He was plainly disappointed
+that it was not I who was fleeing the law, but there was
+ready consolation in the fact that a friend of mine, in
+very sore straits, might be saved from being torn to
+pieces by a pack of bloodhounds if he was picked up at
+a certain point on the north coast before morning.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">We located the cove of the old sugar mill on the chart
+without difficulty, and in his bulky volume of &quot;Sailing
+Directions&quot; found the comforting assurance that it afforded
+especially good shelter in a northerly blow.
+There was no surf, it was stated, and the shore was almost
+steep-to. This was all in our favour. He was sailing
+at midnight, the Captain said. The hurricane was central
+over the New Hebrides, so it was only the tail of it
+flirting across the Great Barrier&mdash;nothing he would
+dream of sticking in harbour for. Doubtless he would be
+able to find an excuse to heave-to off the cove, while I
+piloted the launch in to get our man. Then, if I didn&#39;t
+care to return and take a pleasure voyage with him to Insulinde
+and the Straits, I could drop off and make the
+best of my way home.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Captain had just finished telling me how he had
+made a point of bringing his old launch crew with him
+from the <i>Utupua</i>&mdash;&quot;the lads I use for speshul wark,
+ye ken&quot;&mdash;when the freight clerk who had brought me
+off entered the cabin with a number of papers and letters.
+On the top of the pile was a red envelope marked
+&quot;Rush.&quot; &quot;Choppy&quot; tore the letter open at once. The
+up-flop of his grizzled side-burns at the sudden flexing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page249" id="page249"></a>[pg&nbsp;249]</span>
+of the jaw muscles at their roots gave me warning of
+the coming jolt.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;We&#39;ll nae be gettin&#39; under wa&#39; the nicht, Ryerson,&quot;
+he said quietly to the freight clerk. &quot;Will ye be sae
+guid as to bid the Chief an&#39; the Mate to step this wa&#39;.
+Mair carga the morrow,&quot; he added by way of explanation.
+To the Chief Engineer, when he came, the Captain
+merely countermanded an order for steam on the capstan
+at seven bells, and warned him to keep the pressure
+in the boilers high for fear the steamer might part a
+mooring cable if the wind increased. The Mate he
+ordered to be ready to handle a consignment of silver
+bullion and ingot copper that would come in a tug from
+the <i>Moresby</i> as soon as she arrived from the south in the
+morning. He also told him to have the crew of the
+steam launch called away at once, so as to put &quot;yon
+gentleman&quot; ashore as quickly as possible. If the Mate
+was lively about it, &quot;Choppy&quot; suggested, he might find
+that the fires of the launch had not yet been drawn from
+her trip to the landing. If so, that would save time in
+getting up steam.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Not until all of this was ordered did he turn to me
+with: &quot;The de&#39;il&#39;s ain luck, lad. Nae gettin&#39; awa&#39; afore
+eight bells, noon, the morrow. Shipment frae Broken
+Hill catchin&#39; up wi&#39; us in the <i>Moresby</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;That means that the game&#39;s up and you&#39;re sending
+me back because there&#39;s no hope of doing anything?&quot; I
+asked in dismay.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Nae, nae, lad,&quot; he soothed. &quot;No&#39; so fast. Just a
+wee bit o&#39; a shift o&#39; program, that&#39;s a&#39;. True I&#39;m sendin&#39;
+ye ashore in the launch, but when she comes back
+I&#39;m hopin&#39; tae find oor mon in yer place. Do ye ken
+noo wha&#39; I&#39;m drivin&#39; at?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Do you mean to send the launch all the way round
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page250" id="page250"></a>[pg&nbsp;250]</span>
+from here?&quot; I demanded in astonishment; &quot;and then to
+keep him aboard here in the harbour for ten or twelve
+hours before you sail? Isn&#39;t that asking for trouble
+both ways? Even if the launch stands up against the
+gale outside, aren&#39;t you done for if they come off from
+town and make a search of the steamer?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Old &quot;Choppy&#39;s&quot; blue eyes twinkled merrily at the
+latter suggestion. The police never did seem to have any
+luck in searching his ships, he laughed. As for the
+launch&mdash;it was new, its engine was unusually powerful,
+and it would have &quot;Pisco&quot; at the wheel. &quot;Pisco,&quot; he
+explained, was a Chilean who had been with him for
+years, and had never been known to fail at a pinch. He
+thought that combination ought to win out. I didn&#39;t
+mind a bit of slap-banging off the point, did I? That
+settled it. If he was willing to risk his own launch and
+his own career to save <i>my</i> friend, it was not for me to
+hang back. Fifteen minutes later we had been lowered
+over the side and were rounding under the <i>Mambare&#39;s</i>
+fine clipper bows into the teeth of the gusty norther. It
+had been agreed that I should pilot &quot;Pisco&quot; to the
+rendezvous and deliver my man into his care.
+&quot;Choppy&quot; undertook to do the rest.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">What the hard-bit old sea-dog had characterized as a
+&quot;bit o&#39; slap-banging&quot; off the point proved to be a frontal
+attack upon as ruffianly a bunch of headseas as it was
+ever my lot to face in anything smaller than a ninety-ton
+schooner. Stoutly built and over-engined as she was, the
+launch was quite equal to the task of driving her nose
+through the waves, but&mdash;not being built for submarine
+service&mdash;proved a dismal failure at getting rid of the
+solid green water that deluged her as a consequence.
+Knot by knot, cursing fluently in picturesque <i>roto</i> Spanish
+the while, &quot;Pisco&quot; rang down the engine, until
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page251" id="page251"></a>[pg&nbsp;251]</span>
+finally the pugnacious little craft ceased tunnelling the
+bases of the seas and contented herself with boring neat
+round holes in their curling crests. By this method she
+shipped no more water than her scuppers could put
+back where it came from. The only fear now was that
+enough spray might splash down her squat funnel to
+quench the fires, and to minimize the chances of this, the
+resourceful &quot;Pisco&quot; made the lookout stand so that his
+broad chest would receive and deflect the heaviest rushes
+of the threatening flood. Fortunately, the distance to be
+run head-on to the seas was comparatively short. Once
+round the point the alteration of course brought the
+wind and the waves on the starboard beam, and though
+she now just about rolled her side-lights under, it was
+fairly quiet going compared to the buffeting outside.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I gave &quot;Pisco&quot; his course for the first leg in by the
+lights of the big sugar central, and then, as we opened up
+the inner bay, gave him a bearing on the notch&mdash;barely
+guessable against the overcast west&mdash;where the old cartroad
+grade pierced the brow of the cliff. The clouds
+were racing overhead and the baffling cross-gusts on the
+surface would have made it bad business for a sailing
+craft. But for a launch the task was a comparatively
+simple one. The loom of the old mill was discernible
+against the darker opacity of the cliff at a couple of hundred
+yards, and the right-angling lines of the pier at
+half that distance. As the latter was sure to have been
+built of the eternally-lasting <i>jarra</i>, I knew that it would
+be as solid and serviceable as the day it was abandoned.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had not thought it best to risk dampening Captain
+Tancred&#39;s enthusiasm by confessing that I thought it
+was a good ten-to-one against my man&#39;s turning up at
+the rendezvous. Indeed, I could see no grounds whatever
+for hoping that Ranga had shaken the pursuit&mdash;already
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page252" id="page252"></a>[pg&nbsp;252]</span>
+at his heels&mdash;and won through to the appointed
+place. Nothing short of a miracle could have compassed
+it, I told myself. It was on the off chance that the
+miracle had been wrought that I was keeping my promise.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;&#39;Bout half a point to sta&#39;boa&#39;d, Tuan. Way nuf now!
+Steady!&quot; That deep rumbling voice from the darkness
+was a welcome surprise. &quot;Pisco,&quot; heeding the quiet directions,
+brought his launch alongside the broad solid
+flight of steps as neatly as he would have laid her up to
+the <i>Mambare&#39;s</i> gangway in broad daylight.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Ranga was coming down the steps&mdash;with a slowness
+which I attributed to the fact that they were probably very
+slippery&mdash;when I heard a thud on the deck behind me,
+such a sound as a heavy, soft bundle thrown down from
+above might have made in striking. A second or two
+later there was an ejaculation of astonishment somewhere
+aft, probably from &quot;Pisco,&quot; I thought, as the
+words were Spanish. I did not try to puzzle out the purport
+of them at the moment, as my attention was occupied
+with Ranga, who seemed to be hesitating at the last
+moment about coming aboard. Twice or thrice he drew
+back his foot from the rail, as though uncertain of his
+balance. And when the great bulk of him finally did
+surge forward, it was with a lurch that took all my
+strength to check it and prevent his reeling on across the
+narrow bow and over the other side. He steadied himself
+slowly, with a great intake of breath. &quot;Sorry&mdash;make
+trouble,&mdash;Tuan. Now&mdash;I go aft.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I am leaving you here, Ranga,&quot; I said quickly, for
+I was getting nervous about a movement of lights I had
+observed along the flume in the rear of the big sugar
+mill. &quot;Captain Tancred will look after you on the
+steamer, and put you off wherever you want to go. He
+also has some money for you. Good luck!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page253" id="page253"></a>[pg&nbsp;253]</span>
+The big fellow took a long shuddering breath, and
+when he spoke it was as though he had rallied himself
+from a spell of faintness by sheer force of will. &quot;Some
+day, Tuan&mdash;I pay you back&mdash;for all you do. So long.&quot;
+He turned with painful deliberation and started to edge
+along aft. I was a bit surprised that he had not grasped
+my extended hand, but could not be sure that he had
+been aware of it in the dark. It did not occur to me
+until afterwards that he had not used his own hands on
+the rail of the stairway in descending, and that he had
+seemed to shoulder his way back to the cockpit rather
+than to grope. I waited until his swaying shoulders
+ceased to blot the blinking of the phosphorescent seas
+astern, and then swung off to the stairs.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;All clear!&quot; I called softly to &quot;Pisco,&quot; as I felt the
+solid step underfoot. &quot;Shove off when you&#39;re ready.
+<i>Buena fortuna!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was doubtless &quot;Pisco&#39;s&quot; ejaculation in Spanish a
+few moments before, lurking in the back of my mind,
+that prompted me to speed the spirited coxswain in his
+own tongue. On the heels of that &quot;<i>Buena fortuna!</i>&quot;
+the words he had spoken flashed up in my memory.
+&quot;<i>Cristo! Porqué la muchacha?</i>&quot; It could hardly have
+been a sarcastic dig at Ranga&#39;s hesitancy in stepping
+aboard, I reflected as I mounted the slippery&mdash;astonishingly
+slippery&mdash;steps. He would not have expressed it
+quite that way in that case. A sudden slip in a slimy
+patch at the head of the steps put an end to conjecture
+for the moment, and when I regained my feet the answer
+was written across the cabin doorway of the turning
+launch. The lamp inside had&mdash;purposely&mdash;been turned
+very low, and the blurred silhouette of the figure that
+came groping out to where Ranga had collapsed on a
+cockpit transom might easily have been that of any one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page254" id="page254"></a>[pg&nbsp;254]</span>
+of old &quot;Choppy&#39;s&quot; true and tried launch crew. But
+wet amber silk reflects a deal of light, and there was only
+one peacock shawl in the world&mdash;or in that neck of the
+world at least.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page255" id="page255"></a>[pg&nbsp;255]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII<br />
+<small>DOWN THE FLUME</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">The</span> lights had disappeared from the flume as I
+turned to go, and, rather than take the chance of
+another fall, I decided to use my small electric
+torch in finding a solid footing. The lacquered crimson
+reflection of the fluttering disc of light instantly revealed
+the cause of the slipperiness I had encountered. The
+whole end of the pier was criss-crossed with thick trails
+of blood, with great spreading pools here and there where,
+whoever shed it, had stood or sat. The blood on my
+hands and raincoat, where they had come in contact with
+Ranga&#39;s reeling frame, proved beyond a doubt that he
+was badly hurt. That explained his unsteadiness on his
+feet, and also the fact that he had avoided shaking hands
+with me. Very likely, indeed, his hands were unfit to
+use. Tired to the verge of exhaustion though I was, my
+blood leaped at the thought of the battle royal the splendid
+fellow must have fought&mdash;and won. I was expecting
+to come upon traces of the fight at any moment as I
+picked my way in past the ruined mill to the foot of the
+old grade leading to the top of the cliff.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">As I left the planking of the pier behind two sets of
+footprints appeared in the wet, firm earth of the path at
+the side of the road. Both were made by bare feet, but
+the larger ones&mdash;plainly Ranga&#39;s&mdash;were broken and irregular,
+and saturated with blood. There could be no
+doubt that his feet, like his hands, were frightfully
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page256" id="page256"></a>[pg&nbsp;256]</span>
+torn. The small prints pressed very close to the side of
+the large, indicating that Rona was either supporting the
+wounded giant or being supported by him. From the
+fact that the smaller impressions were deeply indented, I
+figured that the former was the case&mdash;that she was helping
+him. The girl, evidently, was not badly hurt&mdash;perhaps
+not at all.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Where the path I was following joined the bridle-road
+at the brink of the cliff, the trail of blood turned off down
+the foot of the flume toward the big sugar mill. The
+battle royal must have been fought somewhere in the
+depths of the dense tropical growth that filled the rocky
+fissure in the cliff followed by the flume. What grim
+secret the black hole held would have to wait for the
+coming day to reveal. My way home led in the opposite
+direction, and there was some question in my mind
+as to whether or not I had the strength for the full
+course.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Fortunately for me the flume had been built along
+ridges and high ground, so that the trail following it had
+not been exposed to heavy flooding in the torrential rains
+of the early evening. I found it hard and firm underfoot
+for the most part, and by no means hard to follow
+without resorting to my electric torch. It would have
+been very easy going had I not been so nearly all in,
+but even as it was, by using my absinthe sparingly as
+I had done while painting, I managed to keep plugging
+steadily on toward home.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At one time something very near a panic seized me for
+a while, when the thought flashed through my mind that
+the great quantity of Ranga&#39;s blood soaked up by my
+boots and my clothes would undoubtedly leave a trail
+that Rawdon&#39;s hounds, should they chance to nose into
+it, would be quite justified in mistaking for that of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page257" id="page257"></a>[pg&nbsp;257]</span>
+Malay himself. Even if I succeeded in holding the beasts
+off with my revolver, my presence there, and in such a
+state, would call for a lot of explaining. If the Chief
+once became suspicious, I told myself, it would undoubtedly
+upset my plans to get Ranga away, to say
+nothing of involving both myself and Captain Tancred
+in a serious scrape. I was in a miserable state of funk
+until the cheering thought entered my head that Ranga
+had probably killed not only the dogs, but probably
+Rawdon and the Chief as well. That reflection reassured
+me immensely, and, buoyed in mind and body, I trudged
+on confidently to the foot of the waterfall.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had noticed from time to time along the way that
+the flume, in its less inclined stretches, was overflowing
+its sides. The reason for this became evident when I
+reached the intake, at the side of the pool under the falls,
+where I discovered that the gate, usually only partly
+raised, was wide open. A flow of more than double the
+normal was rushing out of the rain-swollen stream and
+into the flume.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was too tired to speculate upon how this might have
+happened. It was touch-and-go with my tottering knees
+all the way up the steep, slippery path to the top of the
+cliff; but, with three or four breathing spells and the
+last of my absinthe, I managed it, and came out at last
+upon the greensward rimming the bathing-pool under
+my bedroom window. It was comparatively quiet here,
+now that the roar of the falls was deadened by distance,
+which was doubtless the reason that I heard for the
+first time a racket from the other side of the plantation
+that must have been going on right along. It was rather
+a lucky thing that I <i>did</i> hear that noise before I turned
+in. Had I not done so, it is hardly likely that it would
+have occurred to me that it might be a wise precaution to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page258" id="page258"></a>[pg&nbsp;258]</span>
+remove my boots before entering the house, and then
+to strip off and burn carefully in the kitchen range everything
+that I had been wearing. It was all I could do to
+keep awake until the irksome job was over, but, since
+it was evident from the ki-yi-ing and cursing that was
+floating down the wind that Ranga had not made a
+clean sweep of Rawdon and his pack, I reckoned that
+it well might be the means of preventing unpleasant
+complications.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">My arduous climb up from the old sugar mill had
+served a useful purpose in one respect. The hard physical
+exercise had sweated the poison of the absinthe out
+of my system and relaxed the near-to-breaking tension
+my nerves had been under for thirty-six hours. I fell
+into a good normal hard-workingman&#39;s sleep the moment
+the mosquito-net closed behind me. And the best
+of it was that, when a pandemonium outside awakened
+me a little after sun-up, I tumbled out upon my feet in
+full possession of all my faculties. This was a mighty
+fortunate circumstance, for the rather delicate situation
+with which I was confronted called for something better
+on my shoulders than the usual &quot;absinthe-holdover&quot;
+head.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Harpool and Rawdon, it appeared, had experienced a
+beastly night. Losing a hot scent that had been picked
+up at the foot of the waterfall immediately after leaving
+the bungalow, they had been forced to take refuge in
+one of the labour villages during the deluge. Dragged
+out by the bloodthirsty Rawdon before the rain had
+ceased to fall, they had spent the night &quot;working&quot; the
+fringes of the bush in the hope of stumbling upon the
+trail of the elusive fugitive. The net result of this was
+the drowning of two more hounds and the driving of the
+baffled bushranger to the verge of distraction. Returning,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page259" id="page259"></a>[pg&nbsp;259]</span>
+dead beat, in the early dawn, they had encountered,
+at the intake of the flume, a scent so strong that even
+the paprika-dosed noses of Suey&#39;s victims followed it
+readily. Swarming up the cliff in full cry, the hunt
+came on to whirl in a mad war dance round the bungalow
+and put a period to my morning slumbers.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The maniacal Rawdon was the worst difficulty, and
+I honestly believe that only the Chief&#39;s restraining presence
+saved me from the necessity of winging him with a
+revolver bullet to prevent his setting fire to the bungalow.
+That &quot;bloody wombat&quot; had dodged him once from that
+shack and he wasn&#39;t going to take chances on its happening
+again. The Chief and I finally induced him to
+leave his &quot;ring of death&quot; intact round the bungalow
+and come in and search for himself. That gave me a
+chance for a quiet word with Harpool, whom I did not
+want to have push on to town for fear he would start a
+search that might extend to the <i>Mambare</i>. Indeed, he
+admitted he was afraid that his man might have doubled
+back to Townsville and got off to the Singapore boat,
+which had doubtless sailed at midnight. He had lost a
+badly-wanted counterfeiter a fortnight ago that way.
+The skippers never seemed very keen to co-operate in a
+search of their ships. Too many little smuggling games
+of their own probably.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I suggested to Harpool that he have a bath, a change
+of clothes&mdash;my togs were about his size&mdash;and a snack of
+early breakfast. Afterwards&mdash;since his horse was gone&mdash;I
+would drive him down in my trap. In the meantime
+he could ring up the Police Station and give any
+orders he thought desirable by &#39;phone. (This latter suggestion
+I made in full knowledge of the fact that the
+line must be down for over a mile. I had seen myself
+where uprooted trees were responsible for wide hiatuses.)
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page260" id="page260"></a>[pg&nbsp;260]</span>
+If it was in any way possible without arousing his suspicions,
+it was my intention to detain Harpool until I
+was sure the <i>Mambare</i> had sailed.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The Chief fell in with my suggestion readily, and felt
+so much bucked up after a bath and a couple of whiskies-and-soda
+that he did not appear seriously upset when
+the telephone turned an irresponsive ear to him. Like the
+straightforward gentleman he was, he accepted at once
+my assurance that Ranga had not entered the house again,
+and took no hand in Rawdon&#39;s wild scrimmages, which
+carried him from cellar to garret with no other result
+than the brushing of a bit more of the bloom off &quot;Honeymoon
+Bungalow&quot; with the soles of his hobnailed boots.
+Madder than ever after his vain search, he surlily refused
+my invitation to remain for a cup of the coffee
+that his Chink friend of the night before was already
+preparing in the kitchen, and slogged off down the
+road, followed by three draggled hounds and two cursing
+helpers. I was a good deal cheered by the thought that
+it was unlikely that any of them would be getting
+through to town, without swimming, for another twelve
+hours at least.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Before he left Rawdon turned over to the Chief the
+little piece of red rag he had been using to put the dogs
+on the scent with. It was at this time that Harpool told
+me of &quot;Squid&quot; Saunders&#39; suggestion, and of the visit
+to the schooner in search of a clue. I did not tell him
+that I recognized the rag as one which Ranga had used to
+wrap his little Malay flute in, and that it had undoubtedly
+been left there the morning the big fellow
+helped carry Hartley Allen to the quarantine launch.
+It was interesting, however, to know that Ranga was
+absolutely guiltless of the outrage to which he had
+confessed. I thought I could just conceive how a well-guarded
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page261" id="page261"></a>[pg&nbsp;261]</span>
+passion for the girl might have prompted that
+chivalrous attempt to shield her from suspicion; but
+why had Rona herself committed the ghastly crime?&mdash;and
+how? It was many months before I was to have an
+answer to those questions, and they came from the lips
+of the last person from whom I could have expected
+them.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Direct and straightforward as ever, Harpool was
+visibly impressed by my suggestion that Ranga had probably
+remained hidden near the fall until the pursuit had
+passed, and after returning to the bungalow and finding
+it dark, had retraced his steps and adopted the
+desperate expedient of trying to escape the dogs by riding
+down the flume. That reminded him that they had
+found the gate of the intake closed when they first
+reached it, and that it had occurred to him at the time
+that the fugitive might have done this so that he could
+walk down the bottom of the flume without risk of being
+carried away by the water. This would account for the
+patch of scent the hounds found at that point. The
+Chief said that he was for pushing along the path by the
+flume, but that Rawdon scouted his theory, insisting that
+their man had jumped back into the water and gone on
+wading downstream. The hound-master had carried his
+point, but, to be on the safe side, they had ratcheted up
+the gate to its full aperture and turned a stream down
+the flume heavy enough, he was afraid, almost to carry
+the sugar mill into the sea. And that reminded me
+(though, obviously, I could not speak of it) that I had
+not heard the roar of the mill&#39;s machinery when I paused
+at the brow of the cliff. There was no doubt it was hung
+up for some reason. Was it possible that Ranga had
+made his escape after coasting right down into the
+crushing gear? But of course not. He would never have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page262" id="page262"></a>[pg&nbsp;262]</span>
+been able to get away unpursued, even if he had survived.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I welcomed for two reasons Harpool&#39;s suggestion that
+we ride down the flume and investigate as soon as breakfast
+was over. It would keep him away from town until
+the <i>Mambare</i> had sailed for one thing, and, for another,
+it would give me a chance to fathom the mystery that
+lay at the end of that trail of blood leading down into
+the rift in the cliff. It seemed probable to me that both
+Rona and Ranga, after the former had overtaken him&mdash;probably
+at the foot of the fall&mdash;had started down the
+flume on foot. Whether there would be any indications
+of what had befallen when the water overtook them
+remained to be seen.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The gate was still wide open when we rode along beside
+the intake, but halfway down to the coast we met
+a man from the mill who said that he was going up to
+shut the flow off so that a break near the lower end
+could be repaired. The wires were down from the storm,
+he said, making it impossible to &#39;phone directions to the
+plantation office. The break was a bit of a mystery, he
+added. Flume opened right out. There were indications
+that some large animal&mdash;perhaps a bullock&mdash;had
+been carried down&mdash;probably washed in at the upper end
+while the stream was at flood. Funny part of it was,
+though, that there was no trace to be found of the bullock
+below the break. Must have been washed right on
+into the sea.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Harpool pushed on eagerly after hearing that significant
+piece of news, and we reached the head of the first
+steep pitch at the top of the cliff some minutes before
+the water had ceased to flow. As I did not care to have
+the Chief discover the trail of blood leading down to
+the sea for a while yet, I proposed that we tie our horses
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page263" id="page263"></a>[pg&nbsp;263]</span>
+here and walk down the top of the flume on a narrow
+board that evidently had been placed there for the use
+of workmen when repairs were necessary. It proved
+ticklish going&mdash;both on account of the incline and the
+elevation,&mdash;but nothing to trouble seriously a man with
+a sure foot and a steady head. Harpool, who was up
+first, led the way, I following closely.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">If the power of the flying bolt of water in the bottom
+of the flume had been impressive on the occasion of my
+first visit, it was a vast deal more so now, both on account
+of the greatly increased volume of flow and because of
+my certain knowledge that a human being&mdash;perhaps two
+of them&mdash;had gone down that chute, where I had been
+assured that a team of bullocks could not hold a man&mdash;and
+survived.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The foot-wide board on which we were walking was
+nailed to the left side of the flume. The top of the
+right side was a rough line of unplaned two-inch pine
+planks. Harpool had only taken a step or two when he
+brought up short with an exclamation of surprise and
+horror. &quot;Look at that top board on the other side!&quot;
+he shouted; &quot;raw, red meat all the way from here right
+out of sight round the bend at the bottom!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I looked, shuddered, shuffled my feet uncertainly, and
+brought my staring eyes back to the precarious footing.
+&quot;Push on!&quot; I implored quaveringly; &quot;my head&#39;s
+beginning to swim as it is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The roar of violently falling water came to my ears
+as we rounded the bend at the lower end of the steep
+incline, and just ahead was the break. The whole right
+or seaward side of the flume had opened out and the
+flood was pouring to the rocks below in a spreading
+forty-feet-high cataract. The ghastly smear along the top
+ran on unbroken, right out to the end of a loose plank,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page264" id="page264"></a>[pg&nbsp;264]</span>
+which was kicking spasmodically under the impulse of
+the released stream of water shooting under it. The
+Chief, pointing to a ragged fragment of bloody cuticle,
+wedged in a joint of the line of boards on which we were
+standing, delivered himself of what I believe was his only
+approximately correct diagnosis of any feature of the
+whole affair.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The fact that piece of skin and toe-nail were torn
+off on this side of the flume directly opposite the bulge,&quot;
+he said, &quot;would seem to indicate that the brake our man
+made of his right arm flung over the top plank of the
+other side must have finally brought him to a stop here.
+Then he must have doubled up crosswise of the flume,
+with his feet against the place where that skin is torn
+off and his back against the end of that plank that is
+sprung loose. When he straightened out that great rack
+of bone and muscle of his something had to give way, and
+it seems to have been the flume. Probably the force of
+the water, where his body deflected it against the side,
+was of some help; but it must have come jolly near to
+staving in his ribs where it drove into him at right
+angles.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Perhaps it did,&quot; I said. &quot;We can&#39;t tell till we find
+him.&quot; I was not anxious to hurry up the search by
+any means; but I felt that it would be better to move
+on to a place where I could grow dizzy without the risk
+of plunging forty feet onto a pile of broken rocks. The
+Chief, with ready consideration, hastened forward, and
+my faintness passed quickly when I felt the solid floor of
+the crushing level of the mill beneath my feet.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It appeared that they had knocked off early the previous
+evening for want of cane. At the time, the superintendent
+said, he thought the flume had been carried
+away by flood water. He had only evolved the bullock
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page265" id="page265"></a>[pg&nbsp;265]</span>
+theory when he went out at daylight and found the
+blood and meat smeared along the planks. The bullock
+must have got wedged in finally, he thought, and the
+water had piled up behind it and sprung out the side.
+They had not found the carcass yet, but, as there was
+a very sharp slope down to an in-reaching neck of the
+cove, it was not impossible that the rush of water had
+rolled it right on into the sea. Neither Harpool nor myself
+thought it worth while to ask him if he had found
+any bullock&#39;s hair among the &quot;meat.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Going down through the silent mill to reach a lower
+level before doubling back to the foot of the flume, a
+weird sort of sputtery peeping caught my ear while we
+were traversing the boiling-room. Something vaguely
+familiar in the sound caused me to trace it to its source
+behind one of the big vats. The <i>virtuoso</i> proved to be
+a lanky Australian sugar-boiler, whiling away the idle
+hour blowing across the holes in a queer little bamboo
+flute. One of the blacks had found it in the last run of
+the <i>bagasse</i>&mdash;the crushed cane&mdash;a while ago, he explained.
+Someone must have dropped it in the flume.
+Funny thing that it had been so slightly crushed in
+coming through the rollers. He gave it to me readily
+when I told him that I was a collector of primitive
+musical instruments. Said he had a much better one&mdash;made
+in Germany and all bound with brass&mdash;in his home
+in Maryborough. I took it on the off chance that I might
+some day be able to give it back to Ranga. I knew how
+greatly he was attached to it, and, since flutes like that
+were only made in one little pile-built village on the coast
+of Ambon, how hard a time he would have to replace it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I played up the superintendent&#39;s &quot;washed-into-the-sea&quot;
+theory for the Chief&#39;s benefit as long as I could,
+but finally he circled round and hit the double trail of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page266" id="page266"></a>[pg&nbsp;266]</span>
+footprints that led down to the end of the old pier. The
+idea that Ranga had ridden the flume alone was so firmly
+rooted in his mind however, that he agreed at once with
+my suggestion that the smaller prints must have been
+made by an idle boy from the hung-up mill, who had
+perhaps trailed the blood on his own account, in the hope
+of getting the bullock meat. As I myself had made a
+point of keeping on the grass to the side of the path, my
+trail of the night was not discovered.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;The poor devil must have thrown himself over here
+and been finished by the sharks and &#39;gators,&quot; Harpool
+shouted up to me from where, at the foot of the
+steps of the old pier, he stood beside the black-filmed pool
+that had drained from Ranga&#39;s wounds as he steadied
+himself for a few moments before lurching over to the
+bow of the launch. The Chief also said something more
+about coming back with a boat next day and searching
+the beach for anything that might remain. I didn&#39;t
+follow him very closely, for, just at that moment, a trim
+clipper bow slid out past the end of the southern point.
+Knowing a certain old brass-cylindered spy-glass would
+be training landward from the bridge that followed, I
+opened and closed my arms swiftly in a surreptitious
+wave of farewell. Good old &quot;Choppy&quot; must have been
+standing very close to the whistle-cord, for his reply
+came instantly. The wind carried the toots that must
+have sprung from the heart of two woolly steam-puffs in
+the opposite direction, but I caught the message just the
+same. &quot;All&#39;s well!&quot; was what old &quot;Choppy&quot; signalled
+in answer to my wave. His &quot;puff-puff&quot; talk was a deal
+easier to understand than his English.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I was no longer in Australia when the <i>Mambare</i> returned
+from her maiden voyage to Singapore, so her skipper&#39;s
+report came to me in Paris by letter. He had put
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page267" id="page267"></a>[pg&nbsp;267]</span>
+both of my friends ashore in Macassar, he said, safe,
+sound and comfortably heeled for &quot;siller.&quot; He had become
+much attached to both of them in the course of
+the voyage, and couldn&#39;t thank me enough for putting
+him in the way of giving them a bit of a lift. He trusted
+I wouldn&#39;t fail to command him whenever another opportunity
+of the kind presented itself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The night that I sent Rona and Ranga off from the
+pier of the old sugar mill in the <i>Mambare&#39;s</i> launch
+marked the beginning of one of the strangest and most
+picturesque friendships the Islands ever knew; picturesque
+in the striking background the strongest and
+most terribly-scarred man in the South Pacific made for
+the hauntingly appealing beauty of the most interesting
+woman, and strange&mdash;more than passing strange&mdash;in
+that there was none who could say that their relations
+were ever other than those of mistress and servant.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page268" id="page268"></a>[pg&nbsp;268]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII<br />
+<small>THE MASTERPIECE</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">The</span> third day after the <i>Mambare</i> sailed found me
+southbound for Sydney, with Paris as my ultimate
+objective. The thought that a striking&mdash;possibly
+a great&mdash;picture might be painted about the face I had
+already done came to me the first time I threw back the
+veiling rug and encountered poor Allen&#39;s terror-haunted
+eyes staring back into my own. In deciding to finish the
+work in Paris I missed whatever chance I might have had
+of doing something really worth while. That I did
+finally complete a picture that was striking, arresting&mdash;something
+to set the tongues of the art world wagging
+for many a day&mdash;was due to the effort I had already
+made&mdash;The Face.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">With small chance of being able to do anything for
+Hartley Allen&mdash;at that time believed to be permanently
+insane,&mdash;there was no reason for my remaining longer
+in Townsville. As nothing that the good Chief of Police
+had learned&mdash;or ever did learn, so far as I know&mdash;was
+calculated to connect me with his failure to run Ranga
+to earth, he, naturally made no objection to my leaving.
+The whole affair was a complete mystery to him. The
+disappearance of Rona was rated only as a minor mystery.
+The amusing part of it was that it never occurred
+to the dear man to connect the two. The last thing that
+I fixed my glass upon as my southbound boat steamed
+out of the harbour was a confused mass of wreckage,
+blurring darkly against the mangroves a few miles north
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page269" id="page269"></a>[pg&nbsp;269]</span>
+of the town. It was all that the late storm had left of
+the grounded labour schooner, <i>Cora Andrews</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Missing the P. &amp; O. boat by twenty-four hours at Melbourne&mdash;too
+late to overtake it by train to Adelaide,&mdash;I
+found the next sailing was a <i>Messageries Maritime</i>
+steamer. Rather than wait a week for the next Orient
+liner, I booked for the French boat. This was all against
+my better judgment, especially in the light of the fact
+that I had work ahead. The one most effective influence
+I had known in keeping my use of absinthe at a point
+where it was not entirely beyond my control was the
+scathing if unspoken contempt of men of my own race
+for another of that race addicted to the insidious Latin
+habit. The nearest thing to a clean break-away I had
+ever made up to this time came after a stony-faced
+Cockney steward on a transatlantic Cunarder, who had
+put my whisky-drunken cabin-mate to bed one night as
+a matter of course, slammed the door with a snort when
+he surprised me pouring absinthe into cracked ice the
+following afternoon. In France, in French colonies, on
+French steamers&mdash;wherever the tri-colour flapped, in
+short&mdash;that restraining contempt was non-existent.
+There one found palliation, indulgence, even encouragement.
+That was the reason I had always become so
+abject a slave of the &quot;Green Lady&quot; during my sojourns
+in Paris, in Algiers, in Saigon, in Noumea. With no
+one to remind me of my shame, I forgot it, sinking ever
+lower and lower the while. This time, it had been my
+plan so to occupy myself with work on my picture in
+Paris that I should be able to keep my absinthe appetite
+just about where I had managed to hold it during the
+last six months in Kai and Australia. It is quite possible
+I might have kept to this program had I caught the
+P. &amp; O. from Melbourne, or had the sense to wait for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page270" id="page270"></a>[pg&nbsp;270]</span>
+another British boat. As it was, five weeks of <i>dolce far
+niente</i> were too much for me. By the time we reached
+Suez, I was seeing so green that the desert banks of the
+Canal looked like verdant lawns to me, and at Marseilles
+they took me straight from the ship to the hospital, pretty
+well all in mentally and physically. As my case presented
+some interesting complications of malaria and
+tropical anaemia, the doctors took a good deal of interest
+in it. Under the circumstances, I was dead lucky to get
+out of their hands at the end of a month.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Thoroughly disgusted with the world in general and
+myself in particular on the day I was discharged from
+the hospital, it was a toss-up for a few hours as to
+whether I should jump out for the Islands by the first
+boat, or push on to Paris. That I finally plumped for the
+latter was due more to the fact that there was no east-bound
+sailing for a couple of days, than to any faith
+that remained in my ability to get on with the picture.
+Considering all this, it seems to me that the effort I
+finally did pull myself together for was fairly creditable
+in its results.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was The Face itself&mdash;after I had unpacked and set
+up the canvas in a studio that a former friend kindly
+placed at my disposal&mdash;that was responsible for finally
+jolting me into action. Even at the end of ten weeks,
+Hartley Allen&#39;s tortured features seemed as real to me
+as on the night I had finished transferring them from
+my burning brain to the canvas. It struck me then&mdash;as
+it seemed to strike the public later&mdash;as the nearest
+thing to flesh and blood ever flicked off the tip of an
+artist&#39;s brush; and I felt that I had only to daub in some
+kind of an <i>ensemble</i> around it to have a work that would
+at least give Parisian art circles something to talk about
+for a while.</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page271" id="page271"></a>[pg&nbsp;271]</span>
+It seemed to me that the most effective thing to do
+would be to make Allen, lashed to the schooner&#39;s wheel,
+the central and dominating figure on the canvas, and to
+have the other figures the creatures of his imagination&mdash;the
+phantoms conjured up by his reeling brain. These
+would include Bell, Rona, Ranga and a background of
+plague-stricken niggers. It was not to be&mdash;as we had
+planned the &quot;Black-birder&quot;&mdash;an attempt to portray some
+incident of the voyage. The &quot;phantoms&quot; were to be
+done in greys and blues, filmy and indistinct, to differentiate
+them from the solider flesh of the maniac tied
+to the wheel. It was not an uneffective conception, had
+I been up to carrying it out&mdash;which I wasn&#39;t.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">By a remarkable coincidence, as I have already mentioned,
+The Face was in exactly the right place to fit
+into the <i>ensemble</i> I had planned. This was a good omen
+and I derived no little encouragement from it. Fearful
+of the effect that terror-stricken gaze might have
+upon my models, I stuck an opaque square of paper over
+the distorted features, with the intention of leaving it
+there until the rest of the picture was finished. This
+was a wise precaution, as the sequel proved.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The model whom I chanced to secure to pose for Allen&#39;s
+figure was an especially fortunate choice. He had
+recently finished spending six or eight hours a day
+lashed to a hollow canvas cross in connection with a
+mural decoration at some cathedral&mdash;Sacré C&oelig;ur, I believe
+it was,&mdash;so he stood up rather well under the
+strain being triced to the property steering-gear I had
+contrived to borrow from the <i>Folies-Bergère</i>, where the
+&quot;marine&quot; <i>revue</i> in which it had figured was just over.
+Considering the fact that I had never done anything but
+seascapes and was notably weak in anatomy, my work
+on this figure was far from being as bad as might have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page272" id="page272"></a>[pg&nbsp;272]</span>
+been expected. It was not seriously out of drawing, and,
+even with The Face covered up, one was conscious of an
+unmistakable suggestion of agony in the tensely-strained
+limbs and back-drawn torso. From the artistic side, I
+would undoubtedly have done better to have trimmed
+down my canvas and limited the picture to this single
+figure. This, however, never occurred to me until a
+long time afterwards. At the moment, my mind was
+quite incapable of running away from the track on
+which I had started it.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Although I knew that one of the things that must
+have been in Hartley Allen&#39;s mind was Bell&#39;s face, as he
+had described it to me&mdash;pain-twisted, with the lower lip
+bitten clean through, and a bar of light from the cracked
+binnacle slashing across it,&mdash;I could not bring myself
+to attempt to dramatize the sufferings of my friend.
+(Indeed, even at that time I had a guilty feeling that I
+was not doing the decent thing in using that of Allen
+in a picture to be exhibited to the public.) All that I
+did in Bell&#39;s case, therefore, was a back view of a huddled
+figure, sitting on the rail of the cockpit, with a
+half-empty whisky bottle rolling on the deck behind.
+It was not destined to draw much attention or comment
+one way or the other, for which I was duly thankful.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Ranga, as a consequence of being unable to find a
+model that would do him justice, I finally omitted. Rona
+came near to elimination for a similar reason, but in
+her case fortune, in the end, was more kind. It may be
+remembered that there was a so-called Hindu dancer
+leading the Oriental ballets at the <i>Comique</i> about this
+time. She was really an Eurasian half-caste&mdash;the daughter
+of a British &quot;Tommy&quot; and a Mahratta girl, born in
+Poona. With little of Rona&#39;s beauty of face and winsomeness
+of manner, she was still possessed of the same
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page273" id="page273"></a>[pg&nbsp;273]</span>
+flaming temperament and a figure that might have been
+poured from the same mould. It was the lithe, sinewy,
+serpentine shape of her that caught my eye when I
+chanced to drop in at the <i>Comique</i> for a matinée of
+<i>Marouf</i>, and (as she was still a few strokes short of the
+crest of the wave of popularity on which she rode for the
+next season or two), I had little difficulty in persuading
+her to give me a few sittings. She insisted she was doing
+it for art&#39;s sake, but it was really vanity that brought her
+into line. Also, as transpired shortly, she had a very
+sharp weather eye for the main chance. In any event,
+the picture proved both her immediate making and her
+ultimate undoing. The advertising she got out of the
+fact that her living, breathing likeness had been painted
+into the most talked-about picture at the spring <i>Salon</i>
+of the <i>Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts</i> doubled and
+trebled her salary several times in the course of the next
+year. But it was also a reproduction of that same picture
+in a Vienna art journal that was directly responsible
+for luring to Paris the young Serbian ex-prince who
+chopped the girl to pieces with a curved Arabian scimitar&mdash;a
+part of her dancing toggery&mdash;as she was dressing to
+go on at a gala night of <i>Aïda</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It had been my original intention to paint Rona issuing
+from the companionway, just as Allen had seen her
+rush out on the morning Bell died. This, however, was
+far from meeting with the approval of Keeora (that was
+what she called herself at the time; it was only in her
+hey-day that she was known as Kismeta), who insisted
+upon breaking in full length or not at all. I was so
+sodden with absinthe by this time, so sick of the whole
+job, so anxious to get quit of it for good, that I raised no
+objections. The flighty thing proposed a sort of near-aerial
+posture on the deck-house that was something like
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page274" id="page274"></a>[pg&nbsp;274]</span>
+a cross between the wing-footed Mercury and one of
+Puck&#39;s getaways in Midsummer Night&#39;s Dream. Rather
+than lose the girl outright, I let her have her own way.
+Steadied by two or three convenient guy-wires and
+puffing contentedly at one of my hemp-doped cigarettes,
+she held her painful pose with a fortitude truly Oriental.
+I can see yet the queer little heart-shaped pucker that
+dented the muscle-knotted calf of her leg when she swung
+up to the tips of her toes.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I fancy it must have been a certain appeal the audacious
+minx made to my physical senses that prodded
+on my flagging energies. Everything that was left in
+me I devoted to making her absurd conception effective
+on its own account. To make it so as an integral part
+of the picture was, of course, out of the question. It is
+still a matter of a good deal of wonder to me that I
+succeeded as well as I did. The pirouetting figure on
+the <i>Cora&#39;s</i> deck-house might just as well have symbolized
+<i>Peter Pan</i>, or <i>The Spirit of Spring</i>, as <i>Rona Rampant</i>;
+but the fact remained that it was exceedingly pleasing
+to the eye. In this connection I thought an American
+tourist&mdash;from somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line
+by his accent&mdash;expressed himself rather well. I overheard
+the remark on my first and only visit to the <i>Salon</i>.
+&quot;If that little filly doan leave off kickin&#39; up so neah them
+buck niggahs,&quot; he drawled, &quot;things ah suah fixin&#39; fo&#39; a
+lynchin&#39; pa&#39;ty. By cracky, if she doan look good enuf
+to eat!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">It was &quot;them big buck niggahs&quot; that were responsible
+for bringing my labours to a sudden end. I had managed
+to round up a half-dozen hulking Senegambians
+from the docks at Havre to pose for my plague-stricken
+Solomon Islanders, and for the first two or three days
+things went very well. I was striving for a sort of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page275" id="page275"></a>[pg&nbsp;275]</span>
+Doré-esque effect, by painting a tangled bunch of blacks
+writhing in the half-light of the shadowed waist of the
+schooner. The lazy brutes found lolling round on the
+studio floor a deal more congenial work than humping
+cotton bales, and I was getting on very encouragingly
+considering my wretched condition, when one of the
+prying rascals, taking advantage of a moment when my
+back was turned, turned down a corner of the patch that
+hid the face of the man lashed to the wheel. What
+damage was wrought was inflicted on such flimsy furniture
+as chanced to be in a direct line of flight from the
+&quot;models&#39; throne&quot; to the door. Fortunately, the canvas
+was well to one side. The Senegalese, it seems, have a
+raw, red terror of the &quot;Evil Eye.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">That little episode brought to an end my work with
+models. I simply blocked in my plague-stricken blacks
+in a rough sort of way and let it go at that. The effect
+was hardly as crude as one would think. The remark of
+the Southern gentleman I have quoted proved that a man
+not unfamiliar with niggers could at least distinguish of
+what the tangle in the waist was intended to be made up.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I have definite recollection of only one further occasion
+on which I tried to work. The interval in which
+I had anything approximating command of my normal
+faculties had dwindled to a half-hour or so in the afternoon,
+and I quickly found that I was utterly unable to
+concentrate my mind sufficiently for connected effort
+even then. On the occasion I have mentioned, I knocked
+off dead after discovering that I was trying to decorate
+Keeora&#39;s brow with the wreath of maiden&#39;s hair fern that
+had crowned the aviating &quot;Green Lady&quot; in her flight of
+the night before. I chucked in my hand complete after
+that, and had the whole monkey-show packed off to
+the Selection Committee. As might have been expected,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page276" id="page276"></a>[pg&nbsp;276]</span>
+the picture nearly caused a riot in that temperamental
+bunch of &quot;pickers,&quot; but, in the end, The Face won the
+day with them, just as it did with the public.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Of the furore created by &quot;<i>Hell&#39;s Hatches</i>&quot; in the
+<i>Salon</i> it will hardly be necessary for me to write. Most
+of the excitement it stirred up was traceable to the haunting
+horror of the face of the wretch tied to the wheel; the
+rest was due to its name, which only suggested itself to
+me at the last moment. Perhaps the fact that everyone
+was baffled from the outset in trying to discover the
+<i>motif</i> of the bizarre thing also contributed to the impulse
+of the whirlpool of morbid curiosity with which it was
+engulfed. And who could blame them for failing to
+discover any connection between a tied-up maniac, a
+hunched-up drunkard, a kicking-up dancer and a bunch
+of tangled-up niggers? The avalanche of surmises would
+have been highly diverting had not my sense of humour
+already fallen a victim to the apathy that was rapidly
+settling upon my mind and body.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">My outstanding recollection of the whole affair is of a
+highly effective by-play staged by that keen little publicist,
+Keeora, who had become a bit piqued over the
+slowness of the Press to broadcast the identity of the
+lady dancing on the deck-house. Utterly indifferent, I
+had avoided the <i>Grand Palais</i> not only on the opening
+day of the <i>Salon</i>, but also during the week that followed,
+when it was reported that the <i>Avenue Alexander III</i> was
+at times blocked with the throngs striving to get within
+sight of the most intriguing picture shown in years.
+My telephone was disconnected; telegrams and letters by
+the stacks lay unopened; a pile of newspapers were
+unread. Growing more sullen and sodden day by day, I
+had eyes for nothing but the green bottle at my elbow
+and the constantly replenished glass of cracked ice by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page277" id="page277"></a>[pg&nbsp;277]</span>
+its side. All the rest of the world was one soft, verdant
+tunnel&mdash;nothing else. I had been drinking steadily for
+days, afraid to face the reaction that must inevitably
+follow the first break in the continuity of the flow of
+the life-saving trickle of green.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">In a way, I suppose, it is Keeora I have to thank for
+the fact that, when I finally left my room in the <i>Continental</i>,
+it was to be headed for the <i>Grand Palais</i> instead
+of to <i>La Morgue</i>. I am quite convinced that nothing
+short of the violent eruption of hysteria that soulful
+lady brought off outside my door would have induced me
+to open it, and probably no one else in Paris could have
+been equal to just that kind of an outburst. In passionate
+French-Cockney, Keeora told how, after failing
+for days to reach me by &#39;phone and telegraph, she had at
+last come in person to bear me to the <i>Salon</i> to share with
+her our common triumph. That didn&#39;t move me greatly,
+but when she swore that she was going to stay until she
+&quot;jolly well croaked, G&#39;bly&#39;me,&quot; unless I let her in, something
+inside of my head snapped and I gave way. (I
+always was like that with hysterical women.) When I
+opened the door I discovered that she was dressed in
+some Mogul princess sort of a rigout, and accompanied by
+an Italian <i>Marchesa</i> and two or three lesser satellites.
+Between them and my valet they got me dressed and
+down to a waiting carriage.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">To get away from the mob at the main entrance, they
+took me around to the <i>Avenue d&#39;Antin</i> side of the <i>Grand
+Palais</i>, where Keeora pointed out with glee that the <i>Salon</i>
+of the <i>Société des Artistes Français</i>, which had opened a
+week or two previous to that of the <i>Beaux-Arts</i> outfit,
+was almost deserted. &quot;<i>Et tout, mon cher Monseer W&#39;itney,
+por raison de&mdash;de la grand success de &#39;Aykootillys
+don fur.&#39;</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page278" id="page278"></a>[pg&nbsp;278]</span>
+&quot;And what might they be?&quot; I asked dully, rather
+fancying some new sort of epidemic had broken out.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Madame means to say &#39;<i>Ecoutilles d&#39;Enfer</i>,&#39;&quot; began
+the <i>Marchesa</i> politely; &quot;eet&mdash;eet ees&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Eat your bloomin&#39; &#39;at!&quot; cut in the lady impatiently,
+indignant that anyone could be so stupid as to have her
+Parisian interpreted to him. &quot;Don&#39;t you twig me, old
+cock? That&#39;s wot them French Jo&#39;nnys calls &#39;Ell&#39;s
+&#39;Atches.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">The picture was extremely well hung, both for position
+and light; though whether this had come about as a
+consequence of a reshuffle after it had turned out to be
+the main drawing card, I did not learn. There was a
+roped-off area in front of it, and through this a number
+of perspiring attendants were feeding the crowd, working
+hard with tongue and hand to keep the chattering
+line in motion. Keeora called my attention to a woman
+who had fainted and was being carried out on a stretcher.
+&quot;Bowls &#39;em over just like that right along,&quot; she giggled.
+&quot;Six of &#39;em squealed and keeled back just w&#39;ile I was
+&#39;angin&#39; on &#39;ere yustidy. But it ain&#39;t <i>me</i> wot gets &#39;em,&quot;
+she hastened to explain; &quot;it&#39;s that crazy bloke at the
+w&#39;eel, wiv &#39;is bloomin&#39; eyes borin&#39; right through your
+chest an&#39; raspin&#39; up an&#39; down your spine. Don&#39;t see
+wot you wanted to put <i>&#39;im</i> in for any&#39;ow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">At a word from Keeora&#39;s sedulous satellites, the attendants
+opened up a line through the mob and cleared
+a space in front of the picture. Then, assuring herself
+with a critically comprehensive glance that the setting
+was all correct, she rushed in, threw her arms around
+my neck, kissed me smackingly on both cheeks, French-fashion,
+and began declaiming in her best Parisio-Whitechapel
+how I had earned her undying gratitude
+and affection (<i>mon amours eternel</i>) in making her the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page279" id="page279"></a>[pg&nbsp;279]</span>
+central figure in the greatest work of art of modern
+times. It was all extremely well done&mdash;from Keeora&#39;s
+standpoint, that is. She had a solid phalanx of reporters
+massed in the background, as a consequence of which,
+after the next morning, there was no chance for anyone
+to remain longer in ignorance of the fact that the nymph
+hot-footing around the coamings of &quot;Hell&#39;s Hatches&quot;
+was Keeora of the <i>Comique</i>. The following Saturday the
+management came round voluntarily to her hotel with
+a new contract worth several thousand francs a week to
+their rising <i>danseuse orientale</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">For myself, groggy in head and knees as I was, the
+experience was rather trying. Breaking away from her
+stranglehold at the first opportunity, I told Keeora to
+keep her &quot;eternel amours&quot; for those who wanted them,
+and bolted. There was some pretence at pursuit, but,
+with the real magnet drawing in the other direction, I
+finally managed to elbow clear. Hailing a cab in the
+<i>Champs-Elysées</i>, I returned to my hotel.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But the interruption, as I have said, was a fortunate
+one. It checked my downward slide dangerously near
+the point where a crash was due. I was far from being
+out of the woods yet, but the interval of comparative
+lucidity had given me enough courage to try to pull up.
+Unloading all the firearms I had about my suite and
+giving them to my man, I told him to go away for the
+night and not to return until noon of the following day.
+Then, as restrainedly as I could, I drank during the
+first three or four hours of the evening, before allowing
+myself to go to sleep. The crisis&mdash;the dread reaction I
+had feared to face&mdash;I knew would come on awakening
+in the morning. It arrived on schedule&mdash;two hours of
+teetering on the edge of hell and cursing myself for putting
+the guns beyond my reach. Even with the <i>absintheteur&#39;s</i>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page280" id="page280"></a>[pg&nbsp;280]</span>
+<i>notorious</i> dread of cold steel, I fingered
+Hartley Allen&#39;s Portuguese throwing-knife a long time
+before mustering up the courage to drop it out of the
+street window. That gave me a new idea, and I held
+lengthy debate with myself about following the knife to
+the pavement. If I had been on the fourth floor instead
+of the second, I might have tried it. As it was, fifteen
+feet to a glass marquee didn&#39;t look good enough. But at
+last I won through&mdash;just. It was a sorry looking figure
+that shivered back at me from the mirror after I had got
+up my nerve to ring for a pot of black coffee at seven;
+but I was off the toboggan, at any rate, with my face set
+unflinchingly toward the one place in the world where I
+felt there was at least a fighting chance for me to pull
+up again. I had arrived at the end of the day of which
+I had dreamed so long&mdash;&quot;My Day,&quot; I had called it.
+Paris had come fawning to my feet&mdash;and brought me
+Dead Sea Fruit. I was going back to work out my own
+salvation in the Islands.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">I had a rather trying time of it, getting packed up
+and away on such short notice; but I simply did what
+I could and let the rest go. Putting Paris behind me was
+the thing. It took all that was in me to do it, but I
+caught the Brindisi Express from the P.L.M. station that
+night.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">My last act before leaving the hotel was to sign a
+paper brought there by a well-known art dealer, with
+whom I had talked by &#39;phone earlier in the day. It
+authorized him to sell to the highest bidder a painting
+in oil known by the name of &quot;Hell&#39;s Hatches,&quot; delivery
+to be made immediately after the closing of the spring
+<i>Salon</i> of the <i>Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts</i>. It also
+provided that he should receive a liberal commission for
+his services. It must have been something like a month
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page281" id="page281"></a>[pg&nbsp;281]</span>
+later that he collected ten per cent. on three hundred
+thousand <i>francs</i> less about five hundred paid some
+second-rate artist for executing a slight alteration in
+one of the figures. It was a petty Sultan from Morocco
+(high card with Keeora at the moment) to whom the picture
+was knocked down after a spirited run of bidding
+with an Irish distiller and a Chicago soap-maker. The
+buyer&#39;s only condition was that the man lashed to the
+wheel should be changed to a <i>burnoused</i> Arab. That would
+tend to give the picture an atmosphere more in keeping
+with his desert palace, he said; also, he wanted the
+<i>efrangi&#39;s</i> face covered up. The eyes made him jumpy.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page282" id="page282"></a>[pg&nbsp;282]</span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX<br />
+<small>AFTER ALL</small></h2>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="smcap">I had</span> not planned by what route I should go to the
+South Seas, and it was only because an Orient-Pacific
+liner chanced to be the most convenient connection
+at Brindisi that I went by Australia instead of by India
+and Singapore. I was rather glad, on the whole, that I
+was going to have an opportunity to learn something at
+first-hand of Hartley Allen&mdash;or, Sir Hartley, as he had
+become since I left Australia. That much I had been
+able to gather from an item I had read in <i>The Times</i>
+shortly after my arrival in Paris. This stated that Sir
+James Allen, Bart., Agent in London for New South
+Wales, had just died of pneumonia. Being without male
+issue, it was understood that the title would pass to his
+younger brother, formerly a well-known racing man,
+and more recently in the public eye through his heroic
+action in navigating a labour schooner full of plague-stricken
+blacks through the Great Barrier Reef to
+Queensland.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Nothing was said in the local item of the outrage
+aboard the <i>Cora Andrews</i>, but the day following a
+dispatch from Sydney stated that Sir Hartley Allen was
+recovering his health and strength at a sanitarium in the
+interior, from which, however, it was not expected that
+he would be in a condition to be discharged for several
+months. The shock to his nervous system from the mysterious
+attack upon him in Townsville three months
+previously had been so great that only time could obliterate
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page283" id="page283"></a>[pg&nbsp;283]</span>
+the traces of it. He had not yet been allowed to
+see any of his old friends, but the correspondent affirmed
+on good authority that Sir Hartley&#39;s reason, so long
+despaired of, had been fully regained.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">From the fact that the attack was still spoken of as
+&quot;mysterious,&quot; I took it that Allen, for some reason of
+his own, had refrained from revealing the identity of
+the person who had left him to die lashed to the wheel
+of the <i>Cora</i>. What that reason might be, was one of the
+things I hoped to learn when I should see him in Australia.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Hartley Allen was still in a sanitarium in the Blue
+Mountains, I learned on my arrival in Sydney, but of
+late there had been little news of him. He was believed
+to be getting stronger, slowly but surely, though no hope
+was held out that he would appear in the saddle again
+for at least another season. It was unlikely that I would
+be permitted to see him, but there would be no harm
+in trying. I should, of course, communicate with his
+physicians, not with Allen himself.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">By a lucky chance, in wiring the head of the institution
+where Allen was under treatment, I stated that I
+was a former friend of his from the Islands. A reply
+arrived the same day, telling me to come on at my earliest
+convenience. The eminent nerve specialist in charge of
+the case drove down to meet me at the train. It was
+very fortunate indeed, he said, that I had mentioned
+in my telegram that I had known Sir Hartley during his
+residence in Melanesia. He had failed, very stupidly,
+to recognize my name as that of the famous artist who
+was about to paint Sir Hartley&#39;s picture when the attack
+upon him occurred. As a consequence, he was about to
+wire a refusal to my application, when he recalled that
+news from the Islands was the one thing in which his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page284" id="page284"></a>[pg&nbsp;284]</span>
+patient had shown any great interest. Accordingly,
+he had asked Sir Hartley himself if he cared to see a
+certain Roger Whitney, lately arrived in Sydney. The
+eager interest manifested by his patient was the most
+encouraging symptom the latter had shown since his
+mind had cleared. If I would carefully refrain from
+introducing any subject calculated to excite Sir Hartley
+nervously, he was confident that my visit would be productive
+of nothing but good. It was even possible,
+should it prove convenient to me, that he would want me
+to remain for several days. Sir Hartley was quite
+sound in brain and body. What he needed was increased
+vigour of both, and to this end he would have to develop
+a greater interest in living than he had yet
+shown. It was just possible there was something on his
+mind....</p>
+
+<p class="indent">After leaving my coat and bag in the reception-room,
+the doctor led me out across a bright solarium. We
+would find Sir Hartley out of doors, he said, probably
+playing polo. He seemed to hate the very thought of
+having a roof over him, even to sleep under. It was a
+strange sight that met my eyes as we came round the
+corner of the veranda. In the shade of a grove of blue-gums
+and stringy-barks a wooden horse had been erected,
+saddled with a light pigskin, and provided with snaffle
+and curb reins running back from the angling bit of
+board that served as &quot;head.&quot; Astride the saddle, in
+the famous short-stirruped &quot;Slant&quot; Allen seat, booted,
+spurred, and in immaculate whites, slashing smartly at
+grass-stained and dented bamboo-root balls that were
+alternately tossed in and chivied by a pair of bare-footed
+youngsters, was a familiar figure. Save for the
+white hair (which I had already seen) and the absence
+of the former coat of tan, he did not, from a distance,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page285" id="page285"></a>[pg&nbsp;285]</span>
+appear greatly changed. It was not until his eyes met
+mine at close range that I was conscious of the weary
+listlessness which, like a bed of ashes, smothered the
+coals of his old fire.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Allen had just poked away the first of two successively
+thrown balls in a sweet-running dribble, and
+sliced off the other in a sharp-angling &quot;belly cross,&quot;
+when he raised his eyes and caught sight of the doctor
+and me coming down the steps. Swinging a bit uncertainly
+out of the saddle, he came toddling in a swaying
+childlike trot across the grass. His grip was firmer than
+I had expected, and the thought flashed through my
+mind that this was the very first time I had ever shaken
+hands with him.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I&#39;ve been wondering when you were going to turn up,
+Whitney,&quot; he exclaimed eagerly. &quot;There&#39;s something
+I&#39;ve been waiting to talk to you about.&quot; He spoke in
+generalities while the doctor lingered, saying that he
+had given up his old idea of returning to the Islands,
+and that, instead, he was hoping to get away before long
+to a back-blocks station he owned and ride the boundaries
+for a year or two. But when the specialist, evidently
+assured that his experiment was getting under way
+properly, quietly excused himself, Allen led me over to
+the wooden horse and launched at once into a subject
+which had doubtless occupied his mind for many days.
+From ancient habit he leaned, as he spoke, now on the
+hollow pigskin of his &quot;pony,&quot; now on the flexible Malacca
+handle of his polo mallet.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;You&#39;re the only man in the world I can talk to about
+this now, Whitney,&quot; he said with a queer new quaver of
+weakness in his voice. &quot;I suppose that&#39;s because you&#39;re
+the only person I ever talked to about it&mdash;before. I take
+it, Whitney, that you had no great difficulty in making
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page286" id="page286"></a>[pg&nbsp;286]</span>
+up your mind as to who was responsible for&mdash;for my
+night of contemplation on the <i>Cora</i>?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Well,&quot; I began evasively, &quot;I had such grave doubts
+about Ranga&#39;s guilt that I went to some little trouble
+to get him away. Mostly old &#39;Choppy&#39; Tancred&#39;s work,
+though.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Good old &#39;Choppy&#39;!&quot; said Allen with an appreciative
+grin; &quot;on hand at the right time as usual.&quot; Then,
+with serious interest: &quot;But the girl&mdash;how did she manage
+to get clear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Just turned up and helped herself to a place in the
+launch I was sending Ranga off in,&quot; I replied, a bit
+worried at my failure to lead the conversation away from
+subjects &quot;calculated to excite Sir Hartley nervously.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;And you were also convinced of <i>her</i> innocence, I
+suppose,&quot; he said, eyeing me with a strange smile across
+the leather-bound handle of his mallet.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;On the contrary,&quot; I answered; &quot;I knew that she was
+guilty. I had taken your throwing-knife away from her
+the same night. I knew that Ranga was quite innocent,
+even though the police, through a silly ball-up,
+tracked him down with their dogs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Then why did you let the girl go?&quot; he pressed.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Because I thought I knew Rona well enough,&quot; I replied
+evenly, &quot;to feel sure that she wouldn&#39;t have done&mdash;what
+she did, unless she was convinced in her own mind
+that she had a good reason for it.&quot; It was a stiff jolt
+for a sick man, that; yet, for the life of me, I couldn&#39;t
+have made an evasive answer.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">But there was a smile of untold relief on Allen&#39;s face
+as he leaned over and laid his hand on my arm. &quot;You
+were right, Whitney,&quot; he said in a voice that trembled
+with the depth of its fervour. &quot;You were right. She
+<i>did</i> have good reason. I ought to have seen it all along.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page287" id="page287"></a>[pg&nbsp;287]</span>
+&quot;I don&#39;t quite understand,&quot; I said, greatly puzzled.
+&quot;Do you mean that all you told me about your&mdash;your
+having nothing to do with Bell&#39;s death was not true?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Not at all,&quot; he replied, with unexpected vigour.
+&quot;Everything that I told you that afternoon at the <i>Australia</i>
+was true&mdash;according to my understanding of the
+moment, I mean. But later my understanding broadened
+a bit, you must know. A chap doesn&#39;t spend a night
+tied up alone with the spirits of three or four white
+men, and Gawd knows how many blacks, without coming
+to comprehend some things that have eluded him before.
+I didn&#39;t go all the way off my chump till well along
+toward morning, you see; and I was broadening my
+understanding all the time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I was never able to make out,&quot; I remarked somewhat
+irrelevantly, &quot;how the girl managed to get the best
+of you the way she did.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Oh, that,&quot; he said lightly, in a voice that indicated
+he rated it as a negligible incidental to the &quot;broader
+understanding&quot; that had come to him as a consequence.
+&quot;Well, I suppose you have a right to know if you are
+interested in that phase of the affair. I simply got
+tired of holding out against the girl, that was all. Her
+relentlessness wore me down. It was not long after our
+return to Townsville that I realized that her picture
+stunt was only a blind. She counted on it to get me
+away to the schooner, where she could finish me off on
+the scene of&mdash;of my offence. I won&#39;t need to tell you
+that hit me jolly hard. Training out Yusuf and making
+a clean-up for Doc Oakes&#39; mission with him helped
+while it lasted; but I gave up as soon as that was over
+and there was nothing to do but wait and brood. Since
+I knew she&#39;d have her way in the end, I told myself that
+the sooner it was over the better. That was the reason
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page288" id="page288"></a>[pg&nbsp;288]</span>
+I finally consented to go off to the schooner with her when
+she waylaid me on the north road, the day after I paid
+you my last visit.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;She must have planned the whole thing in advance
+for the place at which she intercepted me was at the
+point where the road ran nearest to the wreck of the
+<i>Cora</i>. As it was low tide, we were able to walk on the
+sand to within fifty yards of the heeling hulk. Careless
+of consequences as I was, I readily enough consented
+to her suggestion that I wade the remainder of the way,
+carrying her in my arms. For the rest, it was more or
+less of repetition of her little coup at Kai. She pinched
+the knife from my belt while I was wading out with her,
+keeping it carefully out of sight while we were walking
+round the deck of the schooner. I missed it presently,
+but thought it had fallen from its sheath while I was
+clambering over the side. Leaning over to look for the
+knife in the water, I felt the point of it on my neck.
+Same old place&mdash;just over the jugular. Trick she
+learned from the Malays.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;I told her to hurry up and get the job over. She
+coolly replied that this wasn&#39;t the place she had had in
+mind for it, and would I mind coming aft to the cockpit?
+Confident that she knew how to do the thing with
+decency and dispatch, and heartily glad to get life&#39;s fitful
+dream over anyhow, I went. Just like a lamb to the
+slaughter, Whitney. It sounds foolish, but I assure you
+that&#39;s just the way it happened. The idea was so fixed
+in my mind that a plain every-day throat-cutting was all
+she was figuring on, that I let her get three or four
+hitches of the log-line around my shoulders before it
+occurred to me that she might have a few refinements in
+pickle. I started to put up a fight at that, trying to
+force her to use the knife straightaway. Do you think
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page289" id="page289"></a>[pg&nbsp;289]</span>
+she would do it? No fear. She wouldn&#39;t deviate from
+her set program by a hair. Rather than risk having
+the joint jolted into my jugular so that I would bleed
+to death quickly and painlessly, she dropped the knife
+and used both hands on the log-line. We had a hell of a
+tussle, Whitney, but she wore me down. Those three or
+four well-thrown hitches she had to start with were
+too much of a handicap.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;When she finally had me bound fast, she sat down
+on the rail of the cockpit to recover her breath. I tried
+to argue with her, pointing out the certainty that I
+would be seen and rescued in the morning if she left me
+as I was; whereas, if she would cut my throat then and
+there, it would finish things for good and all. I also
+reminded her that dead men tell no tales; that she would
+be much less likely to get into trouble herself if there
+was no one to bear witness against her. (Fancy a man
+having to rack his brain for arguments like that, just to
+get his throat cut, Whitney.) The girl admitted the
+soundness of my contentions, but declared she was willing
+to run all the extra risk for the sake of cleaning up
+the job &#39;good an&#39; propa.&#39; (One of Bell&#39;s expressions,
+that, wasn&#39;t it?)</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Then&mdash;I must have begun losing my nerve a bit, I
+think&mdash;I told her I had never yet been able to twig why
+she had a grudge against me at all; said I&#39;d only done
+for Bell what I&#39;d be jolly glad to have another man do
+for me under similar circumstances, and probably a lot
+more twaddle along the same line. She listened for a
+while, as though she rather enjoyed hearing me rattle on
+in that vein. Then she got up and disappeared down the
+half-open companionway. When she came back on deck
+she had an empty whisky bottle in her hand, probably
+one of a stack left in my cabin. This, with some effort
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page290" id="page290"></a>[pg&nbsp;290]</span>
+on her part and much to my further discomfort, she
+wriggled under the lashings about my chest until she
+seemed satisfied it was held securely. Then, binding a
+filthy gag of oakum in my mouth, she stood off and
+looked me over critically. &#39;I the-enk you will twe-ig
+ver-ee much pu-retty soon, Mista &quot;Slan&#39;,&quot;&#39; she finally
+chirruped with a knowing nod of her head. Without
+once looking back, she stepped to the side, jumped over,
+and waded ashore. I never saw her again&mdash;in the flesh,
+I mean. It took a deal of squirming to shake that bottle
+out. The satisfaction of hearing it break when it hit the
+deck was the only comforting thing that happened in
+the whole night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;And you say that you understand why she did it?&mdash;that
+you believe she was justified?&quot; I exclaimed incredulously,
+shuddering at the horror of a cold-blooded
+cruelty that even Allen&#39;s deliberately matter-of-fact recital
+could not obscure.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Most assuredly,&quot; he replied with an enigmatic smile.
+&quot;I&#39;m just a bit surprised that you don&#39;t see it yourself,
+Whitney. It seems to me that a chap like you ought
+not to miss a point like that. But then, you haven&#39;t had
+a night alone on the <i>Cora Andrews</i> to broaden your
+understanding like I have.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;What was it?&quot; I asked bluntly, completely mystified
+and not a little awed.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Just this,&quot; he answered, growing suddenly serious.
+&quot;That bottle I shoved along to Bell the night he died had
+been partly emptied&mdash;by me, of course. Well, the first
+thought that entered the girl&#39;s head, when she came
+across it on the deck near his body, was that he had been
+drinking from it. In spite of all my assurances to the
+contrary, it seems that she was never able to rid her
+mind of that idea. That was&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page291" id="page291"></a>[pg&nbsp;291]</span>
+&quot;But couldn&#39;t she see <i>why</i> you offered him the
+whisky?&quot; I interrupted. &quot;What if he did drink some
+of it? She must have known it was the one thing that
+would have saved his life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="indent">&quot;Ah, that is just where you miss the point, Whitney,&quot;
+he cried. &quot;And that was just where I always missed it
+until&mdash;she showed me the way to a broader understanding.
+Don&#39;t you see that Rona realized that keeping away
+from whisky, as he had sworn he would, had come to
+mean more to Bell than even a new lease on life? Well,
+she did. But, even so, one would hardly have expected
+her to fall in with the idea. And yet, don&#39;t her actions
+prove that she even did that? Whitney, I&#39;ve never come
+across anything comparable to the straight physical passion
+of those two for each other. And, if anything, hers
+was the hotter flame of the two. There must have been
+something of the impetuousness of her rages in her loving,&mdash;for....
+Well, the most maddening of all the
+thoughts I tried so long to stifle in Kai was the one that
+those frequent welts and abrasions appearing on Bell&#39;s
+neck and cheeks and arms were not from the bites of
+no-nos or mosquitoes. And yet, loving his body like that,
+she loved his soul enough more to be willing to give up
+the body that the soul might pass in peace. It was because
+she thought I had intervened to destroy that peace
+of soul, Whitney, that she&mdash;well, the effect of it was to
+pave the way to my broader understanding.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE END</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Woods &amp; Sons, Ltd., Printers, London, N. 1.</span></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<div class="tnote">
+<h2>Transcriber Notes:</h2>
+
+<p class="indent">Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of
+the speakers. Those words were retained as-is.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">Errors in punctuation and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected
+unless otherwise noted.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 34, &quot;dispayed&quot; was replaced with &quot;displayed&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 67, &quot;skin-kicking&quot; was replaced with &quot;shin-kicking&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 74, an apostrophe was added in &#39;Slan&#39;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 102, &quot;Ulupua&quot; was replaced with &quot;Utupua&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 159, a period was added after &quot;he was going through&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 176, &quot;its&quot; was replaced with &quot;it&#39;s&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 188, a quotation mark was added before &quot;On the off chance&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 203, &quot;at the botton&quot; was replaced with &quot;at the bottom&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 205, &quot;twentyfive&quot; was replaced with &quot;twenty-five&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 233, &quot;back of the easel&quot; was replaced with &quot;back off the easel&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 238, &quot;in no may&quot; was replaced with &quot;in no way&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 241, &quot;ejaculted&quot; was replaced with &quot;ejaculated&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 246, &quot;Marbare&quot; was replaced with &quot;Mambare&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 282, &quot;firsthand&quot; was replaced with &quot;first-hand&quot;.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">On page 285, &quot;listnessness&quot; was replaced with &quot;listlessness&quot;.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Hell's Hatches, by Lewis Ransome Freeman
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+</body>
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+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hell's Hatches, by Lewis Ransome Freeman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Hell's Hatches
+
+Author: Lewis Ransome Freeman
+
+Release Date: January 9, 2014 [EBook #44632]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HELL'S HATCHES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Bergquist, Ernest Schaal, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             HELL'S HATCHES
+
+
+
+
+                              NEW FICTION
+
+
+    THE CURTAIN
+        _By Alexander Macfarlan_
+
+    THE SYRENS
+        _By Dot Allan_
+
+    OLD MAN'S YOUTH
+        _By William de Morgan_
+
+    THE PURPLE HEIGHTS
+        _By M. C. Oemler_
+
+    HAGAR'S HOARD
+        _By George Kibbe Turner_
+
+    THE VILLA OF THE PEACOCK
+        _By Richard Dehan_
+
+    IN CHANCERY
+        _By John Galsworthy_
+
+    SNOW OVER ELDEN
+        _By Thomas Moult_
+
+    EUDOCIA
+        _By Eden Phillpotts_
+
+                        LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+                        21, Bedford Street, W.C. 2
+
+
+
+
+                             HELL'S HATCHES
+
+
+                                   BY
+                            LEWIS R. FREEMAN
+             Author of "In the Tracks of the Trades," etc.
+
+
+                          [Illustration: 1921]
+
+                       LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+    CHAPTER                                                     PAGE
+
+          I A REPUTATION QUESTIONED                                1
+
+         II HARD-BIT DERELICTS                                    10
+
+        III THE GIRL HERSELF                                      25
+
+         IV "SLANT" ALLEN RETIRES AGAIN                           38
+
+          V A SHIP OF DEATH                                       50
+
+         VI COMPULSORY VOLUNTEERING                               65
+
+        VII RONA COMES ABOARD                                     80
+
+       VIII I LEAVE THE ISLAND                                    93
+
+         IX A GRIM TALE OF THE SEA                               106
+
+          X ART AND SUSPENSE                                     124
+
+         XI A HERO'S HOMECOMING                                  142
+
+        XII A BAD MAN'S PLEA                                     180
+
+       XIII THE SCENE OF THE FINAL DRAMA                         193
+
+        XIV HELL'S HATCHES OFF                                   206
+
+         XV THE FACE                                             220
+
+        XVI A SUDDEN VISITOR                                     231
+
+       XVII DOWN THE FLUME                                       255
+
+      XVIII THE MASTERPIECE                                      268
+
+        XIX AFTER ALL                                            282
+
+
+
+
+                             HELL'S HATCHES
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+
+                        A REPUTATION QUESTIONED
+
+
+"Slant" Allen and I, between us, had been monopolizing a good share of
+the feature space in the Queensland and New South Wales papers for a
+week or more--he as "the Hero-Ticket-of-Leave-Man" and I as "the gifted
+Franco-American painter whose brilliant South Sea marines have taken the
+Australian art world by storm"--and now that it was definitely reported
+that he had left Brisbane on his way to connect with the reception the
+boyhood home from which he had been shipped in disgrace five years
+before had prepared for him, I knew it was but a matter of hours before
+he would be doing me the honour of a call.
+
+He simply _had_ to see me, I figured; that was all there was to it: for
+with Bell and the girl dead (that much seemed certain, both from the
+newspaper accounts of the affair and from what I had been able to pick
+up in the few minutes I had been ashore during the stop of my southbound
+packet at Townsville) I was the only living person who knew _he_ was not
+the hero of the astonishing _Cora Andrews_ affair, the audacious daring
+and almost sublime courage characterizing which had touched the
+imagination of the whole world; that, far from having _volunteered_ to
+navigate a shipload of plague-stricken blacks through some hundreds of
+miles of the worst reef-beset--and likewise the most ill-charted--waters
+of the Seven Seas on the off chance of saving the lives of perhaps one
+in ten of them, he had been brought off and forced to mount the gangway
+of that ill-fated schooner at the point of a knife in the hands of a
+slender slip of a Kanaka girl.
+
+To be sure, two or three of the blacks who were hanging over the rail at
+the end of that accursed afternoon may have been among the survivors
+(for it could have been only the strongest of them that had been able to
+fight their way up to the air when Bell chopped open the hatches they
+had been battened under ever since the _Cora's_ officers had succumbed
+who knows how many hours before); but, even so, their rolling, bloodshot
+eyes could have fixed on nothing to have led them to believe that the
+greasy shawl of Chinese embroidery the girl appeared to have thrown
+affectionately over the shoulder of the belated passenger in the leaking
+outrigger concealed the diminutive Malay _kris_ whose point she was
+pressing into the fleshy part of his neck above the jugular.
+
+No, there could be no doubt that I was all that stood between "Slant"
+Allen, "Ticket-of-Leavester," beachcomber, black-birder, pearl-pirate
+and (more or less incidentally to all of the foregoing) murderer, and
+the Hon. Hartley Allen, second son of the late James Allen, Bart.,
+racing man, polo player and once the greatest gentleman jockey on the
+Australian turf. Pardon for the comparative peccadilloes--a "pulled"
+horse or two, a money fraud in connection with a "sweep," and the rather
+rough treatment of a chorus girl, who had foolishly asked for "time to
+consider" his proposal that she come to him _at once_ from the
+Queensland stockman who was only just finishing refurnishing her George
+Street flat--which, cumulatively, had been responsible for his being
+packed off to "The Islands," was already assured, and it looked as
+though more was to come--that his "spectacular and self-sacrificing
+heroism" was going to wipe out the unpleasant memories that had barred
+him from sporting and social circles even before the law stepped in. A
+sporting writer in that morning's _Herald_ had speculated as to whether
+or not he would be seen again riding "Number 1" for the unbeaten
+"Boomerang" Four, with whom he had qualified for his handicap of "8,"
+still standing as the highest ever given an Australian polo player; and
+the racing column of the latest _Bulletin_ had devoted a good part of
+its restricted space to a discussion of the possibility that the weight
+he had put on in his years of "easy life in 'The Islands'" might force
+him to confine his riding to steeplechases. Of the record which had made
+the name of "Slant" Allen a byword for all that was desperate and
+devilish from Port Moresby to Papeete, from Yap to Suva, little seemed
+to be known and nothing at all was said. But then, that old
+beach-combers' maxim to the effect that "What a man does in 'The
+Islands' don't figure in St. Peter's 'dope sheet,'" was one from which
+even I myself had been wont to extract no little solace.
+
+With nothing but my fever-wracked and absinthe-soaked (I may as well
+confess at the outset that I was "in the grip of the green" at this
+time) anatomy standing between, on the one hand, and Allen more
+despicable than even I, who was fairly familiar with the lurid swath he
+had cut across Polynesia, had ever dreamed he could be, and, on the
+other hand, an Allen who might easily become more the idol of sporting
+(which is, of course, the real) Australia than he had ever been at the
+zenith of his meteoric career as a turfman and athlete, it was plain
+enough that he would not--nay, could not--ignore for long my presence in
+a city that was standing on tiptoe to acclaim him as a native son whose
+deed had done it honour in the eyes of the world. It was something like
+that the _Telegraph_ had it, I believe.
+
+Where a word from me (and Allen would know that my friendship for Bell,
+to say nothing of the girl, would impel me to speak it in my own good
+time) would dash him from the heights to depths which even he had not
+yet sounded--there were degrees of treachery which "The Islands"
+themselves would not stand for--it was only to be expected that a man of
+his stamp would make some well-thought-out move calculated to impose
+both immediate and eventual silence upon me. If we were still "north of
+twenty-two" I would have had no doubt what form that "move" would take,
+and even here in the heart of the Antipodean metropolis--well, that I
+was leaving no unnecessary loop-holes of attack open was attested by the
+fact that I was awaiting his coming wearing a roomy old shooting jacket,
+in the wide pockets of which a man's fingers could work both freely and
+unobtrusively. I had shot away a good half-dozen patch pockets from that
+old jacket in practising "unostentatious self-defence," and when a man
+gets to a point where he can spatter a sea-slug at five paces from his
+hip he really hasn't a great deal to fear from the frontal attack of
+anyone--or anything--that hunts by daylight.
+
+Yes, though I hardly expected to have to shoot Allen, at least on this
+first showdown, I was quite prepared to do so if he gave me any excuse
+at all for it; indeed, I may as well admit that I was going to be
+disappointed if he did not furnish me such an excuse. There need be
+nothing on my conscience, that was sure, for, if the fellow had had his
+deserts according to civilized law, he would have been put out of the
+way something like twenty times already. I had heard him make that boast
+himself one night in Kai, just before he went under Jackson's table as a
+consequence of trying to toss off three-fingers of "Three Star" for
+every man he claimed to have killed. Moreover, I had a sort of a feeling
+that old Bell would have liked to have seen his score evened up that
+way, for he, more than almost anyone I could recall, had marvelled at
+what he called the tricks I had tucked away in my "starboard trigger
+pocket." But--I may as well own it--my principal reason for hoping for a
+decisive showdown straightaway was that I felt sure I could see my way
+through an affair of that kind, even with so cool and resourceful a hand
+as I knew Allen to be. As an absinthe drinker, what I dreaded was to
+have the crisis postponed, knowing all the while that during only about
+from four to six hours of the twenty-four would I be fit in mind or body
+to oppose a child, let alone a man who, for five years and among as
+desperate a lot of cut-throats as the South Pacific had ever known, had
+lived up to his boast that he drew the line at no act under heaven to
+gain his end.
+
+It had struck me as just a bit providential that Allen almost certainly
+would be coming to see me in the early afternoon--the very time at
+which, physically and mentally, I would be best prepared for him. It
+varies somewhat with different addicts of the drug, but with me the
+"hour of strength"--the interval of the swinging back of the pendulum,
+when all the faculties are as much above normal as they have been below
+it during the preceding interval of depression--was mid-afternoon. From
+about ten in the morning I was just about my natural self--just about at
+the turn of the tide between weakness and strength--for three or four
+hours; but from about three to five, when the renewed cravings began to
+stir and it had long been my custom to pour my first thin trickle of
+green into the cracked ice, I was preternaturally alive in hand and
+brain. The rigorous restriction of my painting to these brief hours of
+physical and spiritual exaltation must share with my colours the credit
+for the fact that I had already done work that was to win me a niche
+distinctively my own as a painter of tropical marines. How much
+absinthe--or the reaction from absinthe--had to do with my earlier
+successes was conclusively proven by the way my work at first fell off
+when those colourful years I was later to spend with the incomparable
+Huntley Rivers in the Samoas and Marquesas began to bring me back
+manhood of mind and body and to rid me--I trust for good and all--of the
+curse saddled upon me in my student days in Paris. But that is neither
+here nor there as regards the present story.
+
+I had ascertained that Allen's train was to arrive from Brisbane at ten
+in the morning, and that he was to be taken directly from the station to
+the Town Hall to receive the "Freedom of the City." Then, out of
+consideration for the fact "that the hero" (as the _Herald_ had it) was
+"still far from recovered from the terrible hardships he had endured as
+a consequence of his unparalleled self-sacrifice," the remainder of the
+day was to be left at his disposal to rest in. The further program--in
+which His Excellency the Governor-General himself was to take
+part--would be arranged only after the personal desires of the "modest
+hero" had been consulted.
+
+A 'phone to the gallery where my Exhibition was on--or an inquiry of
+almost anyone connected with the show at the Town Hall, for that
+matter--would apprise Allen that I was staying at the _Australia_, and
+there I knew he would come direct the moment he could shake himself free
+from his entertainers. Someone was to take him off to lunch, to be sure,
+but--especially as it was reported that he was already dieting to get
+back to riding weight--I felt sure this would not detain him long. "It
+will be about three," I told myself, and left word at the office that
+any man asking for me around that hour should be brought straight to my
+rooms without further question. I also 'phoned Lady X---- and begged off
+from showing her and a party of friends from Government House my
+pictures at four, as I had promised a couple of days previously. Being
+borne off to the inevitable and interminable Australian afternoon
+teas--or to anything else I could not easily shake myself free from very
+shortly after five--was one of the worst ordeals incident to the spell
+of lionizing that had set in for me from the day of my arrival in
+Sydney. What did I care for Sydney, anyhow? Paris was my goal--gay,
+cynical, heartless Paris, who took or rejected what her lovers laid at
+her feet only as it stirred, or failed to stir, her jaded pulses, asking
+not how it was made or what it had cost. Paris! To bring that languid
+beauty fawning to my own feet for a day--even for an hour, my
+hour--_that_ would be something worth living--or dying--for. For many
+years I had been telling myself that (between three and five in the
+afternoon, of course) and now--quite aside from my nocturnal flights
+there on the wings of the "Green Lady"--it seemed that the end so long
+striven for was almost in sight.
+
+I lunched lightly--a planked red snapper and a couple of alligator
+pears--in my room, and toward two o'clock (to be well on the safe side)
+slipped into the old hunting jacket I have mentioned, and was ready;
+just that--ready. My nerves were absolutely steady. The hand holding the
+palette knife with which (to kill the passing minutes) I began daubing
+pigments upon a rough rectangle of blotched canvas on an easel in the
+embrasure of the windows, might have adjusted the hair-spring of my
+wrist-watch, and the beat of my heart was slow and strong and steady
+like the throb of the engines of a liner in mid-ocean. If either hand or
+nerve inclined more one way than the other, it was toward relaxation
+rather than tenseness. Tenseness--with a man who has himself in hand--is
+for the moment of action, not for the interval of waiting which precedes
+it. My whole feeling was that of complete _adequacy;_ but then, the
+sensation was no new one to me--at that time of day.
+
+Exhausting the gobs of variegated colour on my palette, I went to a
+table in the bathroom and started chipping the delicately tinted linings
+from the contents of a packing case of assorted sea shells, confining my
+attentions for the moment to a species of bivalve whose refulgent inner
+surface had caught and held the lambent liquid gold of sunshine that had
+filtered through five fathoms of limpid sea-water to reach the coral
+caverns where it had grown. Powdering the coruscant scalings in a
+mortar, I screened them from time to time, carefully noting the
+gradations of colour--ranging from soft fawn to scintillant saffron--as
+the more indurated particles stood out the longer against the friction
+of the pestle. At this time, I might explain, I was in the tentative
+stage of my experimentation to evolve and perfect a greater variety of
+media than had hitherto been available with which to express in colour
+the interminable moods of sea and sky and sunshine. The value of my
+contribution to art--not yet complete after five years--will have to be
+judged when I pass it on to my contemporaries and posterity. Of the part
+these colours played in my later and more permanent success (to
+differentiate it from the spectacular but transient spell of fame upon
+the threshold of which I stood at the moment of which I write), I can
+only say that had I been confined to the pigments with which my
+predecessors had been forced to express themselves, I should never have
+risen above the rating of a second or third class dauber of sea-scapes.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+
+                           HARD-BIT DERELICTS
+
+
+With Allen and his coming in the back of my brain, it was only natural
+that my thoughts, as I ground and sifted and sorted the golden powders,
+should turn to Kai and the train of events leading up to the ghastly
+tragedy of the _Cora Andrews_, so distorted a version of which had gone
+abroad as a consequence of the fact that Allen was alive and Bell was
+dead, and that I, so far, had not told what I knew of the circumstances
+under which the one and the other had been induced to board the stricken
+"black-birder."
+
+It must have been, I reflected, its comparative remoteness from all of
+even the least-sailed of the South Pacific trade routes that was
+responsible for making Kai Atoll, a barely perceptible smudge on the
+chart of the Louisiades, the unofficial rendezvous for the most
+picturesque lot of cut-throats, blackguards and beachcombers that "The
+Islands" had known since the days of "Bully" Hayes and his care-free
+contemporaries. Like had attracted like after the original nucleus
+gathered, safety had come with numbers, and at the time of my arrival no
+man whose misdeeds had not made him important enough to send a gunboat
+after needed to depart from that secure haven except of his own free
+will.
+
+Among a score of hard-bit derelicts whose grinning or scowling phizzes
+flashed up in memory at the thought of that sun-baked loop of coral,
+with its rag-tag of wind-whipped coco palms and its crescent of zinc and
+thatch-roofed shacks, only three--or four including myself--occupied my
+mind for the moment. Allen--reckless daredevil that he was--had come to
+Kai from somewhere in the Solomons for the very good and sufficient
+reason that it was the only island south of the Line at the time where
+his welcome would not have been either too hot or too cold to suit his
+fastidious taste. Bell had come, in a stove-in whaleboat, because Kai
+was the nearest settlement to the point where he put the _Flying
+Scud_--the trading schooner that was his last command, if we except the
+_Cora Andrews_--aground on Tuka-tuva Reef. The girl, who arrived with
+Bell in the whaleboat, came because he brought her. The tide-rips of Kai
+passage and the Devil's own toboggan were all the same to Rona--at this
+stage of the game, at least--so long as the big, quiet, masterful Yankee
+was bumping-the-bumps with her. And even afterwards--but let that
+transpire.
+
+I, Roger Whitney, artist, formerly of New York and Paris, and, latterly,
+man-about-the French-colonies, with no fixed abode, had been landed at
+Kai by a French gunboat from the Noumea station. I packed myself off
+from that accursed hole because the suicide of a couple of officers in
+whose company I had been drinking absinthe at the _Cercle Militaire_ for
+some weeks had reminded me altogether too poignantly of what I might, in
+the ordinary course of things, expect to be doing myself before long. A
+change of scene and, if possible, a modification of habits was the only
+hope. I would never have had the initiative to tackle even the first had
+not the feeling persisted that I was on the verge of doing something
+worth while with my painting. I went to Kai because the archipelago
+thereabouts was reputed to have the most gorgeous sky and water
+colouring in Polynesia.
+
+Neither the promised beauties nor the reputed badness of Kai stirred me
+greatly in anticipation. With a bitter smile I told myself that every
+night I was seeing sights more lovely than anything my eyes were likely
+to rest on short of Paradise, while the Chamber of Horrors in which I
+awoke every morning was a veritable annex to the Inferno itself. No, it
+was out of the question that Kai could unfold in realities, whether to
+delight or shock, things to outdo those that were already mine in dreams
+that had themselves become more real than realities. Well, it turned out
+that I was only half right, or wrong, whichever way you want to put it.
+While, on the one hand, I found the bluff, open badness of Kai rather
+more refreshing than shocking; on the other hand, it was hardly more
+than a week before I was ready to swear that not the most ethereal houri
+that ever laid her cool green hand upon my fevered brow was of a class
+to run one-two-three with a flame-quivering slip of a nymph whom I had
+surprised at her bath in a beryline pool inside the windward reef. I
+began to pull myself together from that hour. Rona, the very sight of
+whom threw most men out of hand, had quite the opposite effect upon me.
+I knew she was not for me, and the thought that the world actually held
+such loveliness in the form of flesh and blood had a sort of reassurance
+about it, like the knowledge that one has an ample income from
+government bonds.
+
+Because I had landed from the _Zelee_, and also, perhaps on account of
+my rig-out (especially the brimless Algerian sun-helmet), the "beach" of
+Kai put me down at once as a "We-we," and, therefore, a creature quite
+apart. The only Frenchmen on the island were a couple of escapes from
+the convict settlement of New Caledonia, and because neither of them
+could ride or shoot or fight with their fists, they had no standing with
+the predominant Australian "push," most of whom were more or less handy
+at all three. It was, indeed, the fact that, in spite of all my years in
+Paris and the French colonies had done to make a physical wreck of me, I
+still retained something of the quickness of eye and hand and foot which
+had conspired to make my Harvard record as an all-round-athlete one that
+only two or three men have equalled even down to the present day, that
+gave me such easy sledding in making my way with the "best people" of
+Kai.
+
+It took just three minutes--the length of the first round of the
+"friendly bout" I fought with "Heifer" Halligan, ex-welter-weight
+champion of Victoria, at Jackson's pub one afternoon--to change Kai's
+openly expressed contempt for me to something very near respect. I
+thoroughly appreciated the attitude of that breezy lot of sport-loving
+rascals toward a Frenchified Yankee artist, especially one that did not
+appear to be a fugitive from justice, and so took the first opportunity
+to win a standing with them which would at least incline them to let me
+go my own way when I wanted to. Notwithstanding my wretched condition, I
+outpointed my chunky opponent a good three to one in that opening round;
+indeed, the "Heifer's" excuse for the foul which put me to sleep in the
+Second was that both his "bloomin' peepers" were so nearly swelled shut
+he couldn't see "stryght." But it was my swelling groin and battered
+hands, rather than "Heifer's" bruised optics, that came in for first
+attention from deft-fingered Doc Wyndham--once of Guy's, on his own
+admission. The next day I was waited upon by a delegation sent from
+"Jackson's Sporting Club" to urge me to put myself in training for a
+go-to-the-finish with "Shark-mouth" Kelly of Suva, the Fiji open champ.
+My speed would dazzle a cow-footed dolt like "Shark-mouth" was, they
+said, and he would be easy picking for me. They further urged that we
+could clean up all the loose money west of the "Hundred and
+Eightieth"--what odds would Fiji not give in backing a fourteen-stone
+stoker against an artist that only weighed ten stone and looked half
+dished with the "green" besides? Moreover, I could keep the whole purse
+for myself; all they wanted out of it was the sport. God bless the
+scalawags, it was more than half true, that last.
+
+The funny thing about it was that the project actually tempted me at the
+time, principally, I think, because there seemed a chance that the hard
+exercise of training--the very thing, indeed, that helped work the
+miracle a few years later--might effect me at least a temporary
+separation, if not a permanent divorce, from the "Green Lady." I was
+still temporizing with "delegations" when the _Cora Andrews_ dropped her
+hook in Kai Lagoon and gave us something else to think about.
+
+If the little cunning I had left with my fists won me the respect of the
+"beach," it remained for my proficiency with the revolver--something
+which I had never allowed myself to grow rusty in--to give me real
+prestige. My father had been only less famous as a pistol shot than as a
+builder of steel bridges, and from my birth it had been his dream that I
+should carry on the tradition in both lines. If it had broken the old
+boy's heart when I turned my back on engineering for art--insisting on
+going from Harvard to Beaux Arts instead of to Boston "Tec" as he had
+planned--he at least had nothing to complain of on the score of my
+aptitude for the revolver. He admitted that I had bred true in hand and
+eye, even on the day that he called my "art tomfoolery" a throwback from
+my French grandmother. I have always thought that the one circumstance
+which prevented the Governor from cutting me off in his will when he
+finally had definite proofs of the depths to which I had sunk in Paris,
+was the fact that, on my last visit to the old home on the Hudson, I had
+beaten him, shot for shot, with his own pistols, and at his favourite
+distance.
+
+They were rather free with their gun play during my first fortnight at
+Kai, each little affair having been followed by one or two more or less
+ceremonious burials in the coral-walled cemetery on the south lip of the
+windward passage. It was merely as a precautionary measure--on the off
+chance that they should be tempted to draw me into something of the kind
+at a time when I might not be quite on edge for it--that I took early
+opportunity to uncover a trifle of what I had crooked in my
+trigger-finger. A casually winged gull or two, and a few plugged pennies
+(not a miss at the latter, luckily, even when they tried to spin them
+edge on to my line of fire) effected all that was necessary. After that,
+though they were continually sending for me to come down to Jackson's
+and shoot the wire off champagne corks (fizz, loot of some kind, was the
+freest flowing drink on the island at the time), or perform some other
+equally useful and spectacular gun stunt, not the roughest of the gang
+but took the most meticulous care not to press his invitation the
+instant it sank home to him that my mood of the moment wasn't of a kind
+calculated to blend smoothly with the free and easy spirit of a
+beach-combers' carousal.
+
+It was hardly to be expected that they would ever quite understand why a
+man who could "blot out a cove's blinker as easy wiv his fist as wiv his
+gun" (as I was told that "Reefer" Ogiston, penal absentee and pearler,
+put it one day) and who "'peared mo' than comfitabl' heeled fo' coin,"
+should be "light an' looney enuf tu go roun' smearin' smashed barnculs
+on sail cloth"; and yet it was on that very score--or at least to their
+quick comprehension of what I was driving at in my pictures--that the
+"beach" of Kai rendered me a priceless service. Almost from the outset
+they began to "twig" my marines, to feel the living atmosphere I was
+striving to paint into them. They were all men who had lived by the sea,
+on the sea; yes, and not a few of them had worked under the sea. Well,
+when I began to see those deep-set, wrinkle-clutched eyes squint to a
+focus of concentration, and, presently, the quick heave of a hairy chest
+as the message of the canvas flashed home, I knew that I was on the
+right track. Nothing less than that would have given me the courage to
+go on working, as I had set myself to do, on a steadily decreasing
+allowance of absinthe, a certain supply of which, of course, I had
+brought with me from Noumea.
+
+So much for me and my relations to Kai at the time of which I am
+writing. Now as to Bell....
+
+"Who is that tall, square-jawed chap who looks as though he was not
+quite sober?" I had asked a day or two after I landed.
+
+"Yank--calls himself Bell," Jackson replied laconically; adding that he
+was "not quite sober" when he tried to take a cross-cut over Tuka-tuva
+Reef with the _Flying Scud_, that he was "not quite sober" when he hit
+the beach in a busted whaleboat, that he had been "not quite sober" all
+the time since, and that there was no doubt that he would still be "not
+quite sober" when the time came for him to leave the island, whether he
+went out with the tide in an outrigger canoe or shuffled off up the
+Golden Stairs. "Allus been pickled and allus goin' to be pickled,"
+Jackson continued; then, qualifyingly: "Course I don't know he was
+pickled when he kum int' the world, but I'm willin' to lay any odds that
+he'll be pickled when he shuffles out of it."
+
+Just about all of which was, or proved to be, "stryght dope."
+
+After quoting this terse summing of Jackson's, it may sound a little
+strange when I say that Bell was a gentleman--not _had been_, understand
+(that could have been said with some truth about a dozen or more of us
+at Kai), but _was_ a gentleman. Though undeniably never "quite sober,"
+the fact remained that no one on the island had ever seen him "quite
+drunk." And no matter how much liquor he had stowed "under hatches," no
+one could say that it interfered either with his trim or his navigation.
+His even rolling gait was always the same, whether it was the glow of
+his eye-opening plunge at dawn that lighted his face, or the flush of
+twelve hours of steady tippling that darkened it at twilight. Nor was he
+ever known to omit that gravely courteous, almost "old-fashioned," bow
+which, with the flicker of smile that was more of his eyes than his
+mouth, was the invariable greeting he bestowed upon friend and stranger
+alike. The mellow drawl of his "It's suah goin' to be a fine mawnin',"
+had made it easier for me to weather dawns that--in my inflamed
+imagination--menaced monstrously in jagged lines like a cubist's
+nightmare. If drink had any effect on his speech, it was to incline him
+to reserve rather than garrulity. His temper appeared to be under quite
+as perfect control as his legs. Even when he broke "Red" Logan's jaw
+with a swift short-arm jolt the time that sanguine Lochinvar tried to
+nip Rona off his arm as they passed on the beach in the twilight, they
+said that Bell hardly raised his voice as he "guessed that'd hold the
+varmit fo' a while." And when, a few days later, Doc Wyndham told him
+with a grin that "Red" wouldn't be screwing a diving helmet on his block
+for some weeks to come, it was said there was real regret in the
+Yankee's voice as he hoped that the injury wouldn't be "pumanant."
+
+Yes, before I had been a week at Kai I felt that there was a little
+addition I could safely make to Jackson's comprehensive estimate. I knew
+that Bell had been born a gentleman, and--whatever lapses there may have
+been, or might be--I knew he was going to die a gentleman. And that also
+(had I put it on record) would have proved pretty nearly "stryght dope."
+
+What stumped me at first was trying to reconcile the remarkable control
+Bell maintained over all his faculties in spite of his hard drinking
+with the fact (apparently fully authenticated) that he had run
+aground--through drunkenness--every ship he had ever commanded,
+beginning with a U. S. gunboat. He cleared up that matter for me himself
+one afternoon, however, by casually observing--at the moment he chanced
+to be watching me trying to transfer to canvas the riot of opalescence
+between the _lapis lazuli_ of the barely submerged reef and the deep
+indigo where a hundred fathoms of brine threw back the reflection of the
+sinister core of cumulo-nimbus in the heart of a menacing squall--that
+the sea had always acted as a tremendous stimulant to him, especially
+when he trod a deck.
+
+"If I could just have managed to cut out the whisky at sea, all would
+have been smooth sailin'," he said in his deep rich Southern drawl. "On
+land--heah ... anywheah--kawn jooce is lak food to me; mah body convuts
+it into ene'gy just lak an engine does coal. But with a schoonah kickin'
+undah me--we'ell, I guess theah's just one kick too many, something lak
+mixin' drinks p'raps. It suah elevates me good an' plenty ... and when I
+come down theah's natchaly some crash. My ship an' I gen'aly strike
+bottom at about the same time. But, s'elp me Gawd" (a tensing _timbre_
+in his voice) "on mah next command--"
+
+It was the one sure sign that Bell was beginning to feel the kick of his
+"kawn jooce" when he spoke of his "next command." Unless that kick was
+beginning to carry a pretty weighty jolt behind it he knew just as well
+as everyone else on the beach did that he would never get his Master's
+Certificate back again, and that even if he did there was no house from
+Honolulu to Hobart that would trust a ship to a man who had already
+beached a half-dozen.
+
+Kai was glib to the last detail--rig, tonnage, cargo, insurance, owner
+and the like--respecting the several merchant craft Bell had piled up in
+the course of his downward career; but the extent of local "dope" in the
+matter of the gunboat episode was to the effect that it happened "up
+Manila-way," and that "that was the bally smash that started him goin'."
+
+Personally, I took little stock in the naval part of the yarn--that is,
+at first. Then, one morning--it was the day after the tail of a typhoon
+had sucked up the end of Ah Yung's laundry shack and left everyone on
+the beach short of clothes--Bell came out in a suit of immaculate
+_starched_ whites. It was the cut of the jacket and the way he wore it
+that drew and held my puzzled gaze; that its shoulders were "drilled"
+for epaulettes and that its thin pearl buttons barely held in
+buttonholes that had been worked for something thicker and wider I did
+not notice till later. Steady-eyed, lean-jawed, square-shouldered,
+ready-poised--not even a flapping Payta _sombrero_ could quite disguise,
+nor five years of heavy tippling quite obliterate, the marks of type.
+Then I understood why it was that Bell, all but down and out though he
+might be, was, and would remain to the last, a gentleman. There are
+things the Navy puts into a man that not even a court-martial can take
+away.
+
+The only allusion Bell ever made to his remoter past was drawn from him
+a few days later, when--he was watching me paint again--I chanced to
+mention that I had spent a fortnight in the Philippines on my way south
+from Saigon to Australia. Glancing up at the sound of his sharp intake
+of breath, I saw his jaw set over the questions that leapt to the tip of
+his tongue, to relax gradually as a faraway look came into his wide-set
+grey eyes and a wistful smile of reminiscence parted his lips.
+
+"Did you heah the band play on the Luneta in the evenin'?" he asked
+eagerly, "while the _spiggoties_ in their _calesas_ wuh racin' round the
+circle, an' the kiddies an' theyah nusses wuh rompin' on the grass, an'
+the big red sun was goin' down behind Mariveles beyond the bay? An' did
+you know the Ahmy an' Navy Club--not the new one ... the ol' one ovah
+cross the moat inside the wall?"
+
+"Put up there all my time in Manila," I replied. "A very comfy old
+hangout, especially considering what the hotels were."
+
+"An'--did you--" (he gulped once or twice as though the question came
+hard) "did you evah heah them speak at the Club of a chap called Blake
+... Lootenant-Commandah Blake? He was a son of Captain Blake, who helped
+Sampson polish off Cervera, an' a gran'son of Adm'al Blake. Ol' naval
+fam'ly."
+
+"You mean the man who pulled off that coup when Wood was cleaning up the
+crater of Bud Dajo? Some kind of a bluff on his own with one of the
+little old gunboats Dewey captured after the Battle of Manila Bay,
+wasn't it? Scared some Jolo Dato into giving up a bunch of our men he
+already had lined up against a wall to _bolo_, didn't he? Of course, I
+remember perfectly now. General X----" (mentioning the Military Governor
+of Mindanao by name) "told me the yarn himself the night I dined with
+him in Zamboanga. He said no one but an old poker shark would ever have
+thought of the stunt, much less had the nerve to bluff it out.
+Incidentally he mentioned that the chap was the best poker player in the
+Navy, as he was also the speediest baseball pitcher ever graduated from
+Annapolis; that he had been missed almost as much for the one as the
+other since he dropped out of sight several years before. Some
+difficulty about--"
+
+"Tryin' to push Corregidor out of the entrance to Manila Bay with the
+nose of his gunboat," Bell cut in harshly, the hell in his soul glowing
+through his eyes as the glare of the coal-bed welters beyond a stoker's
+lifted furnace flap. That, and a single sob sucked through his
+contracted throat as the vacuum in his chest called for air, were the
+only outward signs of the intensest spasm of throttled emotion I ever
+saw assail a human being. Then the square jaw tightened, the cords of
+the muscular neck drew taut, and what would have been another body and
+soul racking sob was noiselessly absorbed in the buffer of a flexed
+diaphragm. The fires of agony behind the eyes paled and died down like
+an expiring coal. The corrugations of the brow smoothed out as a
+smile--half amused, half wistful--relaxed the set lips. The old
+controlled Bell (I shall continue to call him so) was in the saddle
+again.
+
+"So they still remembah mah ball-playin'," he drawled musingly, his left
+hand digits gently massaging the bulbous swelling remaining after some
+red-hot drive had telescoped the middle finger of his right. "Ye'es, of
+co'se they'd miss mah wing in the Ahmy-Navy game at Ca'nival time. But
+mah pokah--we'ell I reckon a few of 'em did find mah pokah hand about as
+bafflin' as mah baseball ahm. But it was straight deliv'ry, tho'--both
+of 'em. An' they wouldn't be callin' me a fo'-flushah, etha. No, you
+didn't heah any of 'em say that, I'm right suah."
+
+A smile more whimsical than bitter twitched his lips twice or thrice in
+the minute or two he stood alone with his thoughts. "So I've sort o'
+dropped out o' sight to 'em?" he said finally. "We'ell, I guess that was
+about the best thing to happen for all consuned. But, just the same, if
+you evah go back Manila-way I won't be mindin' it if you tell 'em that,
+tho' the ol' wing's tuhn'd to glass from long lack o' limberin', an'
+tho' I don't play pokah down heah fo' feah o' bein' knifed fo' mah luck,
+I'm still hittin' true to fohm in mah own lil' game of alterin' the sea
+map with the noses of ships. I reckon they'll know the reason why."
+
+There was another interval of silence, but, unlike the other, not
+charged, electric. Bell's blow-off through the safety-valve of frank
+speech had taken the peak off the pent-up pressure within, and when he
+spoke again it was merely to quote what the Governor of North Carolina
+had said about its having been a long time between drinks. "Great thust
+aggravateh, the Sou'east Trade." Would I mind--ahem--hiking home with
+him and lubricating my tonsils with a drop of "J. Walkah"? That was
+simply his delicate way of pretending to ignore my slavery to absinthe,
+a habit which not even the most whisky-saturated sot of an Anglo-Saxon
+can ever quite forgive one of his race for falling a victim to. I
+wouldn't? "We'ell, _hasta manyanah_."
+
+With a crunch of coral clinkers under his feet and a stave of "Carry Me
+Back to Ol' Virginny" on his lips, Bell, disdaining the smooth path by
+the beach, swung off through the pandanus scrub on what he called a
+"bee-line for home"! He had a weakness for taking "short-cuts" on land
+as well as at sea. Never again--not even in the moment of his great
+decision--did he lift for me or any other man the "furnace flap" of iron
+reserve that masked the fires of his innermost soul.
+
+Their saving "sense of sport," which was the golden vein in the rough
+iron of the "beach push" of Kai, made it inevitable that they should
+have a substantial sense of respect for a man of Bell's stamp, and this
+might easily have ripened to an active popularity had not the American's
+quiet but inflexible reserve prevented their knowing him better. They
+suspected that he was no novice in handling the big Colt's that was
+flopping on his hip when he landed, they knew that there was a weighty
+punch behind his long arm, and they were frankly outspoken in their
+admiration of the manner in which he stowed and carried his booze. But
+what had impressed them more than anything else was the way in which he
+had taken the devil out of a vicious imp of a Solomon Island pony on the
+beach one morning. "Hellish hard-handed," "Slant" Allen had said, as his
+steel-blue eyes narrowed down to slits in the intensity of his interest
+and admiration; "but a seat like he was screwed to the brute's backbone.
+Old cross-country rider--hundred to one on it. Man in a million in a
+steeplechase on a horse strong enough to carry the weight. Gawd, what a
+seat!"
+
+All in all, indeed, there was only one thing the "beach" held against
+Bell, and that was Rona, or rather his possession of her. There was
+nothing personal in this, of course. They merely regarded the big
+American in the same light they had always regarded a man with a chest
+of pearls or anything else of value that their simple, direct natures
+made them yearn for the possession of. There was this difference,
+however. Where the "push" of Kai would have combined to a man to get
+away with a box of pearls or a cargo of shell, the annexing of a woman
+was essentially a lone-hand game, and--well, Bell was hardly the kind of
+a "one-man job" any of them cared to tackle. I feel practically certain
+that, but for the disturbance of the even tenor of Kai's way incident to
+the _Cora Andrews_ affair, his "rights" in Rona would never have been
+challenged.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+
+                            THE GIRL HERSELF
+
+
+As for the girl herself, words fail me in trying to picture her, just as
+my brush and pencil (save perhaps for that one rough memory sketch, done
+at white heat while still gripped in the exaltation that first glimpse
+of her splashing inside the reef had thrown me into) have always failed.
+This is, I fancy, because, unbelievably beautiful though she was, there
+was still so much of her appeal that was of the spirit rather than the
+flesh--something intangible which had to be sensed rather than seen. She
+was compact of contradictions, physical as well as mental. So slender as
+almost to suggest fragility at a first glance, there was still not a
+straight line, nor an angle, nor a hint of boniness, from the arch of
+her instep to the tips of her ears. Again, pixie-like as she was in the
+dainty perfection of her modelling, there was yet a fairly feral
+suggestion of suppleness and strength underrunning the soft fluency of
+contour. The strength was there, too, held in reserve in the flexible
+frame like the power of a coiled spring. I saw her unleash it one
+morning when, impatient of the slowness of a clumsy Fijian who was
+launching a very sizable dugout for her, she yanked him aside by the
+hair of his fuzzy head and did the job herself. I can still see the run
+of muscles under the olive-silk skin of arm and ankle, and the bent-bow
+arch of her slender back, as she gave a last push to the cranky
+outrigger. Indeed, my mind is full of pictures like that--paddling,
+swimming, leaning hard against the buffets of a passing squall, with a
+lock of wet hair streaking across her glowing face and her drenched
+garments clinging to her lithe limbs; and yet, as I have said, the
+buoyant, flaming spirit of her always escaped my brush and pencil as it
+now eludes portrayal by my pen.
+
+But the most baffling, as it was also the most fascinating, of Rona's
+contradictions was the combination she presented of inward intensity and
+outward calm. The fire of her was, perhaps, the first thing one was
+conscious of. Even I, with my blood thinned and cooled with the ice of
+absinthe, could never watch her movements without a quickening of my
+jaded pulses; to the sanguine combers of Kai the sight of her (whether
+the rippling undulations of arms and shoulders as she drove a canoe
+through the water, or the hawk-like immobility of her as she poised on a
+pinnacle of reef waiting for a chance to cast her little Dyak purse-net)
+was palpably maddening.
+
+So much for the flaming appeal of the girl in action, or suspended
+action, which was, of course, about the only way in which she was ever
+revealed to the "beach." Now picture the same creature (as Bell--and
+occasionally myself, his only intimate friend on the island--so often
+saw her) seated cross-legged on a mat, her sloe-eyes, set slightly
+slant, fixed dreamily on nothingness, like a sort of reincarnated
+girl-Buddha. The sight of her thus never failed to awaken in my nostrils
+the smell of smouldering _yakka_ sticks, and to set my ears ringing with
+the throb of temple bells.
+
+To my hyper-sophisticated (I will not say degenerate) senses this
+Oriental side of the girl made a subtle appeal that was like an
+enchantment. The passion to paint her--always burning within me when I
+saw her in action--never assailed me when she fell into one of those
+contemplative calms. Rather the peace of her soothed me like an opiate
+and made me content to sit and dream myself. It was the one thing (until
+I got the habit by the throat years afterward) that ever held my nerves
+steady when the "absinthe hour" drew near at the end of the afternoon.
+As long as Rona would continue to "sit Buddha" I had myself completely
+in hand, even till well on after sunset. But if she moved, or spoke, or
+even showed by her eyes that she was following Bell's words (it was
+he--less sensitive to this phase of her than I--who did most of the
+talking at these times), the spell was broken. The haste of my bolt for
+home was almost indecent. I have sometimes thought that a few months
+alone with Rona at this time might have effected very near to a complete
+cure in me--by a sort of involuntary mental therapeutic treatment on her
+part, I mean. But perhaps the other side of her--the "unreposeful"
+one--might have complicated the case.
+
+Both the fire and the repose of Rona--the passion and the peace of
+her--were reflected in the olive oval of her face, the one by the full,
+sensuous lips and the sensitive nostrils, and the other by the smooth,
+low brow. The low-lidded blue-black eyes were "debatable territory," now
+in the hands of one, now the other. So, too, that infallible "gauge of
+temperament," whose dial is the pucker between the eyebrows. With Rona,
+this "passion-pressure index" was a corrugated knot of intensity or an
+olive blank according as to whether her inner fires were flaming or
+banked.
+
+Bell knew little of the girl's origin and said less. "Rona's _trousseau_
+consisted of huh peacock sca'f an' this heah baby _bolo_," he said in
+his slow drawl one afternoon when he had borrowed the exquisite little
+dagger to show me how the Jolo _juramentado_ executed his favourite
+belly-ripping stroke; "an' I reckon they'll comprise 'bout the sum total
+of huh mo'nin' at mah fun'ral." That, and "I guess Rona knows no mo'
+'bout mah past reco'd than I do 'bout huhs," was all I recollect his
+ever having said on the subject. He was content to let it rest at that.
+
+It was old Jackson who told me that he had seen the girl at
+Ponape, where she had been brought by an "owl-eyed" (referring to
+horn-spectacles rather than to the almond orbs themselves, I took it)
+"chink" when he came back to the Carolines after buying bird-of-paradise
+skins down New Guinea-way. She was dressed "Java-style" at the time, and
+was said to have been picked up at Ternate or Ambon in the Moluccas.
+Although the wily old Celestial kept the girl practically under lock and
+key from the first, customers of his shop occasionally glimpsed her, and
+she them, it would seem. Among these was the Yankee skipper of the
+trading schooner, _Flying Scud_. The coming together of those two must
+have been like the touching off of a _ku-kui_-nut torch, Jackson opined,
+adding that he supposed I "twigged that thar was no snuffin' uv
+_ku-kui_, onst aflar."
+
+Just how the sequel eventuated no one in Ponape save the old Chinaman
+knew, and he never told. With only half her copra discharged, the _Scud_
+was heard getting under way at midnight, shortly after which the
+silhouette of her, close-reefed, was observed to blot out the moon three
+or four times as she beat out of that "hell's craw" of a passage in the
+teeth of a rising sou'wester. The girl was never seen in the Carolines
+again. Neither was Bell nor the _Scud_, for that matter, as it was but a
+few days later that he attempted his disastrous short-cut across
+Tuka-tuva Reef.
+
+The next morning the Chinaman waited on his customers with his neck
+heavily, obscuringly swathed in bandages. He kept these on for a
+fortnight or more, and when they were finally dispensed with replaced
+his loose shirt with a close-buttoned jacket having an unusually
+high-cut neck. Even the latter, however, could not entirely conceal a
+number of parallel red cicatrices which, beginning on his fat jowls, ran
+down, slightly converging, onto his puffy yellow throat. Jackson felt
+sure that the point where those red furrows came to a focus must have
+been "fairish messed up."
+
+On the beach of Ponape opinion was fairly divided as to whether the big,
+close-mouthed Yank had "strong-armed" the Chinaman and carried off the
+girl bodily, perhaps against her will, or whether she had made the
+get-away unaided, going off to the _Scud_ on her own. In Jackson's mind
+there were no doubts.
+
+"I see them welts wi' my own peepers," he said, "an' they wan't the
+marks uv a man. They wuz _scratches_. That lanky Yank don't scratch ...
+'e _wallops_. But that gal--s'y, did y'u ever tyke a squint at 'er
+taloons? Them's the ans'er. She kum to 'im; an' she's stickin' lika
+oktypus."
+
+Again I must credit old "Jack" with handing me pretty near to the
+"stryght dope."
+
+Yes, I had indeed noticed Rona's wonderful fingernails; likewise the
+astonishing amount of care she lavished on them. One could not have
+helped noticing them. A quarter to half an inch long, meticulously
+manicured, and stained a maroon-brown (rather darker than the rich _sang
+du boeuf_ of _henna_), she was always polishing them--those of one hand
+on the palm of the other--even when "sitting Buddha" with dreaming
+half-closed eyes. I inferred the habit of letting them grow was acquired
+in the course of her association with the Chinese. She cut them just
+short of where they would begin to curl and be a nuisance. A fraction of
+an inch longer, and they would have been as useless as the tusks of an
+old boar that had curved back more than a half circle. As they were....
+
+One man's guess was as good as another's in the matter of Rona's racial
+origin. Kai, though agreeing that she came from "somewhere Java-side,"
+always spoke of her as a Kanaka, just as they did of all the rest of the
+"beach" women who were not palpably Jap, Chinese or white. I doubt very
+much, however, that she had a drop of real Polynesian blood in her
+veins. Flaring with temperament though she was, there was still nothing
+about her of the happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care sensuousness of the
+Caroline or Samoan, the only women of the Islands to whom she bore even
+the faintest resemblance in face or figure. If she had come from
+Marquesas-way--but no, not even an admixture of old Spanish pirate blood
+would have accounted for either the spirit or the body of Rona.
+
+The girl's practice of wearing her _sulu_ (Kai used the Fijian name for
+the inevitable South Sea waist-cloth which the Samoans call _lava-lava_
+and the Tahitians _pareo_) Malay-fashion--looped over the breasts and
+secured by a hitch under the left arm--indicated that her outdoor life
+at least had been spent somewhere in the Insulinde Archipelago. Her very
+considerable English vocabulary, however, and especially her fluency in
+"pidgin," could hardly have been acquired save through some years of
+residence in the Straits Settlements or the Federated Malay States. I
+was inclined to favour Singapore, especially as she had once let slip
+something about a fling at _fan-tan_ at Johore. But even had she been
+born in that amazing island melting pot, her unmistakably Hindu cast of
+features and mould of figure were hardly accounted for. The Madrassi
+Tamils of the Straits were coolies, and Rona radiated _caste_ from her
+slender pink-tipped toes to her crown of indigo-black hair coils.
+
+In my own mind I harboured the theory that the girl was a "by-product"
+of the harem of one of the innumerable petty Sultanates of Malaysia,
+among which I knew were to be found girls of all the tribes and races of
+the Moslem world. In no other way could I account for the flaming spirit
+and the physical perfection of her. Not even descent from that strange
+Hindu remnant of the lovely island of Lombok, just east of Java (a
+theory which I had also turned over in my mind), quite satisfied on both
+these scores. As to what sort of a centrifugal impulse might have
+operated to spin her forth to the clutches of the currents of the
+outside world, I had not speculated very deeply. But--well, I knew
+something of the strange currencies in which Malaysian potentates paid
+their debts to Singapore rug and jewel merchants!
+
+In spite of the increasing warmth of Bell's friendship for me, my way to
+Rona's confidence proved far from easy sledding. This was partly because
+I had got in bad at the outset by starting to sketch that capricious
+lady at her reef-side bath in the face of her very outspoken disapproval
+of anything so unseemly, and partly because she was slow in making up
+her mind that I did not necessarily classify with the predatory males
+against whom her whole life had unquestionably been an unrelieved
+defence. Obsessed by the desire to paint her, I had not improved my
+standing with the girl by asking Bell (after she had refused me
+pointblank) to intercede to get her to sit for me. Indeed, that _faux
+pas_ on my part seemed to have put an end for good to any chance I might
+have had of getting her to pose. Rona was openly indignant that I should
+have presumed to regard her own decision as other than final in the
+matter, while Bell, though perfectly good-natured about it, was no less
+decided in his disapproval.
+
+"No, sah, I'm not fo' it in the least, ol' man," he drawled decisively.
+"Lil' Rona's 'bout the neahest thing to a true, lovin' an' lawful wife I
+evah had, awh evah will have, fo' that mattah. So you must see that it
+doan quite jibe with mah sense o' what is right an' propah unda the
+ci'cumstances fo' me to aid an' abet a proceduah that might culminate in
+huh appeahin' on the wall o' somun's bathroom as a spo'tin nymph awh a
+wallowin' mumaid. Nothin' doin', ol' man; not with mah blessin'."
+
+That ended it, of course. From then on I had to content myself with the
+hopeless "sketches from memory," in not the best of which was I able to
+catch more than a suggestion of what I sought. I could not have failed
+more utterly had I set myself to do a "character portrait" of the "Green
+Lady" herself.
+
+But on the personal side it was not long before I began to make an
+appreciable gain of ground with Rona. First she ceased avoiding me when
+I dropped in for a mid-afternoon yarn with Bell; then she began to
+assume a sort of "benevolent tolerance" by coming and sitting on the mat
+as we talked; finally she started taking an active interest in the
+conversation, coming out of her Buddha-like trances every now and then
+to cut in with some trenchant comment in fluent _beche-de-mer_ jargon,
+or perhaps a shrewd question phrased in carefully chosen and enunciated
+English.
+
+At last, one memorable afternoon, she came (quite on her own initiative,
+he assured me) with Bell to call at the little thatch-roofed,
+woven-walled hut I was calling home at the time, wearing in honour of
+the occasion her most treasured possession, the "peacock" shawl. It was
+this astonishingly fine piece of Cantonese embroidery which Bell had
+mentioned as having made up, with the little Malay _kris_, the sum total
+of the dower Rona had brought him. It was the first time I had had a
+chance to examine it at close quarters and I saw at a glance that,
+however it had come into her possession, it had once been a priceless
+thing, a real work of art, a treasure fit for the _trousseau_ of a
+princess.
+
+The body of the shawl was amber-coloured silk of so close a weave that
+it would have shed water as it stopped light. A rubber blanket would not
+have thrown a blacker shadow when held against the sun. Yet so sheer and
+fine was the fabric that a twist of it streamed from one hand to the
+other as brandy pours out of a flask. The peacock itself, done in a
+thousand tints and shades of delicate floss, was all of life-size in
+body and something more than that in tail. Stitching and matching,
+stitching and matching--you could almost _see_ the artist growing old
+before your eyes as you thought of the years he must have bent above his
+glacially-growing masterpiece.
+
+With this rainbow-bright rectangle of shimmering silks worn folded over
+the shoulders in the ordinary way the peacock must have been
+considerably telescoped and distorted. It was doubtless for this reason
+that Rona always wore it Malay-fashion, as the Javanese women wear their
+_sarongs_. This displayed the jewel-gay bird in all his pride, the
+bright breast swelling over Rona's own and the coruscant cascade of tail
+(you could almost hear the rustle of it) falling about her limbs like
+the feather mantle of an early Hawaiian queen.
+
+I have said that this shawl _had been_ a priceless thing. As a matter of
+fact it still was such. So lovingly had it been cared for, not only by
+Rona but by the many owners it may well have had before her (for Canton
+had done no such work as this for half a century at least), that not a
+corner was frayed, not a one of its countless thousands of stitches
+started. In texture it was scarcely less perfect than the day it was
+finished. The only thing wrong with it was that the colours were a good
+deal dulled, not by age (for the old Cantonese dyes are as deathless of
+hue as ancient Phoenician glass), but by grease. This had happened, I
+suspected, largely during Rona's stewardship, for the _tiare_-scented
+coco oil she used so freely as a hair-perfume often found its way to her
+arms and shoulders--and so to the shawl. All the latter needed to
+restore it to its pristine freshness and refulgency was a good
+"dry-cleaning."
+
+"Even Rona does not dream of the brilliance of colour under that
+grease," I said to myself. "Oh, for a can of naphtha!" Then the fact
+that my benzine would do the same trick flashed into my mind. I was all
+but out of it, I reflected, with replenishment uncertain; but I could at
+least contrive to spare enough to make a start with. Pouring a teacupful
+of the pungent solvent out of the scant pint I found still on hand, I
+saturated a clean rag with it and, without a word of explanation to the
+girl, walked up to her and started washing the bird's face and hackle.
+For an instant she stiffened angrily, evidently under the impression
+that my solicitude for the embroidery was only a thinly veiled excuse
+for chucking her under the chin. (Indeed, she confessed to me later
+that "gentlemen" could always be counted on to employ such indirect
+methods of approach, and that she found them rather more difficult to
+combat than the straight cave-man stuff of the less sophisticated
+beach-comber). But as the first glad flash of brightening colour caught
+the corner of a suspiciously-lowered eye, the innocence--even the
+laudability--of my purpose shot home to her quick mind. With a twirl of
+thumbs and a twist of shoulders, she came out of the shawl as a golden
+moth spurns its cocoon, and, leaving it in my hand, darted over to a peg
+and purloined an old smoking-jacket to take its place.
+
+"Bath heem good, Whitnee," she chirruped, giving her slipping _sulu_ a
+hitch with one hand as she thrust the other into an arm of the jacket.
+"Makee heem first-chop clean. He too much dirtee long time."
+
+That she lapsed thus into "pidgin" was a sure sign of the girl's
+ecstatic excitement. Usually her English--especially when she had time
+to ponder and polish it in advance, as when she put questions--was much
+better than that.
+
+Sopping gently to avoid pulling the delicate stitches, I managed to
+"bath heem good" from his saucy crest, down over the royal purple
+hackle, and well out upon his comparatively sober-coloured breast before
+my benzine came to an end. A slightly more vigorous dabbing beyond the
+embroidery line "alchemized" a patch of clouded amber to a halo of
+lucent gold, against which the bird's haughtily-held head stood out like
+the profile of a martyred saint on an old stained-glass window. Thus far
+would the precious contents of that teacup go, and no farther.
+
+Rona was in raptures. What though there was a blotchy high- (or rather
+low-) water mark where the dabbing had ceased near the base of the
+erupting splash of tail-feathers, what though the magic liquid had come
+off second best in its bout with an indurated gob of egg-yolk drooling
+across one wing, what though the worst of our Augean labours--the
+cleansing of the mighty green tail--had yet to be tackled--just look at
+the glory already wrought!
+
+Crooning with pleasure, the girl stroked and petted the renovated
+iridescence of the lordly neck--until I called her attention to the fact
+that the still unevaporated benzine was dissolving her finger-nail
+stain. It was an ill-advised remark on my part, for it turned her
+attention to the still unreclaimed tail and set her begging for "just
+nuff fo' one-piecee featha, Whitnee; he need it vehry ba-ad."
+
+She had her way, of course, and would have finished my benzine then and
+there had not Bell come to my rescue. Laughing and muttering something
+about "thustiness" (not drinking whisky myself, I had none in stock), he
+took Rona by the arm and started off on the homeward path. Strutting and
+preening she went, the very reincarnation of the royal bird upon her
+bosom, the very living, breathing spirit of "peacock-iness."
+
+She might just as well have finished the job--or rather the benzine--at
+once, though, for she got it all in the end. Every day or two--sometimes
+with Bell, sometimes alone--she began paying calls. Always she was in
+gala dress and always, after more or less "finessive" preliminaries, she
+made the same plea.
+
+"Just one mo' featha, Whitnee," she would coo ingratiatingly, putting a
+long-nailed finger-tip on the "eye" of the particular quill next in line
+for renovation. "Ple-ese, Whitnee.... 'Peakie' has been one veh-ry good
+fella bird too-dayee. Pu-retty ple'ese, Whitnee."
+
+Of course that always got me, and incidentally the benzine--as long as
+it lasted. I had remarked to Bell once or twice how his soft Southern
+drawl was beginning to creep into Rona's English, and how fetching a
+combination it made with her "pidgin-_beche-de-mer_" blend. Getting wind
+of this, the sly minx played the card to the limit. That "one mo' fetha,
+Whitnee," had me fated, and she knew it. I was completely out of benzine
+for three weeks, and at a time when I was in especial need of it in
+connection with my experiments in colour-mixing; but Rona's friendship
+was cheap at the price. When I finally got hold of a five-gallon can of
+naphtha from Suva (sent up to Bougainville by Burns, Phillip packet,
+where one of Jackson's cutters picked it up), the dry-cleaning the two
+of us gave old "Peakie" was the best fun I'd had since I used to scrub
+my Newfoundland pup as a kid.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+
+                      "SLANT" ALLEN RETIRES AGAIN
+
+
+Although "Slant" Allen had "retired" to Kai on three or four occasions
+previous to my arrival, his latest sojourn--the one which ended with his
+enforced departure on the _Cora Andrews_--began about a month after I
+took up my residence there. Two questions which Jackson asked of the man
+who told him "Slant" had landed on the beach the night before have
+always struck me as especially illuminative. One was: "Did 'e fetch a
+'awse?" and the other--even more laconic--was: "Gin, Kanak, Jap or
+Chinee this croose?"
+
+And equally illuminative was his comment when told that Allen had come
+across in a catamaran, bringing neither girl nor horse. "Then 'e musta
+sloped in a 'ell uv a rush," said the old trader with finality.
+
+Kai was frankly disappointed that "Slant" had come without his "stable,"
+for the "beach race meets" which had made his name a byword throughout
+the Islands were always productive (it was universally agreed) of no end
+of sport and excitement. Allen, it was claimed, had transported ponies
+about the South Seas by every known craft that plied their waters, from
+a steam packet to a Papuan head-hunting canoe. Once, in Fiji, he had
+even swum a horse across the flooded Rewa in order to get it to Suva in
+time to run for the "Roku's Cup." Of course he won out. "Slant" always
+did that--by hook or by crook--whether with a horse or a woman. Thus
+Kai, in discussing Allen's advent.
+
+It was characteristic of that hard-hit bunch of "gentlemen and
+sportsmen" (a phrase often on the lips of the post-prandial speakers at
+their "race-banquets") that they should hasten to tell me that Allen had
+once owned a Melbourne Cup winner--"came jolly near riding the gelding
+himself, too"--while the fact that he had killed more of his
+fellow-creatures than any man of twice his age in the South Seas was
+only a matter of casual mention. You had to credit the frank minded and
+mouthed rascals for running true to form in that touch of naivete,
+though. To them the Melbourne Cup was the greatest thing in the world
+beyond any possible comparison: a human life was just about the least.
+But they were quite as careless about their own lives as of those of
+others, and that alone always raised them in my eyes far above the
+pettiness of lesser if more conventionally moral men.
+
+Although there was not a horse on the island at the time of Allen's
+arrival, within a week he had wangled it somehow to have a bunch of
+Solomon ponies brought over from Malaite, and at the end of a fortnight
+had pulled off the first Kai "Grand National." "Slant" called it that,
+he said, because, like the great Liverpool classic from which he
+borrowed the name, it was to be a steeplechase. The half-wild little
+beasts were brought over on the deck of a trading schooner, travelling
+in such restricted quarters in the waist that they had to be thrown and
+held down to let the foreboom go over every time she was put about.
+
+A bit stiff in the knees but uncurbed of spirit, the vicious quartette
+clambered out on the beach, shook off the water soaked up during their
+swim from the schooner, laid back their ears and stood ready to fight
+all-comers with tooth and hoof. As a consequence, naturally, the
+preliminaries of the "Grand National" were more in the character of
+broncho-busting contests than speed trials, and it was in one of these
+that the mighty Bell had won the plaudits and the respect of the "beach"
+by breaking the spirit of a wild-eyed lump of a cayuse which had just
+managed to give the momentarily overconfident "Slant" a nasty spill.
+
+The "Grand National" was run round the curve of the beach, with two
+"water-jumps," the "stonewall" of the quay, and three hurdles in the
+form of old dugout canoes to be negotiated. Bell declined to accept a
+mount, and, in any event, his weight would have told prohibitively
+against him in competition with any one of at least a dozen lighter men,
+all of whom had had more or less actual racing experience.
+
+Allen was the only one to go the full route at the first running of the
+"National," all three of his rivals falling out at the water-jumps. When
+one of the defeated riders limped in and started to attribute "Slant's"
+win to the fact that he had picked the best-broken if not the speediest
+mount, that imperturbable sportsman cheerfully agreed to ride the race
+over mounted on any one of the ponies the judges cared to designate.
+Again he had a walkaway. It was all a matter of sheer horse-mastership;
+the speed of the beast had little to do with it.
+
+Finally, just to prove that the running was all on the square, "Slant"
+rode the race on each of the two remaining ponies, one of which had
+strained a tendon and rasped most of the hide off one side of him in
+trying to jump _through_ the coral blocks of the quay instead of over
+them. We gave the laughing centaur a great ovation when he brought even
+the cripple--dripping blood and sweat it was, but still responsive to
+the magic of the hand that imposed its will at the pressure of a bridle
+rein--under the wire a half-breach-length winner.
+
+And still more wildly we cheered him when "Quill" Partington--a
+broken-down and broken-out (from jail, I mean) newspaper writer, late of
+Melbourne and formerly of Calcutta and London--chivvied up an ancient
+tortoise that Jackson used to keep around his shop as a pet, and,
+mounting "Slant" on the ridge of its shell, offered to back the pair at
+catch-weights against anything on the island. "Quill," a most engaging
+character, was the poet and minstrel of Kai. He did not, however, figure
+in the _Cora Andrews_ affair, save that he later wrote some rather
+spirited verses in celebration of it, or rather of what little he knew
+of it.
+
+If the feeling in Kai had been one of disappointment when it was first
+reported Allen had landed without a horse, that awakened by the still
+more astonishing intelligence that he did not have a girl with him was
+somewhat different--rather more akin to apprehension, it seemed to me.
+"Slant" was no more of a laggard on the love-path than the race-track,
+and the gay gossip of his amazing _amours_ was sipped with the tea of
+effete Apia and Papeete with scarcely less gusto than when it sauced the
+salt-horse of the pearling fleets of Port Darwin and Thursday Island.
+The lightning of his love was likely to strike anywhere, you were told,
+sometimes in the most unexpected places. There was that vixen of a
+_gin_--a straight Australian aboriginal black--whom he had risked his
+life for in cutting across a corner of the "Never-Never" when he ran
+away with her, only to have her turn and knife him later in Deli out of
+jealousy of a half-caste Portugee Timorese who had caught his fickle
+fancy. And--to take the other extreme--there was that little
+golden-haired doll of a niece of the Governor of Fiji, who fell heels
+over head in love with "Slant" after seeing him play polo in Suva, and
+who, when they packed her off for home to break up the disgraceful
+affair, made what was described as a really sincere attempt to go over
+the rail of the Auckland-bound Union packet. Then there was "Slant's"
+affair with that notorious pearl-pirate "Squid" Saunders' girl--the one
+the missionaries adopted and tried to reclaim, and who promised for a
+while to be such a credit to their teaching--with its ghastly sequel.
+And so it went.
+
+It was said that "Slant" boasted of having a son (he never kept track of
+girls, he said) and a saddle in every group west of the "hundred and
+eightieth." I daresay this was true, though those who put it _island_
+instead of group doubtless exaggerated. I had landed at several islands
+myself where I had been unable to borrow a saddle.
+
+Most of the little unpleasantnesses that disturbed the _dolce far
+niente_ atmosphere of Kai had their roots in the fact that the male
+population of the island was always a good jump ahead of the female,
+that there were not, in short, enough girls to go round. Under these
+conditions the advent of so notorious a "feminist" as Allen could not
+but be provocative of a certain anxiety, especially on the part of those
+who were (to use Jackson's terse if inelegant expression) "'arborin'
+'igh-class 'ens."
+
+"Don't you coves make no mistake," Jackson was quoted as saying;
+"'Slant' 'll be tykin' a myte stryght aw'y. Only question is 'oo's myte
+'e's goin' to tyke. If it was any bloke but that squar'-jawed Yank w'at
+'ad 'is grapplin' 'ooks slung into the plumage uv that perky peacock
+pullet, I'd 'ave no doubt w'at bird 'Slant' ud be baggin' an' draggin'
+'ome to broil. But--layin' low as 'e is fer a bit--I'm thinkin' it ain't
+_that_ presarve 'e'll be gunnin' in just yet aw'ile."
+
+"Stryght dope" again from old "Jack." Allen had his own reasons for not
+wishing his presence in Kai to be called too forcibly to the attention
+of the authorities in the British Solomons, where his latest escapade
+(something to do with the forcible recruiting of blacks) came pretty
+near the line where they were likely to ask for a gunboat from the
+Sydney station to aid in bringing him to book. Allen was by no means
+inadept of his fellow men, and he must have known that a showdown with a
+man of Bell's stamp--even though he had the best of it and copped the
+most desirable thing he ever set eyes on for his very own--could hardly
+fail to prove a clash that men would like to talk about, the inspiration
+of a tale that would shudder itself from Yap to Tasmania in delirious
+beach-comber jargon, setting tongues wagging about him at a time when
+publicity was quite the last thing that he wanted.
+
+Pipped as he was by the pullet's pulchritude (his own expression--he
+admitted as much to Jackson offhand) the cool-headed if hot-blooded
+Allen evidently decided to ride a waiting race for at least the first
+half or three-quarters, and so have something to draw on for the
+straightaway. "Easy starter but a hell of a finisher," was the popular
+appraisal of "Slant's" way of winning with a horse, and it was but
+natural that he should pin his faith to similar tactics where a woman
+was in the running. There's a lot in common between the two, and it is
+rarely indeed that a man who has a way with the one comes a cropper with
+the other.
+
+It has occurred to me, too, that a very wholesome respect for Bell as a
+man may have had a good deal to do with Allen's failure to force the
+running at the start in the matter of Rona. The steel of his own hard
+purposefulness could not have but struck sparks on the flint beneath the
+American's mask of suave reserve at their first meeting, and the
+Australian was far too intelligent not to sense that in Bell's Jovian
+spirit there was a force more compelling than anything in his own.
+Moreover, at riding, fighting and shooting--all that carried much weight
+when they judged a man in the Islands--Allen must have known that if the
+balance inclined either way, it was in the American's favour.
+
+It may well have been the sheer rugged, manly forcefulness of Bell that
+gave Allen pause, at least in those early weeks before the Australian's
+infatuation for the girl became an obsession in which his reason had no
+part. For years he had been taking life and property out of downright
+contempt for his victims. "I'm the better man, and therefore the more
+deserving," was sufficient excuse in his own mind for his most
+high-handed outrages. But in Bell--for almost the first time perhaps--he
+had met a man who had an "edge" on him--even his soaring ego could not
+prevent his recognizing that. This must have been plain to him even when
+he measured the Yankee with the yardstick of his own primitive code.
+Yes, I really think that Allen, in his innermost mind, rated Bell as a
+man who, like himself, had a "right" to the best of everything. I am
+even convinced that, for a while at least, he even tried to respect
+Bell's right to Rona.
+
+But do not let me leave the impression that there was one iota of
+physical fear of Bell in this attitude of Allen's. From what I had seen,
+and was to see, of the cool-eyed Antipodean that was unthinkable, even
+though he knew that the powerful ex-athlete could come pretty near to
+staving in his ribs with a single punch, and though he may have
+suspected that the Yankee was the deadlier man on the draw. I honestly
+believe that "Slant" Allen had no fear in his heart of anyone or
+anything under heaven. At that time, I mean; what came to him later is
+another matter.
+
+"Slant" ran true to Jackson's "dope sheet" in the matter of "tykin' a
+myte," though, but it was done quite decently and in order--that is, as
+such things go in the Islands. He put up with "Quill" Partington (an old
+pal) for a fortnight, and then, when "Quill's" lyric spirit led him to
+run over to Malaite in search of a queer native banjo that someone had
+told him the bush niggers of the interior of that island made, strings
+and all, from the wild boar, "Slant" simply stayed on to "look after the
+pigs and chickens" (as he told them at Jackson's) and, incidentally,
+Mary Regan. Mary came from Norfolk Island, and claimed lineal descent
+from the mutineers of the "Bounty." Certainly she looked the part--of a
+descendant of mutineers, I mean. She had specialized in unhappy love
+affairs, and showed it. She had a thin, bony, angular frame, a voice
+like the wail of a cracked fog-horn, and a temper "calid enough for
+cooking purposes," as "Quill" described it. "Quill," who had developed a
+taste for curries and hot seasonings while living in India, claimed that
+the reason he had put up with Mary for so long was because of the saving
+she enabled him to effect in _paprika_.
+
+How "Slant"--straight meat-eating and unpampered of palate as he
+was--hit it off with the mercurial Mary no one seemed to know. At any
+rate, I feel sure that he found her "condimental" disposition useful as
+a counter-irritant against the rising fever of his passion for Rona,
+something which, though he kept it under astonishingly good outward
+control, had been burning with increasing heat from the very first time
+he saw her. He confessed that to me later. Curbed passion, like wounded
+pride, if it cannot find outward expression, bites inward. With all his
+despicable record well in mind, I still cannot help thinking with a
+certain admiration of the game bluff the rascal put up during those six
+or eight weeks that the enchantment of Rona worked within him, of the
+gay, devil-may-care smile that so successfully masked the writhings of
+his racked spirit. First and last, there was something about the
+fellow--I think it must have been his flaming courage--that attracted me
+strongly in spite of all that I knew, and all that I came to hold,
+against him.
+
+Since Kai held no regular intercourse with any of the surrounding
+islands, the news that the plague--a pernicious form of bubonic--had
+broken out and was making terrible ravages among both the bush and
+saltwater niggers of the Solomons was received with no especial interest
+on the beach, save perhaps by those who were wont now and then to take a
+flyer in "black ivory." The labour-recruiting trade--itself almost the
+only medium through which the pest had been spread--was hard hit of
+course; indeed, had there been anything like adequate control of the
+pernicious traffic at this time, it would have been suspended entirely
+until all of the islands from which blacks were being taken, or to which
+they were being returned, were able to present something approximating
+clean bills of health.
+
+Since this was not done, however, the only check on the movement of
+blacks--infected or otherwise--was the possible reluctance of the
+masters of ships engaged in the trade to take the risk of carrying them.
+And since the average black-birding skipper lived as a matter of course
+with a gun in one hand, his life in the other, and the devil's tow-line
+between his teeth, it was hardly to be expected that a little thing like
+the spectre of the "Black Death" looming up on the windward horizon was
+going to make him reef much canvas. The "Black Death" in another form
+would ambush him sooner or later anyhow. With niggers waiting to settle
+accounts with him in every bay it was only a matter of time at the best.
+Why worry about a few cases of a disease that might not kill him even if
+he did get it? Heave in and get under way! That was about the way the
+black-birder looked at it, and he went right on scattering infected
+niggers around the South Seas like a cook stirring raisins into a
+pudding.
+
+But in the secluded and peaceful haven of Kai lagoon they reckoned that
+they had little to fear from the epidemic whatever happened elsewhere.
+Let the plague and the heathen rage for all they cared. They were their
+own quarantine officers, and, until the "Black Death" ceased to stalk in
+the neighbouring islands, "No Visitors" was the order of the day. All
+very simple and efficient--in theory. Covered every possible
+contingency--just about.
+
+I had spent several colourful days once--getting about from island to
+island in the New Hebrides--with red-haired old Mike Grogan on the _Cora
+Andrews_, and had heard from that hard-fisted giant's own lips something
+of the grim balances checked against his life in practically every
+black-birding island of Melanesia. A black's home bay holds a
+labour-recruiting skipper responsible for the man's safe return at the
+end of his contract time, and if he does not come back they figure that
+the only fair way to even up the score is by killing the captain of the
+ship which took him away. Grogan calculated that he would have to be
+killed something like one hundred and forty times to make a clean sheet
+of all the accounts thus reckoned against him. He took a sort of grim
+pleasure in running over the items of the various tallies, but always
+ended with: "B'gorra, the devils'll be gittin' me yit!" He was convinced
+that it would be a "cutting-out" party that would do for him in the end,
+and I have no doubt that he fought over in his mind that final bloody
+showdown every night he stood the "graveyard" watch alone. A sudden
+volley from the bush, his whaleboat caught in a swarming rush of blacks,
+his crew disabled or deserting, and himself alone battling it out
+single-handed with the niggers at the last.... It was something like
+that he expected for a grand finale, and all the "fighting Irish" in him
+yearned for it as a sunflower turns to the setting sun.
+
+"An' it ain't as if I won't be givin' the spalpeens a run for their
+money, me bhoy," he had cried one afternoon, clapping me on the shoulder
+where I swayed with him to the plungings of the _Cora_ in a nasty
+cross-swell. "An', b'gorra, it's a way to die after a man's own
+heart--shootin' an' clubbin' into a mob o' niggers out under God's own
+sky!"
+
+Full as my mind was of other things on that accursed day of which I am
+about to write, I could not help but think of these words when they told
+me at Jackson's that old Mike's fighting spirit had passed on a windless
+midnight, and while Mike himself was jack-knifed over the _Cora's_
+wheel, spitting blood and curses, and imploring the devil to quit tying
+knots in his tortured guts with a red-hot pitchfork.
+
+What little we heard of how things came to go wrong with the _Cora_ in
+the first place fell from the blackening lips of her "Agent" (as the
+recruiter is called), who managed to reach the beach of Kai in a
+whaleboat, and who did not go into a delirium until a half-hour before
+he died that evening. She was packed to the hatches with "return" boys
+from Samoa. Although the plague had been claiming a very heavy toll
+among the Melanesian blacks of the coco plantations of Upolou, Grogan
+decided to take a chance at making the Solomons with a load which, on
+account of the risk, was offered him at double rates. They would have
+made it all right, the Agent thought, had not the southerly gale which
+blew them a long way out of their course been followed by many days of
+calms and alternating winds. Grogan's softness in trying to doctor the
+first case of plague--instead of following the customary practice, cruel
+but effective, of shooting the infected black (doomed anyhow) and
+throwing the body to the sharks--was probably responsible for the
+ghastly sequel. The blacks fell sick by dozens, until at last the
+Skipper--doubtless already in the first throes of the disease
+himself--ordered every living man except the surviving members of the
+crew driven below and battened under hatch. Grogan died that night and
+the mate the following morning.
+
+The only white man remaining was the Agent, and he, obsessed with a
+life-long horror of being buried at sea, steered the best course he
+could for the nearest island. The _Cora_, luckily heading into the
+treacherous reef-beset passage at the turn of the tide, dropped her hook
+in Kai lagoon in the first flush of the dawning of the next day.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V
+
+                            A SHIP OF DEATH
+
+
+With a good many days of my life to which I cannot look back without
+a blush of shame, I write deliberately when I say that the one
+ushered in by the raucous grind of the _Cora Andrews'_ chain running
+through its hawse-pipe as she let go anchor a couple of cables'
+lengths off Kai beach, stands alone in the horror and the painfulness
+of its memories. It is characteristic of all but the most degraded of
+beach-combers--doubtless their general contempt of life has much to do
+with it--that "once in a while" they "can finish in style"; that, on a
+showdown, they are usually there with the goods. I had always felt sure
+that, in a pinch, I could force myself to come through in the same
+way--the thought had gilded many a slough of despond for me. Well, this
+day, I had my chance and funked it--funked it clean, as a yellow dog
+slinks from a fight with its tail between its legs, as an underbred
+hunter refuses a jump. Oh yes, I had an excuse. "Seeing green" is next
+thing to "seeing yellow." Almost anyone knows that. But I had thought
+that there was enough red blood left in me to make it possible for me to
+take the bit in my teeth and finish like a thoroughbred at the last. But
+there was not. That was the thought which had made the ghastly tragedy
+even more tragical to me, which made a mockery of the triumph which I
+might otherwise have felt when, first Australia and then Europe,
+acclaimed me as the greatest marine painter of the decade.
+
+For several days previous to the coming of the _Cora Andrews_ I had
+been slipping up pretty badly on my "absinthe reform" program. It was
+largely the fault, I think, of a positively infernal spell of weather.
+The ozone-laden trade winds, falling light after a spell of low
+barometer, had finally failed altogether. Kai was lapped in sluggish
+moisture-saturated airs that clung like a wet blanket. The Gargantuan
+popcorn-like piles of the trade clouds were replaced by strata of
+miasmic mists which awakened all the latent fevers in a man's body and
+mind. The sea, slatily slick of surface, heaved in oily, indolent
+smoothness, sliding over the reef without sound or foam. The brooding,
+ominous sullenness was all-pervading, oppressive with sinister
+suggestion.
+
+Everyone on the island was drinking heavily, and mostly alone. No tipsy
+choruses boomed out from under the sounding-board of Jackson's
+sheet-iron roof. Even "Slant" Allen failed to appear for his wild
+end-of-the-afternoon dashes up and down the beach. Rona dropped in
+languidly one afternoon to say that Bell was tilting the bottle more
+frequently than she had ever known him to do before, and that for three
+days he had missed his early morning plunge from the reef.
+
+"Too much walkee with Jo'nnee Walkah, Whitnee," she punned in a feeble
+flicker of pleasantry. "I veh-ry much worree along Bel-la."
+
+She needn't have worried, though. _He_, at least, had the stuff in him
+for a proper finish.
+
+It was only to be expected that I should seek solace in a time like this
+by snuggling closer than ever into the enfolding arms of the "Green
+Lady." That fickle jade was at her best--and her worst. Never had she
+winged me to loftier pinnacles of sensuous delight; never had she
+dropped me to profounder depths of horror and despond. The night before
+the _Cora_ came marked a new "high"; also a new "low." I dropped like a
+plummet straight from a pea-green grotto full of lilies of the valley,
+maiden's hair ferns and ambrosia-breathed houri to the fire-scorched
+cliffs ringing the mouth of the Bottomless Pit. I knew that Pit of old.
+Most of the early hours of my mornings for the last five years had been
+spent in trying to keep from being pushed into it.
+
+But this time, though, it looked as if they were going to get away with
+it. Failing to break my grip (I always managed to hang on somehow), they
+had tried new tactics. They were pushing in the side of the Pit itself
+so as to carry me with it. I felt the relentless creeping of the ledge
+on which I struggled to maintain precarious footing. If I could only
+push back into the rock ... through it ... out to the air! Nothing could
+stand against the mighty heave I gave with my shoulders. The cliff
+parted with a great rip-roar of rending, and I reeled back, back,
+straight through--the pandanus siding of my hut. An instant before a
+nigger had knocked off the shackle of the _Cora's_ anchor chain. The
+unchecked run of forty-odd fathoms of rusty iron links through a
+hawse-pipe is very like in sound to the rending of a rocky cliff--that
+is, to a man in an absinthe nightmare.
+
+That violent awakening did not bring me straight back to normal by any
+means. You never come out of the "green horrors" that way, unless, of
+course, you fall into water, or set fire to the house, or do something
+else that calls for instant action. You usually come out by gradual
+stages, each successive one marked by a shade more of the earth-earthy
+than the last.
+
+In this instance my fall only changed the spirit of my nightmare. I was
+by no means out of the woods, either. I had backed away from the Mouth
+of the Pit all right, but what brought that Ship of Death--black and
+sinister she was against the bloody redness of the infernal
+sunrise--unless it was to take me there again? I _knew_ that it was a
+real ship. I _knew_ those black things festooned along its rails were
+real dead men. I _knew_ that the horrible reek which presently came
+pouring in over the oily water to penetrate my contracted nostrils was
+the real smell of rotting flesh. I _knew_ that I was looking out at Kai
+lagoon, and from the door of my own hut. I _knew_ these things, just as
+I _knew_ it was real blood I saw and tasted when I bit my finger to
+prove that I knew them.
+
+But it was still as in a dream that I became aware of an erratically
+rowed whaleboat pulling away from the Death Ship and making for the
+beach. It was with an agreeable sense of relief that I noted that it was
+apparently heading for the quay rather than in my direction. Drawing
+near, it sheered away from the weed-slippery landing and went full-tilt
+for the beach. A man--a big man, bare of legs and of chest, wearing only
+a red _sulu_--ran down to meet it. It seemed no more than a perfectly
+natural development of the ghastly pantomime that the big man should
+raise a revolver and shoot one of the black rowers when the latter
+jumped over the gunwale of the whaleboat and started to bolt up the
+beach. I saw the flash from the revolver, saw the fugitive crumple and
+fall, and the sharp report, impacting on the side of my sheet-iron
+rain-water tank, slammed against my ear-drums with a shattering "whang."
+
+That close-at-hand shot had the effect of shocking me back a notch or
+two more nearer normal; but, nerve-shattered as I always was at the end
+of a night, it was something very akin to the abject terror that gripped
+me as I backed away from the Brink of the Pit which now impelled me to
+"back away" from the new menace. Seizing my painting things from sheer
+force of habit, I slunk off through the long early morning shadows of
+the coco palm boles, not to stop until I came out upon the broken coral
+of the steep-shelving leeward beach of the island. It was as far as I
+could go without swimming.
+
+Here Laku, my Tonga boy, found me toward noon. The coffee from the flask
+he brought was the first thing to pass my lips since I had poured my
+last drink the night before. It steadied me somewhat, but my nerves
+still refused to react. The shock of the morning had been too much for
+them. I realized that Kai had a mighty knotty problem on its hands with
+that shipload of dead and dying niggers in the lagoon (Laku had told me
+it was the _Cora_, and something of what the trouble was), and it took a
+lot of screwing before I got my courage up to a point where I could
+force my reluctant feet to carry me back to shoulder my share of the
+responsibilities.
+
+I was still streaking and dabbing at my canvas at three o'clock, and it
+must have been nearly an hour later before I packed up and started back
+toward the village. I burned that bizarre rectangle of colour-slashed
+canvas on the very first occasion (which was not until a day or two
+later) that I had a chance to stand off and look at it objectively.
+There was revealed in it too much of the utter unmanliness which marked
+my conduct on this most shameful day of my life to make it a pleasant
+thing to have around. For me to have kept it would have been like a
+man's framing and hanging the excoriation of the judge who had sentenced
+him for some despicable crime.
+
+What had transpired in the village up to the moment of my return at the
+end of the afternoon I must set down as I learned of it later.
+Everything considered, it seems to me that Kai--with one or two notable
+exceptions--behaved very creditably in an extremely trying emergency.
+Awakened when the _Cora's_ anchor was let go, a number of men had run
+out to the beach, from where their glasses quickly gave them a pretty
+good idea of the state of affairs aboard the luckless black-birder. Then
+they got together at Jackson's--the lot of them in their pajamas or
+_sulus_, just as they had tumbled out of their sleeping mats--to decide
+what was to be done. The majority at first seemed inclined to stand by
+their predetermined plan of shooting the first, and every man from a
+plague-infested ship that tried to land on the beach. But at this
+juncture Doc Wyndham, calling their attention to the fact that a
+whaleboat had already put away from the _Cora_, suggested that they wait
+and learn just how things stood before starting off gunning.
+
+"I'm with you as far as shooting any nigger that tries to break
+quarantine goes," he said, "but I'm dam'd if I'll stand by and see
+anyone take a pot shot at Mike Grogan, or any other sick white man, for
+that matter. Old Mike nursed me through a spell of 'black-water' once at
+Port Darwin, and if he is in that boat I dope it it's up to me to tote
+him home to my shack and do what I can for him. If he can't clamber out
+I'm going to wade in and carry him back to the beach, so you'll have to
+shoot the two of us if you shoot at all. But I don't think you will. I'm
+not asking any of you chaps to have anything to do with the stunt. You
+needn't touch him. I'll take him home and swear not to budge from there
+till the thing's over one way or the other. After that I'll put myself
+in a ten-day quarantine. Moreover, I won't be expecting attention from
+any white man or nigger on the island in case the luck goes against me
+and I catch the pest myself. It's my own little game and I won't stand
+for any interfering in it."
+
+That was the gist of Doc Wyndham's remarks as Jackson outlined them to
+me the next day. They met with hearty assent from all of the dozen or
+more present, except on the score of letting the Doc have the job all to
+himself. He turned down every one of the volunteer nurses, however,
+saying it was his own kettle of fish and that he'd have to stew it in
+his own way. He even insisted on meeting the boat alone, urging that
+there was no use in multiplying the points of possible "plague contact."
+
+So it must have been the distinguished surgeon from Guy's that I saw
+shoot the bolting black that morning. Had I continued to watch, instead
+of bolting myself at that juncture, I would have seen him wade out, lift
+a man tenderly from the stern-sheets of the whaleboat, and start
+carrying the limp body up the beach to where a spreading bread-fruit
+tree shaded the door of the sheet-iron shack which he was wont
+humorously to refer to as his "professional, social and domestic
+headquarters for Melanesia." Following that, I would have seen a bunch
+of motley-clad figures prance down and start menacing the irresolute
+boat-pullers with flourished revolvers, forcing the frightened blacks to
+back off and begin splashing their wobbly way out to the _Cora_.
+
+Wyndham's conduct all through struck me as rather fine, especially for a
+man who was a convict of three continents and two hemispheres.
+Disappointed in finding his friend Grogan in the whaleboat, on learning
+that the latter and his mate were already dead, Doc just as cheerfully
+set about paying to the Agent the debt he felt he owed to old Mike.
+Before entering his house, he called to his girl--a saucy little Samoan
+named Melita, who had gone right on sleeping through all the
+racket--ordering her to make a hurried departure by the back door and
+not to return until he sent for her. The Doc was never a man to let
+sentiment interfere with business, Jackson opined.
+
+Making the doomed man as comfortable as possible in his own canvas
+folding bed, Wyndham deferred giving an opiate until he had gained such
+information as he could of how things were on the _Cora_. Then, after
+communicating (from a safe distance) what he had learned to a delegation
+from executive headquarters at Jackson's, he nailed a red _sulu_ to his
+front door as a danger signal and disappeared behind the bars of his
+self-imposed quarantine.
+
+I may as well state here that Wyndham--thanks, doubtless, to the
+precautions which he, as a medical man, would have known how to
+take--side-stepped the plague completely, quite as completely, indeed,
+as he sidestepped the Thursday Island customs authorities a year or so
+later, when a half season's shipment of pearls from Makua Reef, Limited,
+disappeared as into thin air.
+
+Of the information Wyndham gleaned from the Agent before giving the
+latter a shot of morphine to relieve his agony and mercifully hasten the
+inevitable end, the most important as affecting Kai's action was that
+something over a hundred blacks had been battened down in the schooner's
+forecastle and 'midships hold for seventy-two hours, with nothing but a
+couple of stubby wind-sails feeding them air. The dead had all been
+cleared out before this was done, but there were a lot of bad cases
+among the living who were driven or thrown down the hatches. By the
+stench, the Agent knew that some of these had already died; but that
+many still had life in their bodies he judged by the unabated vigour of
+the howling.
+
+The most reassuring news passed on by the dying man was that Ranga-Ro,
+Grogan's gigantic Malay Bo'sun, had remained in charge of the _Cora_,
+and that he appeared to have the black crew (only three or four of them,
+luckily, had succumbed to the plague so far) well in hand. That
+brightened the outlook a good deal, for what Kai had feared above all
+else was a general breakout and stampede, which might inundate the
+island with plague-infected niggers, crazy beyond all possibility of
+control.
+
+Ranga, who claimed to have had at one time or another every tropical
+disease on record, was--or believed himself to be--a plague immune. He
+was not in the least worried over the responsibilities that had fallen
+on him, and could be counted upon, the Agent thought, to see the game
+through. The only trouble was that he couldn't navigate, so that if the
+_Cora_ was going to be taken to a port where any real relief could be
+obtained, she would have to have at least one competent white officer.
+Would Kai furnish that officer? was the question up before the meeting
+called at Jackson's to decide what should be done with the ill-fated
+black-birder.
+
+This was rather a larger assemblage than the one which had gathered at
+dawn, called up by the rattle of the _Cora's_ anchor-chain. The latter
+was mostly made up of the "inside push," "Jackson's Own," as they were
+sometimes alluded to, and that they were a dead game bunch of sports was
+attested by the way in which they had volunteered in a body to nurse for
+Doc Wyndham. The later and more representative meeting was hardly up to
+the earlier one on the score of quality. There were a few out-and-out
+rotters on the island, and about the worst of these was a typical
+Wooloofooloo larrikin from Sydney, whose name I have forgotten. As foul
+of tongue as of face, he was as sneaking and cowardly as a wild Malaite
+pup reared in a black-birder's galley. He it was who, with a smirk on
+his tattoo-defiled face, got up and suggested that the simplest way out
+of the difficulty was to "blow up an' burn the bloomin' 'ooker w'ere she
+lies. Cook the bloody niggers to a frizzle, pleg an' all." Give him a
+few sticks of dynamite and he'd pull off the bally job himself.
+
+The leering wretch, in his eagerness, pushed right out in front of
+gaunt-framed old Jackson, who was "presiding." "Wi'out battin' a
+blinker," as he told me later, that old Kalgoorlie outlaw took the
+proper and necessary action. His straight-from-the-hip kick doubled the
+miscreant up, breathless, speechless, upon the floor--the only floor of
+sawed boards in all Kai. He rather favoured that method when he had to
+throw a man out, Jackson explained, on account of the convenient parcel
+it made of him when lifted by the back of his belt.
+
+When Jackson called the meeting to order again and explained what word
+Wyndham had sent as to the lay of things on the _Cora_, "Froggy"
+Frontein, one of the escapes from Noumea, his Gallic soul aflame, popped
+up and volunteered to sail her to any non-French port in the Pacific.
+That brought a cheer for "Froggy," but the enthusiasm died down a bit
+when it transpired that the only ships the gallant ex-counterfeiter had
+ever boarded in his life were the steamer which deported him from
+Marseilles and the cutter in which he--buried under copra in its
+hold--had escaped from New Caledonia.
+
+More competent volunteers were not lacking, however, and several of
+these were trying to urge their respective claims at once when "Slant"
+Allen's magnetic glance drew the eye of the chairman and he was given
+the floor.
+
+Calling several of the more insistent of the volunteers by name, "Slant"
+asked if it had occurred to them that the nearest port which had
+quarantine facilities equal to handling more than a dozen cases of
+infectious disease was in Australia--probably Townsville, but possibly
+Brisbane. They admitted that they hadn't thought that far ahead.
+
+"In that case," Allen cut in with, "it may be in order for me to point
+out that there's not a one of the whole mob of you young hopefuls that
+wouldn't be pinched and clapped in the brig just as soon as they saw
+your face and recollected what it was you sloped for in the first
+place."
+
+That shot made some impression, though "Crimp" Hanley seemed to think he
+had countered not uneffectively when he asked: "Who in hell thinks he's
+going to last long enough to get her there?"
+
+What "Slant" had got up to say, he went on without deigning to engage
+the logical "Crimp" in argument, was that there was one first-class
+sailor in Kai against whom nothing was booked in Australia, a man,
+moreover, who had been known to be looking for a command for a number of
+months. He referred to Captain Bell, who, he regretted to say, had not
+been summoned to their meeting. If it was agreeable to those present, he
+would be glad to wait upon Captain Bell and acquaint him with the facts
+in connection with the emergency which confronted them all. In the event
+that Captain Bell should see fit to assert his claim to this place of
+honour, as he had no doubt would be the case, he--"Slant"--was in favour
+of giving that claim precedence over all others, both because of Captain
+Bell's well-known ability as a navigator (his late slip, they would all
+admit, was due to circumstances quite beyond his control), and because
+he was the only competent man available who would not have to step out
+of the frying pan into the fire on making port in Australia. What was
+more, in case Captain Bell felt that he needed a mate for a voyage which
+could not but be beset with much danger and many difficulties,
+he--"Slant"--wished to take the occasion to put in his claim for that
+berth. He had been in bad in Sydney, he had to admit, but it was nothing
+very serious, and he felt assured that, in a pinch, there were certain
+influences which could be counted upon to get him clear. No fear that he
+would not be seen in the Islands again in due course.
+
+Considering what "Slant" was really driving at, you'll have to admit
+that this was put with consummate adroitness. The meeting voted by
+acclamation to allow him to carry out his suggestion, adjourning in the
+meantime to await developments. It was significant, in the light of what
+transpired later, that Allen flatly refused the offer of Jackson and two
+or three others to go along to Bell's with him and "make a delegation of
+it."
+
+No suspicion was aroused by the fact that Allen, on the way to Bell's
+shack, stopped in at his own for five or ten minutes. Indeed, nothing
+that he did at any time awakened anybody's suspicions--among the beach
+push, I mean.
+
+When "Slant" came out of Bell's at the end of half an hour, he was
+accompanied by the American, the latter apparently leaning heavily on
+the Australian's shoulder. This occasioned little surprise, as Bell, who
+had hardly been seen for the last three days, was believed to have been
+drinking heavily. Instead of returning round the curve of the beach to
+report at Jackson's, as it had been assumed he would, "Slant" led the
+way to a little dugout canoe lying in the shade of the coco palms in
+front of Bell's and started pulling it down to the water's edge. When it
+was seen that the slender Australian was doing most of the tugging,
+while the big American seemed to be blundering about to small purpose,
+it was remarked at Jackson's that Bell, for the first time since he hit
+the beach of Kai, appeared to have stowed enough booze to submerge his
+"Plimsol" and affect his trim. At the same time it was admitted that the
+Yankee was a wonderful "weight-carrier"--nothing like him ever seen in
+the Islands. It was thus that they mixed nautical and racing idiom at
+Jackson's Sporting Club.
+
+When the little canoe was finally launched, Bell, helped by Allen,
+stumbled forward and slithered down in the bow. The Australian plied his
+paddle from the stern. It was remarked that the dugout's progress was
+very slow, but "Slant's" leisurely paddling was attributed to the care
+he had to take on account of the trim Bell's lopsided sprawl gave the
+cranky craft.
+
+By the time the canoe slid in alongside the _Cora_, Bell appeared to
+have collapsed completely. Lifting carefully by the shoulders, Allen was
+seen to raise the inert body in the bow enough for a hulking yellow
+giant--easily recognizable as the lusty Ranga-Ro--to throw a mighty arm
+around its waist. Then, with his other arm looped round a stanchion, he
+swung his burden high above the rail and into the arms of two of the
+black crew. Thereafter nothing was seen of the _Cora's_ new skipper for
+an hour or more.
+
+"Doosed smart loadin'," was Jackson's laconic comment on the teamwork
+Allen and Ranga had displayed in hoisting Bell's husky frame out of a
+wobbling canoe and up over the _Cora's_ four feet of freeboard topped by
+five strands of "nigger wire."
+
+Allen did not go aboard, but continued to lie alongside for ten or
+fifteen minutes, evidently giving extended orders to the Malay bos'n.
+Immediately the canoe pushed off, great activity was observable among
+the crew, who were evidently rushing preparations for getting under way
+before the ebb began to race through the passage.
+
+The rate at which Allen paddled back to the beach was in marked contrast
+to his leisurely progress on the way out. Grounding the canoe on the
+beach near where it had been launched, he made directly for the door of
+Bell's house and bolted inside. Reappearing almost immediately, he came
+on along the beach at a more deliberate gait.
+
+At Jackson's he told them that Bell had jumped at the chance of taking
+the _Cora_ to Townsville.... Said it might be the means of getting his
+master's certificate back in case he pulled it off all right. But
+he--"Slant"--couldn't allow a white man to tackle a job like that alone.
+He had only landed to pick up his kit and a few things Bell wanted. He
+was going to get back aboard the _Cora_ before they began to shorten in.
+It was going to be a ticklish job, fetching the passage from where she
+lay in those fluky airs.
+
+Leaving Jackson's, Allen went to his own (or rather "Quill"
+Partington's) house, where, according to what I heard from Mary Regan a
+couple of days later, he took several drinks but did not do anything
+toward throwing his things together. A half-hour later he was seen
+hurrying along the beach to Bell's again, and when he came out from
+there it was in the company of a girl--plainly the "Peacock." Paddled by
+a third party, who came upon the scene at this juncture, these two went
+off to the schooner, boarding her just as she filled away on the first
+tack of the almost dead beat to the entrance of the narrow seaward
+passage. For all they knew on the beach, Allen was carrying out his
+program (with the little incidental of Rona--doubtless taken along at
+the last moment by way of a surprise for Bell--thrown in), just as he
+had outlined it to them. They were not hurt by his failure to say
+good-bye. They were not strong for the gentler amenities in the Islands,
+anyhow.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VI
+
+                        COMPULSORY VOLUNTEERING
+
+
+As a matter of fact, however, there had been a very considerable slip-up
+in "Slant's" carefully doped slate. That was plain from a number of
+little things which sunk into even my absinthe-addled brain in the few
+minutes I spent in his and Rona's company while paddling them off to the
+_Cora_. How staggering a slip-up it must have been for him I was not
+able to figure until I got my nerves under control the following day.
+
+I was still far from pulled together when I came back to the village
+after my day of hiding (for that's what it amounted to) on the other
+side of the island. With my head twanging like an overstrung banjo, I
+was feverishly anxious to get home and seek relief in the only thing I
+knew would relax the tension of my breaking nerves. I had told Laku to
+"putem littl' fella pickaninny in rock-a-bye belonga him" just as soon
+as he got back to the shack. This was a long-standing joke between us,
+and I knew that he would interpret aright this _beche-de-mer_ order to
+"put the baby in its cradle" as a strict injunction to lay a certain
+long green bottle in a little basket of porous coco husk, which,
+dampened and hung in a draught, answered the purpose of a crude
+refrigerator. The vision of the slender green trickle I should shortly
+pour from the dewy fresh lip of that bottle was drawing me on as the
+thought of the oasis with its fountain draws the thirsting desert
+traveller.
+
+Between horrors fancied and real--from my struggle at the mouth of the
+Bottomless Pit to the coming of the Ship of Death--my nerves had
+suffered a number of trying shocks since the dawning of that accursed
+day; but the one that came nearest to bowling me over I had still to
+receive. I had _known_ there was a Bottomless Pit; I had _known_ there
+was a Death Ship; I had _known_ they were shooting niggers on the beach.
+As each of these horrors was projected upon my vision in turn I had
+accepted their reality as a matter of course. Didn't I see them with my
+own eyes? Didn't I continue to see them after I had bitten my finger?
+But _Rona, with her arm and her peacock shawl thrown over "Slant"
+Allen's shoulder, coming out of Bell's house_.... No, that wouldn't
+do.... That was one thing they couldn't put over on me. My eyes must be
+playing tricks on my brain. I must be in even worse shape than I
+thought. Never before had my fancy conjured up a thing so utterly,
+impossibly absurd. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, I pulled up and started
+kicking the shin of one foot with the toe of the other. That was another
+little trick I had of proving whether or not I saw what I "saw."
+
+At the clink of the broken coral under my shuffling feet the girl turned
+her head in my direction, but, far from releasing "Slant's" neck from
+her embrace, she only drew the lanky Australian closer with her right
+arm, while with her left she beckoned me imperiously.
+
+"Whitnee, come alonga this side, washy-washy!" Her thin clear voice cut
+the air like the swish of a rapier.
+
+It was, strangely enough, the fact that she lapsed into the vulgarest of
+_beche-de-mer_, rather than the eagerness of her gesture, that drove
+home to my wandering wits the fact that Rona was confronted with
+difficulties, that she needed help. Verging on nervous and physical
+collapse as I was (and as I knew I would continue to be until I had
+gulped my first steadying draught from the cool green bottle), the
+realization that something concrete was demanded brought me instantly
+out of the half-trance in which I had walked since dawn. Still a sorry
+enough specimen, I was at least sufficiently in hand not to need any
+more finger-bitings or shin-kickings to know the difference between what
+seemed real and what was really real. Letting my easel go one way and my
+paint box the other, I hastened forward in answer to Rona's summons.
+
+"Katchem washy-washy one piecee boat," Rona began as I came up, her
+heaving breast, flushed face and flashing eyes revealing the emotion
+that held her in its grip.
+
+"Man-man; my word, what name this fella thing you do?" I interrupted
+between breaths, blurting mixed _pidgin_ and _beche-de-mer_ English of a
+brand to match the vile blend the girl had discharged at me.
+
+"I too much cross this fella 'Slan','" she started to explain. "Him too
+much--"
+
+"You'd think she was cross with me, Whitney, if you could see the way
+she's sticking me in the neck with her hat pin," Allen cut in, the
+half-sheepish, half-amused grin he had worn from the first broadening as
+he spoke.
+
+That was the first "straight" English to be spoken, and the words had
+the effect of reminding Rona that she had been speaking nothing but low
+jargon from the outset. For weeks she had been taking the greatest pains
+to avoid both of the weird volapuks in all her chats with me. Pulling
+herself together with an effort, she strove again to be a purist.
+
+"'Scuse me, Whit-nee," she chirruped, paying "Slant" for his sally with
+a prod that made him duck like a prize-fighter avoiding a straight-arm
+punch; "'scuse me, but I'm veh-ry mad. This bloody boundah he put
+_kor-klee_ in Bel-la's drink. He take Bel-la to schoonah. Now we all go
+off to schoonah. If Bel-la he dead, then I keel this boundah, 'Slan'.'
+You will do us the paddl'?--ple-ese, Whit-nee."
+
+There was a deal more that I would fain have been enlightened about, but
+my brain was clear enough now to understand the urgent necessity of
+getting off to the _Cora_ without delay. A drugged man (or a poisoned
+one--it was not until later that I learned how that strange essence of
+the wild Papuan fig might be expected to act) on a plague-infested
+black-birder looked like just about the last word in hopelessness; but
+(I told myself) if there was anything I could do for my friend, it was
+up to me to try to do it. Rona seemed to have some sort of plan in her
+head, though just what she was taking Allen along for I didn't quite
+twig at the moment.
+
+The funny part of it was that the Australian didn't seem particularly
+averse from going off to the schooner. Indeed, it was he who cut in to
+call Rona's attention to the fact that they were rushing preparations on
+the _Cora_ for getting under way, adding: "If you don't want to be left
+at the post I might suggest you whip up a bit." Even as he spoke the
+throbbing wail of a chantey came to our ears across the water, and I
+could just make out the blur of motion on the forecastle where a knot of
+niggers was circling round the capstan.
+
+"Washy-washy! Quick! quick! Whit-nee," implored Rona, leading the way,
+with Allen's head still in the crook of her arm, to the canoe; "we must
+make the great hur-ee."
+
+Luckily, the dugout, although Allen had left it pulled well up on the
+beach when he landed, was half awash through the rising of the tide, now
+just about to ebb. I launched it without difficulty. Still with her
+knife at "Slant's" neck, Rona made him enter ahead of her and crouch in
+the bottom of the canoe, well forward, while she seated herself on the
+sinnet-wrapped thwart immediately behind his hunched shoulders. When the
+unabashed rascal coolly leaned back and started to make himself
+comfortable with an arm thrown over her knee, the girl stiffened with a
+start of repulsion. It was more than a prick she gave him this time, for
+I saw the sudden swell of his jaw muscles wipe out the lines of his grin
+as his teeth set over a repressed oath.
+
+Pushing off, I slid gingerly along the port weatherboard until the canoe
+heeled just enough to bring a gaping hole in the starboard bow clear of
+the water that started to pour through it, and began to paddle
+cautiously inside the outrigger, the only place I could get at from
+where I sat. Our progress was, of course, slow as to speed and wobbly as
+to direction. Even at that, a good deal of water kept slopping in, and I
+couldn't blame Allen, who was sitting in it, for asking Rona if she
+minded if he baled a bit with his sun-helmet.
+
+Her only reply was another prod with the needlepointed _kris_. (I knew
+it was the little Jolo dagger, for I had seen it as she adjusted her
+shawl on sitting down). "Hur-ee, Whit-nee," she urged, quiveringly
+tense, and continued to keep her flaming gaze riveted on the schooner,
+where the latter, foot by foot, was moving up on her shortening chain.
+
+About halfway out Rona gave a start and a glad little cry. "I see
+Bel-la," she laughed. "He stand up by wheel. By jingo, he look--he look
+like he lick his weight in wile cats!"
+
+That had been the big Southerner's favourite expression when, glowing
+with the reaction from his deep, eye-opening dive from the reef, he
+would come prancing back to his door of a morning. The sight of his bare
+muscular torso, white as marble against the dingy folds of the
+half-hoisted mainsail, must have called up in the girl's mind the
+picture of Bell breezing in from his bath, and brought the tersely
+quaint phrase to her lips. As a matter of fact, there was no saying at
+that distance _how_ Bell looked; but it was good to see him on his feet,
+at any rate. Probably Rona had been mistaken about the poisoning.
+
+"I told you he was all right," Allen remarked drily, shifting a few
+inches to get clear of the water that was beginning to swish about his
+knees. "He was drunk--dead drunk; that's all. He began to buck up an
+hour ago. Looked through my glass and saw them dousing him with water.
+First thing he did was to take a drink (plenty of it aboard)--saw him
+tilt the bottle. Then he must have made them open up the hatches.
+There's more than the crew lining the rail there for'ard; besides--you
+don't think the slop-chute from the galley spills out the bait that's
+drawing those black fins, do you? I won't need to tell you they don't
+belong to chambered nautili out for an afternoon sail. There's a
+man-eating shark under every one of them. Can I lend you my binoculars?"
+
+He started to slip the strap of the powerful racing glasses over his
+neck, but desisted when Rona refused to clear the way by lifting the
+point of her dagger. Save for maintaining that one important little
+point of contact, she ignored him completely, and "Slant" seemed rather
+to resent the latter more than the former.
+
+"Well, if you don't want to use it, I suppose you won't mind if I have a
+bit of a look-see," he went on in half-assumed petulance. Rona replied
+with the usual prod, but interposed no further objection when he raised
+and began focussing the glasses.
+
+"Clubbing niggers on the fo'c'sl'," he commented presently, as signs of
+commotion were visible forward. "Skipper don't want 'em too thick on
+deck while he's getting under way, most likely."
+
+Then, a minute later: "Looks like you'll need an ice-breaker to clear a
+passage through those sharks, Whitney; or perhaps we can walk across
+their backs from the edge of the jam. Seem to be thick enough to give
+good solid footing."
+
+And again, shortly: "Chain almost straight-up-and-down, Whitney. Mudhook
+going to break out in a couple of minutes. Can't accelerate that 'long,
+long pull' of yours, can you? Looks as if they weren't planning to wait
+for us."
+
+It was a gruesome passage, that last hundred yards. The sharks were
+hardly as thick as Allen's picturesque hyperbole might have led one to
+believe, but there were undoubtedly more than a score of triangular
+dorsals slashing about in swift circles. But the sharks, for the most
+part, gave us a good berth. It was the things that _didn't_ get out of
+the way that came near to flooring me at the last--black, bloated
+bodies, floating face down, like logs awash, till the canoe struck them,
+then to roll shudderingly over and sweep you with the sightless gaze of
+their wide, staring eyes as you fended with the paddle. Rona, her
+flashing glances running back and forth over the schooner (following
+Bell, who appeared to be lending a hand now and then on sheet or
+halyard), seemed not to see the floating horrors around us. Allen's
+steely eyes met the corpses stare for stare, and looked them down. But
+upon me the horrors which passed the others by descended with full
+force. How I kept going is more than I can guess. But I did it. At last
+the loom of the _Cora's_ blistered starboard quarter cut off the seaward
+view, and I steadied the dugout in close to the upper line of her
+weed-foul copper sheathing.
+
+Apparently no notice whatever had been taken of us up to this time.
+Short-handed as he was, Bell was doubtless too busy to keep a lookout,
+while to the few niggers watching us through the wire the sight of a
+dugout carrying "two fella white marsters and one fella Mary" was of
+indifferent interest. All they cared about was getting away from the
+Death Ship, and they didn't need to be told that this "pickaninny boat"
+hadn't come to help forward their desires in that direction. Besides,
+the guard walking up and down behind them with a Lee-Enfield over his
+black shoulder had undoubtedly given them to understand that the first
+one to start over the side would be shot.
+
+It must have been the guard who reported us finally. Burning with
+impatience, Rona was just prodding up Allen and ordering him to clamber
+aboard and tell "Mistah Bell" she wanted to speak to him, when I heard
+the shout of "'Vast heavin'!" ring out, and presently a familiar tousled
+head was poked over the top of the barbed wire. (I should explain,
+perhaps, that three or four strands of "nigger wire" are run all the way
+round the rail of every labour-recruiting ship. This is done with a
+double purpose--to make it difficult for the blacks aboard to bolt,
+should the spirit move them, and to serve as a partial protection while
+at anchor against the always imminent attacks of the treacherous shore
+natives.)
+
+There was a look in Bell's face I had never seen there before. The old
+familiar furrows of dissipation showed deep around the mouth, but if he
+had been drinking heavily, there was nothing to indicate it. What struck
+me at once was his air of determination--I might almost say exaltation.
+His head was held high, his shoulders were thrown back, and he might
+have been treading the deck of a battle-ship as he swung up to the rail.
+Everything about him betokened the man who has taken a great resolve,
+and means to see it through if it kills him.
+
+Although I had heard no word of it up to that moment, I understood at
+once that Bell had taken command of the schooner, that he was going to
+try to sail her to some port where the plague-stricken blacks could be
+given medical attention and kept under control. It was like Bell to take
+on a job like that, I said to myself; but he would do it as a matter of
+course. It would never occur to him that there was any alternative, just
+as with an order in the Navy. There must be something more to account
+for that air of high resolve.... I couldn't help thinking that, and I
+was right. He let out what it was shortly.
+
+"It's right nice of you to come off to say good-bye, honey--and of you,
+too, Whitney," Bell called down genially; "but, as we'ah not quite what
+you'd call fixed fo' cawlahs, you'd bettah do it from wheah you a'. You,
+Mistah Allen, if you have fin'ly made up youah mind in the mattah of
+signin' up for the voyage, I reckon we can find accommodation fo' you.
+But fust, let me say that if you've got any mo' of that dope you put in
+my whisky stowed about youah puson, you'd best scuppah it befo' you
+climb abo'd. I doan quite twig what you did it fo', unless it was to
+dodge out of goin' yo'self, afta you had promised to help me see the job
+through. But now, seein' you've come off of youah own free will, I
+reckon I can fo'get that lil' slip, providin' it ain't repeated."
+
+Although Rona could hardly have known the exact meaning of "free will,"
+she caught the drift of Bell's remarks readily enough. "This rotten
+boundah" (bounder was the worst name she knew to call a man in "pure"
+English) "not come himself," the girl cut in shrilly, speaking for the
+first time. "I fetch him. See!" and she threw back the folds of the
+peacock shawl to reveal the bright wavy blade of her little _kris_
+boring into the hollow between Allen's right shoulder-blade and the
+corded column of his sinewy neck.
+
+"From the reef I see you an' this fella 'Slan''" (Allen's shoulder
+quivered under her designative prod) "go off to schoonah in boat," Rona
+went on, avoiding as well as she could in her excitement the jargons she
+knew Bell disliked so much. "Bime-by I see 'Slan'' come back--you stop
+schoonah. When I go home I smell'em _kor-klee_. You no sabe _kor-klee_,
+Bel-la. I sabe him too much long time. I smell _kor-klee_ in one
+glass--not in othah. Pu-retty soon this boundah 'Slan'' come house. He
+say: 'Bel-la go off in schoonah. Now I stop with you all time!' Then I
+sabe what for _kor-klee_ veh-ry queeck. So I katch'em this fella by neck
+an' fetch'm off schoonah. I say myself: 'If Bel-la dead, I keel this
+boundah; if Bel-la not dead, _he_ keel him.' Heah he is, Bel-la--you fix
+him pu-lenty. Then we go home-side."
+
+"So that's what upset the appl'-ca't?" There was nothing of the wrath of
+the jealous male in Bell's deep, chesty laugh. "Well, I'm not blamin'
+Mistah Allen fo' fallin' in love with you, honey. No propah man could
+quite help doin' that, as I see it. Just the same, I can't quite approve
+of his way of goin' about it, no' the occasion he took fo' it, eethah.
+So you brought him off fo' me to execute, honey. That's right rich.
+Youah a brick, you shuah a'. But I won't be killin' him, honey--no,
+hahdly that. I'm just goin' to sign him on as Fust Mate of the _Cora
+Andrews_, just as he 'lowed he do at the beginnin'. Of co'se I won't be
+goin' home with you, honey. Doan you see I'm in command of this heah
+ship?"
+
+A sudden shiver shook Rona's tense frame at those last words. Half
+rising, she started to speak, but Bell cut her short with lifted hand
+and went on himself.
+
+"Mistah Allen," he said, addressing himself now to the huddled figure in
+the bottom of the canoe; "I said I was goin' to sign you on an' take you
+with me. Let me qualify those wuds just a trifle. I'll pumit you to go
+if you'll agree in advance to my tums. I might explain that theah's two
+dif'rent views in the mattah of the best way of avoidin' catchin' the
+pleg. One is, that you must keep strictly soba--straight teetotal; the
+otha--diametrically opposed to the fust--is that you must keep dead
+drunk--pif'ucated. Now I reckon that it's goin' to take at least one
+white man to sail this hookah all the way to Australyuh; that is to say,
+at least one white man must steah cleah of the pleg fo' the entahprise
+to be crowned with success. But as theah ain't no suah data as to which
+is the safe an' sutin way to 'complish this, I figa theah's nothin' else
+to do but sta't with two white men, and let one of 'em try the fust
+purscripshun an' the otha the second.
+
+"Now (tho' I must admit it's a bit high-handed on my pa't) I've already
+picked the one I'm goin' to take; so, if you elect to sign on, Mistah
+Allen, you'll have to take the otha. Theah's a dozen cases of whisky
+abo'd--not Jawny Wakah, to be suah, but still fayah to middlin' cawn
+jooce--an' I had to toss off a tumblah o' two of it as an antidote fo'
+that dream-provokin' dope you wished onto me. But"--Bell's head was up
+and his shoulders back again--"_that's the last_." His square jaw
+snapped shut on the words like a sprung wolf-trap. Now I understood.
+_That_ was his Great Resolve.
+
+Bell paused, and in the waiting silence I became aware for the first
+time of the low rumble of groaning from the bowels of the ship.
+
+"So you'll see, Mistah Allen"--the corners of his mouth relaxed into a
+smile as Bell resumed--"that since the Skippah's plumped to try the
+'soba man' preventative, theah's nothin' left for the Mate to do but to
+fight off the pleg by the 'drunk man' method. Theah'll only be two of
+us, you see, an' it's theahfo' up to us to hedge ouah bets an' play
+safe. But you won't be havin' to go if you ain't hankerin' after it. I'm
+not (in spite of what the way you've been 'shanghaied' by--by Miss Rona
+might lead you to think) runnin' a press-gang. It's entiahly up to you
+as to whethah o' not you want to sail as the drunken Mate of the soba
+Skippah of a black-birdah full of pleg-rotten niggahs. You see, Mistah
+Allen"--the whimsical grin broadened--"you see I'm not tryin' to luah
+you on by paintin' the picture any brightah than it is. 'Drunk Mate of a
+soba Skippah'--do you get that?"
+
+Allen made no reply, that is, not directly. Raising his hand to fend the
+expected prod from Rona, he wriggled halfway round and started to speak
+to me, where, in the stern, I still paddled the canoe gently against the
+turning tide and held it close alongside the schooner. For an instant I
+was puzzled with the look on the side-face he presented, but almost at
+once saw the reason for it. For the first time in my recollection the
+thin upper lip was uncurled by its mocking smile. By that, I thought I
+could gauge something of the extent of his slip-up. Yet--if I could have
+read the man's mind--I would have known that it was something even
+deeper than the wreck of personal hopes that had sobered "Slant" Allen.
+What it was I learned later.
+
+"Whitney," he began, the words coming huskily from the dryness of his
+throat; "I don't dope a man's chances for finishing inside the distance
+flag in this little Handicap of Captain Bell's as better than a hundred
+to one. That's long odds to be on the short end of when a man's life is
+his stake. I don't give a damn about my life. Anyone will tell you that.
+I've thrown it into the pool on worse than a hundred-to-one shot a good
+many times before this. But--well, I'd rather appreciate it if--if you
+could see fit to make a point of not telling my friends on the beach
+that--that I had any help in--in volunteering--volunteering to lend
+Captain Bell a hand in getting this hooker on her way."
+
+Rona, sensing that her responsibilities, so far as Allen was concerned,
+were at an end, raised the _kris_ from his neck and thrust it into the
+knot of her _sulu_. The Australian lifted himself lightly to his feet
+and looked Bell straight between the eyes. "Lead me to your whisky," he
+said in a steadied voice.... "By Gawd, I need it!"
+
+Poising an instant on the middle of a forward thwart of the canoe, he
+sprang to the rail, clambered smartly to the top strand of the barbed
+wire, and swung lightly down to the deck on the main backstay.
+
+It was at this juncture that I went through the feeble motions of trying
+to act the part of a man myself. I pointed out to Bell that I had
+knocked about on yachts a good deal, and, while I couldn't claim to be
+much of a hand with niggers, was probably as good a navigator as Allen
+was. I also said something about three men standing a better chance than
+two of pulling off the job, and even added, half jocularly, that I was
+about ready to go to Australia anyway, as I had had word that an
+exhibition of my pictures was due to open in Sydney in a fortnight. I
+only hope my words didn't sound as hollow to Bell as they did to me--for
+they were the last ones I was ever to speak to him.
+
+Bell's gentlemanliness--nay, rather, his gentleness--came home to me
+more in what he refrained from saying in his reply than in what he said.
+He did _not_ say that he had no absinthe aboard, and that, as a
+consequence, I would be only more useless and undependable than if he
+had. He did _not_ say that his hands would be full enough looking after
+crazy niggers without having a crazy white man to keep an eye on. He
+even refrained from recalling to my mind a story I had told him of a
+French official in New Caledonia whose absinthe supply had run out while
+he was at an isolated post, and who, unable to stand the deprivation to
+the end of the three-days' run in to Noumea in a trading cutter, had
+taken a header over the side almost in sight of port--and relief.
+
+All he _did_ say was: "Nonsense, ol' man.... Quite out of the
+question.... Nothin' doin'." Then, as though to soften the curtness of
+his refusal: "'Twouldn't be propa, Whitney, to set a man that can slap
+colour on canvas like you can to herdin' sick niggas. Besides, I'm
+countin' on you to stick 'roun' Kai an' be a sort o' fatha an' motha' to
+Rona while I'm gone. Youah the only man on the island I'd ca'ah to trust
+with that job."
+
+There was nothing more to be said after that, I told myself; nothing
+more to be done. I gave up limply and relapsed into wondering how long
+it would take me to paddle Rona ashore and traverse the quarter of a
+mile of coral clinkers between the place where she would land and the
+long green bottle cooling in its breeze-swept swing beneath my coco leaf
+jalousies.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII
+
+                           RONA COMES ABOARD
+
+
+Well, I still think I was right on the score of the futility of further
+words. Nothing more that I could have _said_ would have changed the
+situation; but was there nothing more that I could have _done_? Rona
+answered that question, so far as she herself was concerned, then and
+there, though hardly in a way that I had the wit or the will to profit
+by.
+
+Bell's answer to the girl's anxious appeal that she be allowed to join
+him had been no less brusque and decided than that he had made to mine.
+"Sorry, honey. No 'commodations fo' ladies this voyage. You wun't
+intended to nu'se niggas, anyhow. Can't be done, honey." Then, to me:
+"Time to be shovin' off now, Whitney. Tide's already on the tu'n. Right
+sorry to have to hurry you-all this way." Not a word of farewell....
+Navy training would not down.
+
+"Bel-la, leesten to me!" There was more threat than entreaty in Rona's
+voice now. Beyond doubt, he had never crossed her before. That she was
+hurt and angry showed in every line of her tense figure, as she balanced
+precariously with her left foot on the outrigger and her right on the
+port weatherboard. "Bel-la, by crackee, I say I go with you! If you let
+me come on schoona, all good. If you say no, by crackee, I--I sweem! I
+sweem afta you. You know I good sweema, Bel-la."
+
+Swim! I knew the girl well enough to know it was not a bluff, and Bell
+must have known even better. I had heard him speak many a time of her
+absolute lack of fear. Also, although at that moment his imagination was
+not quickened (as mine was) by the drunken roll a black cadaver under
+the counter gave as a questing nose pushed into it from below, he must
+have known what shrift a swimmer would have in those shark-infested
+waters.
+
+Bell's mouth twitched at her words (I could just see his head and
+shoulders where he conned ship with a foot on the starboard rail and a
+hand in the shrouds of the mainmast), but he made no reply. Doubtless he
+counted on my doing what I could to fish her out before anything
+happened. Sweeping his eye fore and aft, he noted how the turning tide
+had swung the schooner so that she headed directly away from the
+passage, with the fluky puffs of the freshening trade wind coming over
+her port quarter. Then, cautioning the men standing by at the fore and
+main sheets to "take in sma't" as she gathered way, he bellowed the
+order to "Heave away!"
+
+The ululant surge of the _beche-de-mer_ anchor chantey floated aft as
+the blacks resumed their rhythmic tramp around the capstan.
+
+    "_What name you b'longa?
+    What name you b'longa?
+        You Mary come catch'm ride.
+    What name you b'longa?
+    Come hear my songa--
+        I take you to Sydney-side._"
+
+I have often wondered if the frank invitation in the swinging lines
+might not have been the inspiration of Rona's astonishing action.
+
+The obligato of the incoming chain grinding through the hawse-pipe had
+accompanied the chantey for only a stave or two, when Allen's clear,
+ringing voice (he had not needed to be told where a mate belonged when a
+ship was getting under way) announced from the forecastle: "Anchor
+broken out, sir!"
+
+"Walk lively! Get catted 'fore she hits the passage!" Bell roared back,
+anxious lest the great length of chain still out would make trouble
+where the lagoon shoaled at its seaward entrance. A moment later he came
+aft and relieved the man at the wheel, ordering the latter to stand by
+to keep the mainsheet from fouling the nigger wire. It was the gigantic
+Malay, Ranga-Ro, bulking mightily against the purpling eastern twilight
+sky, who responded with a deep-rumbling "Ay, ay, su!" and sprang to the
+starboard rail to clear the sagging lines running back from the
+unstable-minded main boom. Then the amazing thing befell.
+
+As the schooner gathered way and began gliding ahead under the impulse
+of the half-filled mainsail, Rona had crouched as though for a spring at
+the towing whaleboat. The painter of the latter, however, made fast on
+the port side of the taffrail, brought the yawning double-ender too far
+away for anything but a creature with wings to bridge the gap. Seeing it
+was impossible to jump to the whaleboat, she straightened up again,
+swaying undulantly as the dugout bobbed about in the gently heaving wake
+of the schooner.
+
+"Bel-la, I come!" There was more of anger than despair in that
+steel-clear cry; more indignation than resignation in the hair-trigger
+poise of the reed-slender figure. The instant that she hesitated on the
+chance that this final threat might soften Bell's resolve was all that
+prevented what at best could not have been other than a nasty mess for
+the both of us. There was no possible chance for me to intercept her
+before she jumped, and, once in the water, I knew she was quite equal to
+upsetting the canoe rather than be dragged back into it. As for help
+from the schooner--Bell had determined upon his course, and his eyes,
+like his mind, were directed ahead, not astern.
+
+It was Ranga-Ro (deftly fending the slack of the mainsheet from the
+nigger wire), not Bell, who turned at the sound of Rona's cry. Whether
+or not he had glimpsed her during the previous ten minutes, I am not
+sure; but for the girl (whose eyes had been on Bell from first to last),
+I was certain that the big Malay had not impinged upon her vision
+before. Recognition of his racial characteristics must have been
+instantaneous. They were written for even an ethnic novice to read in
+the giant's straight black hair, high cheek bones, wide mouth, with its
+betel nut-stained teeth, and the light golden yellow skin clothing the
+monstrously muscled limbs. The peculiar twist of the loosely-looped
+_sarong_ and a wisp of rolled leaf behind an ear would have located him
+even more definitely; but to Rona the fact that there was an indubitable
+Malay staring into her eyes from the nearest rail of the receding
+schooner, made the incidental of his being a Moluccan--a Spice Island
+man--of little moment. She was used to handling big golden-yellow
+men.... They had proved a deal more manageable than a certain white man
+she could mention.
+
+I heard, without understanding, the swift run of her tripplingly-tongued
+Malay, and only the sibilant hiss of "_Lekas! Lekas!_" at the end told
+me that what she had ordered done was to be done "quickly! quickly!" Her
+next order--to me--was no less insistent. "Paddl' catch'n schoona,
+Whit-nee! Paddl' lak hell!"
+
+The girl's imperious mood brooked no delay. My work was cut out clear
+for me, and, everything considered, I am not at all sure that the yellow
+man--on the score of zeal, at least--outdid the white man in carrying
+out the orders he had received. Slipping back to the stern to even up
+the down-by-the-head trim Rona's presence in the bow gave the cranky
+dugout, I plied the stubby paddle with all the strength and skill at my
+command. The crazy craft rode higher now with Allen out of it, but even
+so the speed with which I drove it threw a wave inches above the hole in
+the crumbling bow. The up-curling water poured through in a steady
+stream. My race, I saw, was against that rising flood in the bottom of
+the canoe quite as much as against the schooner.
+
+There were only eight or ten yards to make up on the still slowly moving
+_Cora_, and, barring swamping or a collision with a shark or a floating
+nigger, I felt that I could do it easily. But what to do when we had
+caught her up? Ah, there was where the yellow man was to come in. Ranga
+was just as busily carrying out his orders as was I. "Clear away the
+nigger wire and stand by to pick me up," had plainly been the drift of
+that swift stream of Malay Rona had directed at him. Superbly disdainful
+of the sharp barbs that were slashing his bare palms to ribbons, he
+forced the whole savage entanglement down to the deck with no more
+apparent effort than a child would have used in collapsing a
+string-strung "cat's-cradle." Rove through steel stanchions set at close
+intervals along the rail, the wire could not be torn entirely clear. So
+the direct and simple-minded Ranga did the next best thing--gave a
+mighty heave and brought three or four of the nearest stanchions down to
+the deck in the tangle of wire they had supported.
+
+An order from Bell at this juncture would probably have stopped this
+wholesale destruction of his protective entanglement; or perhaps I
+should say _possibly_ rather than probably. One cannot be sure just how
+strong a force Rona had lashed into action. It has since occurred to me
+that the man must have been gripped with something very closely akin to
+the madness of _amok_ to handle that wire with his naked hands as he
+did. It may be that the only one from whom he would have brooked
+interference was the one who had fired that savage train of
+energy--Rona. These points were not to be put to the test, however. From
+first to last Bell--although, from the wrecking of the wire almost under
+his very eyes, he must have known what was going on--never looked back.
+
+What with the settling of the half-swamped canoe and the accelerating
+speed of the schooner, it was touch-and-go at the end. I had gained by
+feet at first; then by inches; and finally, with but a couple of yards
+more needed to bring the bow up even with the schooner's counter, I
+realized that I was no better than holding my own. It was the last ounce
+of reserve in my aching frame that I called upon for that final spurt.
+Rona must have sensed that I was going my limit, for she said no word
+... only crouched, tense as a waiting wild-cat, for the moment of her
+spring.
+
+For the first few seconds the gap closed quickly as the canoe gathered
+increased headway from the impulse of my wildly driven paddle; then more
+slowly and more slowly, until, again, I was no better than holding even.
+Another foot, and the jump would be safe. Bending low to make the most
+of my expiring strength, my eyes wandered from the goal for an instant.
+It was a shuddering gasp of consternation from the bow that brought them
+back again. The swooning mainsail, filled by the freshening puffs, was
+beginning to make its pull felt in earnest. The gap had widened. Instead
+of gaining a foot I had lost two. That dished me completely. "No good,
+Rona--I'm--all in," I groaned, and slid limply down into the bottom of
+the canoe, where the water now lapped level with the thwarts.
+
+Half fainting though I was, the picture of that super-simian spring of
+Rona's is indelibly etched upon my memory. Save for that one quick gasp,
+she made no sound. The jump was an impossible one ... sheerly
+impossible. And yet-- Only a swift gathering of muscles--very like the
+final quivering hunch of an ape that leaps from tree to tree--heralded
+action. Then, with a back-kick that forced the already half-submerged
+bow right under, she flashed up to her full height and launched her body
+into the air.
+
+It was a good jump,--a wonderful one, indeed, considering the unstable
+take-off--but of course she missed the rail--and by feet. That didn't
+surprise me.... I had seen it was inevitable. But what I had _not_
+reckoned upon was the astonishing length of Ranga's mighty left arm.
+Standing by with a bight of the mainsheet gripped in his right hand to
+keep from overbalancing, he had sprung to the top of the rail as Rona
+jumped, leaning out at all of an angle of forty-five degrees, probably
+more. It was into the solidly pliant muscles of his great corded left
+wrist, extended to the full reach of the arm, that Rona clawed with the
+last half inch of her out-stretched fingers--clawed and _held_. I say
+_clawed into_, not clutched or seized. The girl's hold on Ranga's wrist
+was not that of an acrobat grabbing over the bar for which he has jumped
+(her leap was short by an inch at least of giving her a chance to do
+that), but rather that of a flung cat clawing into the limb or the trunk
+of a tree. With less strength of fingers or length of nails her hands
+would merely have brushed the outstretched arm and missed a hold.
+
+Under the impact of that flying hundred and twenty pounds (in spite of
+her slenderness, Rona must have weighed quite that) of bone and muscle,
+striking, as it did, just where the greatest leverage would be exerted,
+Ranga was all but swung round and thrown from his footing. The
+hastily-seized mainsheet was hardly a scientifically-run guy for the
+leaning tower of his stressed frame, nor did the wreck of the barbed
+wire entanglement writhing over the rail offer the solidest of
+foundations. Back and forth he swayed, like the half unstepped mast of a
+grounded sloop; then steadied, quiveringly, up to his original tense
+slant.
+
+The acrobatic miracle wrought by Ranga in swinging Rona's precariously
+hanging form inboard was the most perfect feat of strength and balance I
+ever saw, or ever expect to see. It looked as sheerly impossible as the
+jump had looked--and was accomplished scarcely less quickly. The drawing
+up of the extended left arm (what a marvellous rippling and bunching of
+golden muscles that was!) brought the girl's pendant form close in
+against the corrugated bulge of the giant's chest, reducing the terrific
+leverage by a good half. A similar doubling up of the right, with a
+sudden tug on the mainsheet at the end of it, did the rest. For an
+instant the great rangy rack of corded muscles balanced erect in the
+midst of the wire-tangle festooned over the rail; then jumped lightly
+down beyond and deposited its burden on the deck.
+
+Hardly ten seconds could have elapsed from the instant of Rona's jump to
+the one in which Ranga plumped her down beside Bell at the wheel. The
+gap between the canoe and the schooner had widened to hardly twenty
+yards. I could see both the Malay and the girl quite distinctly as, with
+the latter still looped in the crook of his fingernail-torn left arm, he
+poised for a moment on the rail. Neither appeared to have turned a hair.
+Neither seemed in the least flustered ... might have been in the habit
+of doing that sort of thing every day for all the excitement they showed
+about it.
+
+The first thing Ranga did, as the dropped mainsheet gave him a free
+hand, was to reach to the knot of his _sarong_ and satisfy himself that
+the little bamboo flute tucked in there had ridden out the storm. And
+Rona--her first move was to gather up and stow an amber-streaming corner
+of the peacock shawl, which was threatening to catch in an uprearing
+strand of the nigger wire. Those two funny little incidentals complete
+my recollections of that breathless quarter-minute. Whether Rona, or
+Bell, or anyone else on the schooner waved good-bye in my direction I do
+not recall. Ranga was taking in the slack of the mainsheet when I looked
+again, and Bell, peering up at the flapping headsails, was grinding away
+at the wheel. Two or three shots rang out following a commotion
+forward--probably fired to check a fresh up-surge of the blacks from
+below.
+
+As Bell brought her round in a wide circle, the _Cora's_ sails were
+flattened in and she began to beat up toward the entrance of the passage
+in a series of short tacks. As she headed in past the quay, I heard a
+burst of cheers roll up from a knot of humanity blurring the beach in
+front of Jackson's. It was just a big, full-throated general whoop, that
+first one, but it was quickly followed by a number of other volleys of
+"huroars" that seemed to carry suggestions of control and leadership.
+The last of these was a hearty "three-times-three," topped off with a
+"tiger." "Cheering the parting heroes by name," I muttered to myself,
+and wondered who that last rousing "tiger" was meant to speed. I was
+still speculating when the sharp whish of a heeling dorsal, as a
+sheering shark avoided the submerged outrigger by a hair, awakened me to
+a rude realization of the fact that the swift tropic night had all but
+fallen and that I was drifting out with the tide in a holed and barely
+floating dugout.
+
+Of all the ebbings of the tide of courage that my sorrily spent life had
+known, and had still to know, those next few minutes--with the _Cora_
+dissolving into the swimming dusk as she beat out through the passage,
+the weirdly green wakes of the sharks lacing the oily-black water with
+welts of phosphorescence as they assembled for their ghastly banquet,
+and my swamped canoe teetering in balance between positive and negative
+buoyancy--registered low-water mark. I have never heard of a despairing
+absinthe slave trying to break his bonds at the end of the day. It is
+invariably at the end of the night that he makes his break for
+liberty--at the beginning of the day he has not the courage to face. But
+it was the shame of the yellow in me, rather than the green, that held
+empire now. Rona had brooked no refusal of her demand to be taken on the
+_Cora_. Why had I? She had been ready to swim for it. Why should not I?
+Surely the sea, better than anything else, would wash that yellow stain
+from my honour and leave it white at the last. I didn't even have to
+screw my nerve up to the point of jumping over. Listing heavily to
+starboard as the half-capsized dugout was, one little inch edged to the
+right, and not even the leverage of the outrigger could keep it from
+overturning. Just the inclination of my shoulders would do the trick....
+I would not even have to take the initiative to the extent of edging
+along. Surely--
+
+With a quick gasp, I slid sharply to one side--but it was to the
+left--the outrigger side. The great starshaped welter of green
+luminescence, where a half-dozen wallowing man-eaters nuzzled into a
+bobbing witch-fire-streaked shape of unreflecting opacity, proved too
+much for my last unbroken filament of nerve--all that I needed to make
+my honour white. I had always dreaded sharks, and it was my horror of
+them now that checked the worthiest impulse that had stirred me that
+day. The momentarily eclipsed image of the cooling green bottle took
+shape again before my eyes, and, after that, there was nothing to do but
+make the best fight I could to reach it.
+
+Proceeding with infinite caution to avoid the upset which I now feared
+above everything in the world, I crawled forward along the outrigger
+side and stopped the hole in the bow with my folded drill jacket, as a
+necessary preliminary to beginning to bail out with my waterproof
+sun-helmet. But before I turned to on what could have hardly proved
+other than a hopeless task, the sound of oars and voices reached my
+ears, and presently the bow of a hard-pulled whaleboat came pushing up
+out of the darkness. It was old Jackson whose strong arm reached out and
+dragged me in over the gunwale. When they got back their breaths lost in
+cheering the departing schooner, he explained, after depositing my limp
+form in the stern sheets, Doc Wyndham bawled over to them from
+"Quarantine" that some cove had been left behind in a foundered canoe.
+Jackson himself reckoned that the Doc was beginning to go off his nut
+and see things; but as several of the others seemed to have hazy
+recollections of something of the same kind, it was thought best to put
+off and investigate.
+
+"'Ow'd you 'appen to miss c'nections?" Jackson asked sympathetically. "I
+spotted you paddlin' the canoe off, an' we was so sure the Skipper 'ad
+signed you on that we give a speshul w'oop in your 'onour. 'W'at's the
+matter wiv W'itney?' I bellered ('member the night you learned us that
+one?--time the looted fizz from the _Levuka_ was on tap); an' the boys
+cum back wiv: ''E's all right!--you bet!--Ev'ry time!'"
+
+"That wasn't the big 'three-times-three' at the end, was it, Jack?" I
+asked, my face burning with shame at the thought.
+
+"Well, no; 'ardly that un," was the half-apologetic reply. "That
+ripsnorter was in 'onour uv 'Slant' Allen. Long time pal uv all uv us,
+'e is. Slash-bangin' finisher, li'l ol' 'Slant.'... Trust 'im allus to
+be on 'and w'en they're liftin' 'ell's 'atches."
+
+I knew then that I wasn't going to be tumbling over myself to tell
+"Slant's" friends on the beach that his volunteering to go with the
+_Cora_ had been just a shade less voluntary than they reckoned. _He_ had
+not pulled up dead at his first hurdle as I had, anyhow. No, until I
+knew more of what had transpired earlier in the day, I was not going to
+give the man away; and not to his old friends in any case. I would do at
+least that much homage to his nerve.
+
+Seeing how dead beat I was, Jackson waved back the crowd at the quay and
+headed me straight for home. He knew what I needed, and I was as
+grateful for the bluff old outlaw's unspoken sympathy as I was for the
+help of his sustaining arm. With rare delicacy, he avoided being a
+witness to my assault on the green bottle by leaving me at the door.
+Like all the rest of those rough, red-blooded roysterers of Kai, Jackson
+felt that habitual absinthe drinking was degenerate, almost immoral....
+All right for a "Froggy," of course, but not for a proper white man....
+A thing that a real self-respecting beach-comber would never allow
+himself to be guilty of. The fact (which could not be concealed for
+long) that I was known to be addicted to the habit had taken even more
+living down than my painting, especially when they learned I was
+straight Yankee and not a "_We-we_."
+
+I drank hungrily at first--gulping glass after glass of the cool green
+liquid,--but stopped just as soon as I found my nerves were steadied and
+before the first stage of "elevation" was entered upon. (A seasoned
+drinker takes some time to reach the latter.) Unspeakably tired
+physically, I dropped off to sleep almost as soon as the absinthe
+relaxed the tension on my nerves. My rest was dreamless and
+untroubled--or comparatively so.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VIII
+
+                           I LEAVE THE ISLAND
+
+
+Rolling out of bed at the end of twelve straight hours of sleep, I found
+the Trades blowing fresh and strong again, and the air--after the
+soddenness of the past week--almost bracing. A plunge from the reef and
+a piping hot breakfast of fried clams and duck eggs--my first solid food
+in over thirty-six hours--bucked me up astonishingly. For almost the
+first time since I came to the island, I was out before ten o'clock--and
+well in hand, too. I had to be.... There was much that it was up to me
+to learn--and perhaps to act upon.
+
+That which I most desired to get some line upon was what Allen had been
+driving at in drugging Bell, or even, possibly, trying to poison him.
+What was _kor-klee_? (of which Rona appeared to be so terrified), and
+how did it act? were questions which I wanted especially to find the
+answers to. Was it a drug with a delayed action, following a preliminary
+stupefaction of comparative mildness? If so--no, there was nothing that
+could be done for Bell in that case; but, as a friend of his, I might do
+what I could to square the account later on. There was no lack of
+confidence _that_ morning. The reaction (which had eluded me completely
+the day before) was strong upon me, and I felt quite equal to any
+situation that might arise. I still blushed with shame at the thought of
+the contemptible figure I had cut from dawn to darkness of the day
+previous, but I was ready to make such atonement as was humanly
+possible. It was merely one of my "high" moods coming three or four
+hours ahead of time. I could have slung my colours with telling effect
+that morning, if there had been a chance for me to get at canvas.
+
+From one and another at Jackson's I gathered a fairly connected account
+of what had happened during the hours I was away on the leeward side of
+the island. The salient incidents of this I have already set down. None
+of them knew much of anything about _kor-klee_, but all agreed that Doc
+Wyndham would be sure to be an authority upon it. I dropped the subject
+for the moment, as I did not care to be pressed for an explanation of
+why I sought the information. The next day I slipped quietly over and
+had a long-distance interview with the learned Wyndham.
+
+The Doc had buried the _Cora's_ recruiting agent the night the schooner
+sailed, doing everything except the digging of the grave with his own
+hands. He had then returned home and shut himself in for his ten days of
+solitary quarantine. Solitary is hardly the word, though. Wyndham was
+far from being alone. Unlike Bell, he was a "spree drinker" rather than
+a speedy tippler. It was his habit (as he put it himself) to accumulate
+aridity during five or six months of the most rigorous teetotalism, and
+then blow up the dam and make the desert blossom like the rose under the
+stimulus of a generous flood. The breaking up of the Monsoon and the
+culmination of Doc Wyndham's biennial sprees were bracketed together in
+the Islands' list of seasonal disturbances.
+
+The desert was hardly due for its wetting at this time, but Wyndham,
+shaken by his unsuccessful fight to save the Agent's life, was loath to
+face the ordeal of the confinement ahead of him without company. So (as
+he explained after he had halted me a dozen paces from his door with a
+revolver flourished from the window) he called in the only dead sure
+plague-immune he knew--his old friend John Barleycorn--and raised the
+floodgates. The last thing he had impressed upon his brain before
+putting Barleycorn in charge was that he must rigidly confine his desert
+reclamation project to his own wastes. On no account was he to leave his
+own house, and, on no account, was anyone to be allowed to enter it.
+"Strict quarantine's the word," he had repeated to himself many times
+before he started drinking, and "Strict quarantine's the word" was the
+greeting--and the warning--I heard when I stepped into the shadow of the
+big breadfruit tree in front of his door.
+
+Solemn as an owl, Wyndham had been catching purple shrimps (or something
+of the kind) with a butterfly net and putting them under his microscope
+for examination. The big brass instrument was set upon a table pulled up
+to the window, while the shrimps were being harvested from the bosky
+depths of a patch of elephant-eared taro just outside. It was his
+favourite hunting and fishing preserve, that taro patch, the Doc had
+confided to me once, and the rarity and variety of the specimens
+captured there were rather remarkable. I don't remember many of them,
+but a sea-cow and a sabre-tooth tiger were among the commonest he had
+made slides of. Everything went under the microscope, of course. His
+captures were small in size during the first few days, starting with
+mere animalculae, but bulked steadily bigger as the desert blossomed to
+a jungle. It required a microscope with a great latitude of adjustment
+to handle such a wide range of subjects--but his was a most excellent
+instrument ... most excellent. Thus the Doc.
+
+Pretending to ignore my approach completely, Wyndham continued squinting
+through the eye-piece of his microscope until I crunched over the
+dead-line he had established. Then he flourished the revolver, barked
+out his quarantine formula, and asked what I wanted. "When I replied
+that I had come to inquire respecting the effects of a drug called
+_kor-klee_, his manner changed instantly. By some queer psychological
+process quite beyond me to fathom, he started at once speaking French,
+or rather what he thought was French. It was a weird jargon he had
+picked up in the Marquesas, where he had spent a year in research work
+when he first came to the Islands, and where (it was said) only his
+passion for collecting pearls--other people's--had prevented his winning
+to international fame for his all-but-successful efforts to isolate the
+bacteria responsible for the dread _fe-fe_ or _elephantiasis_.
+
+"_Kor-klee--mais oui, mon ami. Je comprend him fella kor-klee too much.
+Parfaitement. C'est la liqueur essential de la ficus--ficus--nom d'un
+chien--ficus what-dyucalum. C'est la aphrodisique le plus exquite, le
+plus fort, en tout le monde. Prenez vous comme ca--whouf!_"--and he made
+a great pretence of inhaling the contents of his shrimp net to show how
+the drug was administered for that particular purpose.
+
+"_Encore--quand--quand eat'm like kai-kai!_" he floundered on learnedly;
+"_quand eat'm kor-klee il fait--mak'm mort--dead--tres vite_."
+
+Here he interrupted himself to ask for which purpose it was I intended
+to use the stuff.
+
+"Neither," I denied stoutly. "I was merely asking out of curiosity."
+
+"_Parle that talkee a la marines_," he scoffed. "_Le meme chose talkee
+parle_ 'Slant' Allen. _Je voudrais connoce ou--ou in hell you fella
+catch'm kor-klee._ I'd like to get my fist on some of the blooming
+elixir myself," he trailed off into English.
+
+Save for that one lapse, Wyndham, in spite of my reiterated appeals
+that he speak straight English, rattled on in his impossible
+Franco-_beche-de-mer_ from first to last. That which I have tried to
+render does it scant justice. Most of it was quite unintelligible. At
+the end of a rather trying half-hour (though it would have been amusing
+enough had I been less anxious for information that might throw light on
+the mystery I had set myself to unravel), about all that I had been able
+to gather was that _kor-klee_ was the name given in the Dutch Indies to
+several preparations made from the latex of the wild fig of New Guinea.
+A crude infusion of it was employed by the Papuans in stupefying fish in
+their rivers. More elaborated extracts were distilled for their narcotic
+and other properties. One of these, vapourized and inhaled, was much
+prized by the Rajahs of Malaysia as a quickener of the languid pulse, a
+restorer of youth. Another--the most powerful extract of all--was a
+deadly poison--very neat and incisive in its action.
+
+I also understood Wyndham to say that the use of the drug in any form
+acted as a great exciter of the cravings for alcohol and narcotics on
+the part of those addicted to these habits. "If that's the case," I said
+to myself as I turned home, "God pity poor old Bell's teetotal
+resolutions! It would have been hard enough without anything further in
+the way of a 'thust aggravata.' I'm afraid he'll be having to exchange
+roles with 'Slant' after all--to let the latter be the 'soba Mate of a
+drunken Skippa.'" Now that I had a chance to think about it, I didn't
+have any great faith in Bell's ability to refrain from drink for any
+length of time--certainly for not more than a day or two at the outside.
+He'd probably see the thing through, I admitted, but not as a "soba
+Skippa."
+
+Turning over all I had picked up at the end of a couple of days, I felt
+that I could come pretty near to reconstructing in my mind those scenes
+of the drama of which there had been no witnesses save the actors
+themselves. Allen's infatuation for the girl had undoubtedly got the
+better of him the instant the turn of events suggested a plan which
+promised to give him undisputed possession of her. To this end he had
+plotted to get Bell off on a voyage from which there was no more than a
+negligible chance of his ever returning, while he himself remained
+behind to enjoy the spoils.
+
+Considering that Allen's plan was evolved upon little more than a
+moment's notice, there could be no question that it was laid with
+consummate cleverness and carried out without a hitch--save, of course,
+for that final fatal slip-up which undid all the rest. To make sure of
+Bell and disarm his suspicions, Allen had assured the American that he
+himself would also go on the _Cora_. That he had tried to poison Bell, I
+had my doubts. I had not learned enough of how the drug acted to make my
+speculations on that point of much use. At any rate, with Bell
+unconscious on the schooner, it had clearly been the Australian's plan
+to return to the beach and remain there until she sailed, at the turn of
+the tide. That the _Cora_ should get under way at that time had already
+been arranged between the unsuspecting Ranga and himself. The pretence
+that he had missed the schooner while engaged in getting his own and
+Bell's kits together would save his face with his friends on the beach.
+This latter consideration, it appears, was something the rascal never
+lost sight of. In the improbable event that Bell ever returned--but that
+bridge need not be crossed until it was in sight.
+
+Allen's cropper at the last jump was directly due to his cool assumption
+(natural enough, considering his success with South Sea ladies
+generally) that the girl, once Bell was out of the way, would fall into
+his lap like a ripe mango. That, and his long-curbed passion for her,
+led him to rush in search of Rona the moment he landed from his first
+visit to the schooner, and, missing her then, to return before the
+_Cora_ had got her anchor up. The consequences of his finding her in on
+this latter occasion I had seen something of myself. How that slip of a
+girl got the drop on the most notorious bad man in the Islands I could
+only conjecture. Probably, with Allen, it was the old story--prudence
+going out of one door as passion entered at the other. I didn't reckon
+that Rona had ever read the story of Delilah; yet I felt pretty
+confident that the point of that little Joloano _kris_ had found its way
+to the pulse of "Slant's" jugular some time after the girl's arm had
+gone round his neck in what he thought--for a second or two at
+least--was a warm embrace. Rona's uncanny faculty for getting away with
+everything she went after--from having her peacock shawl dry-cleaned to
+boarding a schooner which was all of "two jumps" beyond her reach--had
+greatly impressed me. And well it might have....
+
+Even allowing that Allen had not tried to poison Bell outright, the fact
+remained that he had played the worst kind of a low-down trick on the
+American in treacherously attempting to railroad the latter out of the
+way and deprive the girl of his protection. That much was plain, and it
+was dead against the shifty Australian. In "Slant's" favour was the game
+manner in which he had stood the gaff at the last, when Bell left the
+way wide open for him to return ashore without even going over the side
+of the plague-infested schooner. He had not hesitated an instant in
+staking his life in what he had very fairly characterized as the short
+end of a hundred-to-one shot. There must be redeeming qualities in a man
+who could do that, no matter how shot through with infamy his past
+record had been. It occurred to me as just possible that Bell's
+magnanimity had struck a responsive chord in Allen's sense of
+sportsmanship--that the latter was going to play whatever remained of
+that grim game on the square. If the _Cora_ was lost, or if Allen and
+Bell and the girl all died of the plague (one or both of which
+contingencies seemed practically inevitable), the whole slate would be
+wiped clean anyhow. If not--if the _Cora_ won through with any of those
+three surviving--some hint of what had transpired on the voyage would
+certainly be obtainable at Townsville, or whatever port the schooner
+succeeded in making. In any event, I told myself, it was up to me to get
+on to Australia at the earliest possible moment.
+
+The fact that my Exhibition would be sure to have opened in Sydney by
+the time I reached Australia, really had nothing to do with my decision.
+In spite of the bluff I had tried to put over on Bell, I had had no
+intention of leaving Kai for a number of months to come. Nor, even after
+I began getting ready to go, did I attempt to ignore the fact that there
+might be duties for me to carry out in Townsville, the performance of
+which would be more likely than not to interfere seriously with my
+freedom of action for a good deal longer than the art world of Sydney
+would be inclined to pay homage to my marines.
+
+No, my coming show had nothing to do with my resolve to hurry south,
+although, naturally, I fully intended to take it in if things shaped so
+as to make it possible. Since my daubs had been making good with the
+connoisseurs of Kai--men who knew at first hand the things I was trying
+to paint,--I had little fear that the more sophisticated critics of
+civilization would not fall for them. I hadn't any worry on that score.
+I knew I had been doing good work. But--well, an artist who isn't
+interested in the way his work will react on his fellow-beings is
+lacking in a very important stimulus to success.
+
+Kai manifested its usual sympathetic interest in my preparations for
+departure, but, with characteristic delicacy, asked no questions. Well
+off the steamer routes, and with only the most infrequent comings and
+goings of pearling and trading craft, the problem of reaching Australia
+with any dispatch seemed, at first, a hopeless one. For a while it
+looked like the best I could do would be to accept "Slim" Patton's
+kindly offer to run me over in his pearling sloop to Thursday Island,
+where I could count on getting a south-bound China-Australia liner
+inside of a fortnight. As Patton was known to be in bad for several
+little things at Thursday Island, his offer did more credit to his heart
+than to his head, and I was a good deal relieved when Jackson figured
+out a plan that promised to make it possible for me to reach my goal by
+another route. After thumbing a greasy sheet of Burns, Phillip sailings
+for the best part of an afternoon, the old outlaw suddenly announced he
+had found reason to believe that, with luck, a cutter getting away from
+Kai that night could intercept the Solomon-Australia packet at Samarai,
+off the easternmost tip of New Guinea. To be sure that the thing was
+done properly, he would take one of his own cutters and sail her
+himself. As my impedimenta consisted of little beyond a few changes of
+drills and ducks, my painting kit, and a case of absinthe, and as
+Jackson used neither paint nor absinthe and wore a flowered _sulu_ in
+place of ducks and drills, we had little difficulty in getting away on
+schedule.
+
+Jackson's carefully tabulated calculations--you can do that kind of
+thing in those latitudes when the southeast Trades are blowing steady
+and you know your boat--were only wrong by an hour. That is to say, we
+would have missed the _Utupua_ by something like that had we pushed
+right in to Samarai. Old "Jack," however, sighting a bituminous smear
+trailing off above the tufted tops of the coco palms that line the inner
+passage, promptly shook out all his reefs, hauled up four or five
+points, and headed away on a course calculated to converge with that of
+the outgoing steamer a couple of miles to seaward. It was only after an
+abrupt greening of the tourmaline depths of the passage we had been
+threading suggested a sudden shoaling that it occurred to him to unroll
+and study his chart.
+
+"Five 'undred fathom--three 'undred fifty fathom," he read laboriously
+as his tarry forefinger cruised along the tiny rows of dots and figures
+indicating soundings. "Three 'undred fathom--two 'undred fifty
+fathom--_one_ bloody fathom! By Gawd, W'itney, we're 'igh an' dry
+already! This bally chart says they's only one fathom uv water on this
+kerblasted coral patch, an' the cutter draws two feet mor'n that."
+
+But he never luffed her, never altered her course a fraction of a point.
+"More she 'eels the less she draws," he muttered philosophically,
+sitting down on the weather rail of the cockpit and starting to whittle
+at the end of a stick of tobacco with his clasp-knife. "Save a lot of
+wig-waggin' if we do pile up," he continued presently, rolling the
+shaved-off blackjack between his palms. "Ol' 'Choppy' Tancred never giv'
+the go-by to even a nigger dugout he could len' a han' to." Then he
+lighted his pipe, whoofed two or three whirling jets of blue smoke to
+leeward as he brought it to a proper draw, and settled comfortably back
+in puffing contentment. Ten minutes later he unrolled the chart again,
+produced a greasy stub of pencil from the band of his _koui_-leaf hat,
+and wrote with great care the letters "P.D." across the dotted expanse
+where curving lines of figure "1s," like the graphic representation of
+telegraph lines on a bird's-eye map, indicated six feet of water where
+the eight-feet-draught cutter had just crossed without a bump.
+
+"As I figger it," Jackson observed drily, rolling up the chart and
+tossing it down the companionway as a thing whose usefulness was
+ended,--"as I figger it, a bloke's only manifestin' proper conserv'tism
+w'en 'e marks as 'Position Doubtful' a reef that ain't tangibl' enuf to
+stop 'im w'en 'e 'its it." Then, presently, between puffs, as he
+stretched himself and sidled along to take the wheel as the cutter began
+to close the slowing steamer: "Wonder 'oo the bally cove'll be 'oo bumps
+a mis-charted reef w'en 'e thinks 'e's got four 'undred fathom uv brine
+'tween his keel an' the bottom uv the Pacific." The notorious inaccuracy
+of the South Sea charts is a continual source of amusement or
+wrath--according to whether a misplaced shoal or passage has spelt
+comedy or tragedy to him--for the man who sails their reef-beset waters.
+
+It was Captain Tancred himself who came tumbling down from the
+_Utupua's_ bridge to greet me as I clambered up the Jacob's ladder
+thrown over from the forecastle head. Hearing of him often before, this
+was the first time I ever set eyes on one of the best-loved characters
+in the South Pacific. He was a red-faced, blue-eyed, sandy-haired Scot,
+with a heart as big as his fist, and as soft as his voice was rough.
+Square himself as his own broad shoulders, and strictly law-abiding
+personally, he was credited with an amiable weakness for befriending
+every man who had run afoul of the statutes. I had heard them yarn by
+the hour at Kai of the way he had smuggled this one out of Australia,
+and that one into New Guinea; of how he had all but bumped South Head
+while standing-off-and-on in a "Southerly Buster" one night, on the off
+chance of picking up a jail-breaker, whose only claim upon Tancred had
+been that the latter had once before performed a similar service for the
+reprobate when he had forced his way out of the jug in Suva. Several of
+the push at Jackson's claimed actually to owe their lives to the bluff
+old Scot; many of them their liberty. "Choppy" Tancred--so called from
+his sun-washed red-brown mutton-chop side whiskers--was the nearest
+thing to a patron saint Kai ever had--that is, until the Rev. Horatio
+Loveworth hove up on their skyline some years later and converted the
+lot of them (just about) with the knuckles of his brawny fists.
+
+The last thing Jackson had said, as he steadied the ladder for me to
+swarm up the _Utupua's_ side, was to the effect that I ought to consider
+myself dead lucky to be stacking up with "Choppy" Tancred; "or,
+leastways," he qualified, "you would be if you was in any kind uv a mess
+'e could fish you out uv."
+
+"Don't give up hope, Jack," I chaffed back, clawing round a projecting
+ventilator; "I may land in a mess yet."
+
+"Then don't be forgettin' ther'll allus be a refooge for the errin' on
+the banks an' brays uv Kai Lagoon," he sang back, taking in the
+mainsheet as the cutter came up to the wind; "an' that 'Choppy'
+Tancred'll be the cove to give you a first leg-up on the way back
+there."
+
+Except for his very evident disappointment over the fact that I
+disclaimed any need of his help in getting ashore in Australia, Captain
+Tancred seemed not in the least put out over being stopped and boarded
+so high-handedly. He had carried many queer birds in his time, so that a
+man eccentric enough to take a case of drinkables with him on the
+_return_ trip from the Islands didn't worry him as much as it might have
+some others. He was also kindly charitable about my "exclusiveness" of
+evenings (when all normal beings expand and grow sociable at sea), and
+even good-naturedly tolerant of my weakness for having breakfast in my
+cabin. I made it up to him to the best of my ability in my "quickened"
+hours of the afternoon, and we became good friends.... Really good
+friends. I felt that I could count upon him in a pinch.
+
+The grounding of the company's Port Moresby steamer somewhere along the
+Barrier Reef was responsible for the fact that the _Utupua_, this
+voyage, had been ordered to pick up freight at both Cooktown and Cairns,
+instead of proceeding direct to Townsville on her regular schedule. This
+set her back two days, and brought us into the offing at Townsville
+twenty-four hours after--instead of twenty-four hours before--a
+sun-blistered, foul-smelling labour-recruiting schooner, with a dead
+Captain and a score or more of dying niggers, was brought to anchor off
+the Quarantine Station by the Mate, who, immediately the hook was let
+go, collapsed on the deck and went to sleep. The empty hulk of the _Cora
+Andrews_, swinging lazily to the turning tide, was one of the first
+things to catch my eye as the _Utupua_ steamed in and tied up to her
+buoy.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IX
+
+                         A GRIM TALE OF THE SEA
+
+
+I have often tried to figure just what effect on the succeeding train of
+events my earlier arrival in Townsville might have had. I have never
+come to any very definite conclusions in that connection. There were two
+or three things that were pretty well bound to happen, and if they
+hadn't come about one way, there is little doubt that they would have
+done so in another. Had I been there when the _Cora_ arrived, it is
+probable that I would have learned definitely at once (instead of
+somewhat tardily) that Bell had _not_ died of the plague. Certainly, on
+learning that fact, my impulse would have been to try to force Allen to
+an immediate showdown--to insist on his proving that the dope he had put
+in the American's whisky at Kai had not been the direct cause of the
+latter's death. Such a showdown would have been impossible to bring
+about at the time, however: for one reason, because Allen had been put
+into quarantine immediately, and, for another, because, completely
+played out by thirty-six hours at the wheel without relief, he had sunk
+into a sleep from which he had not rallied for over two days. Similar
+considerations would have prevented my seeing Rona. Besides being in
+quarantine she was in a state of raving delirium, which would have made
+it impossible for her to convey coherent information. Even Ranga,
+unaffected in mind and body though he was, I would hardly have been
+permitted to talk with when he landed, any more than I was two days
+later. No, everything considered, I fail to see where my earlier arrival
+would have made much difference in what happened. It must have been
+slated anyhow, I think--just bound to come off however the incidentals
+shaped.
+
+Still askance at what he rated as my temerity in making an open landing
+in Townsville, Captain Tancred had somewhat reluctantly granted my
+request for a boat to take me ashore as soon as the quarantine officials
+were through with the ship. I couldn't, of course, go off in the
+quarantine launch, but one of the doctors lingered a few minutes to tell
+me what he knew of the _Cora_. Although her captain had died twenty-four
+hours before the schooner anchored, his remains had not been buried at
+sea. This, it appeared, had been largely due to the protests of some
+sort of a Kanaka girl the Skipper had had with him. According to the
+Bo'sun's statement (fine upstanding fellow that looked like some kind of
+a Java man), she had gone plumb off her chump. Tried to knife the Mate
+first, and then plumped down by the Skipper's remains and threatened to
+stick the first man to touch it. The Mate, endeavouring to humour her,
+had not insisted on the burial--a reprehensible weakness on his part....
+Common prudence demanded that the dead on a plague ship should be
+scuppered as soon as the breath was out of their bodies. That is, with a
+white man; with a nigger it did no harm to anticipate that event by an
+hour or so--as long as you were sure the fellow was going to whiff out
+anyway.
+
+The funny part of it was, though (the Doctor went on), that the Skipper
+had not died of the plague at all. They had not, it was true, made any
+post-mortem in the rush of things; but it was certain, nevertheless,
+that his body had not displayed even the preliminary evidences of
+infection--no swelling of the glands of the groin or under the arms.
+Magnificent physical specimen the chap was, but plainly a man who had
+punished an ocean of booze in his day. And yet--confound it all!--there
+was no evidence that the fellow had drunk himself to death, either. Now
+if it had been the Mate--_he_ was exuding alcohol from every
+pore--absolutely reeking with it. Almost made a man drunk to breathe the
+air down to leeward of him. Seemed to have been on one glorious spree
+all the way from--somewhere up Solomon-way, he thought it was. Harried
+the niggers like a fiend, according to the Bo'sun. Clubbed three or four
+of them to death for not stepping lively enough to his orders. Lucky
+thing the Skipper had scuppered all but one of the guns the first day
+out. But not all the booze he had soaked up had effected the nerve of
+the Mate. Kept his head and his legs to the last, finishing up with a
+straight twenty-four-hour trick at the wheel. Said none of the crew knew
+the Barrier Reef as well as he did. Had one nigger holding a parasol
+over him, another playing a concertina, another waiting handy with a
+bottle of whisky, and a fourth standing by to block any rushes from the
+Kanaka girl with her knife. Funny thing it never occurred to him to have
+her disarmed and tied up, or shut up. Grabbed the bottle of whisky and
+started to brain the Bo'sun with it every time the latter tried to push
+in and relieve him at the wheel.
+
+A chap of terrible determination and iron nerves, that Mate was,
+observed the Doctor. But no wonder.... Think who he was! Allen! The
+Honourable Hartley Allen! The great Allen! Son of old Sir Jim Allen!
+Melbourne Cup winner! Best horseman in all Australia! Crooked as they
+make 'em--but how he could ride! Sent off to the Islands four or five
+years back for raising some sort of hell. His old Ticket-of-Leave had
+given him away when they came to strip him for a bath. No possible
+mistake about it. One of the doctors at the Quarantine Station had set a
+broken collar-bone for him once after he had fallen in a steeplechase at
+Coolgardie. Found the marks of the old compound fracture still humping
+up on the clavicle--the left one....
+
+It was not without difficulty that I brought the excited young medico
+round to speaking of Bell again. The astounding fact that he himself,
+with his own hands, had actually helped to put the great and only
+Hartley Allen to bed, was proving almost too much for him. It was
+certainly not less than three separate times that he assured me that it
+was his own silk pajamas that were encasing the limbs of the resurrected
+hero. He switched subjects reluctantly, rising to go to his waiting
+launch.
+
+"Nothing in the world the matter with the big fellow--not even too much
+drink," he said as he began shuffling his health sheets together. "He
+must have passed away from the sheer mental strain of the stunt he had
+tackled. Intense nervous strain--that was the one thing written all over
+the man. Face was starting to bloat a bit from the heat by the time I
+saw it first; but, even so, it still showed the lines of the most
+terrible mental suffering. Seemed to have gone out fighting hard to pull
+himself together--shoulders hunched up, finger-nails clenched deep into
+palms, lower lip bitten clean through."
+
+"May not those--those things you mention have been caused by physical
+rather than mental agony?" I asked, speaking very slowly to hide the
+agitation aroused by this significant intelligence. "Isn't that about
+the way a man would repress his feelings if he was racked with--with
+stomach cramps--if he had eaten something that disagreed with him?"
+
+"Possibly so," admitted the Doctor, with the air of a man weighing
+an idea that had not occurred to him before; "but somehow that
+wasn't the suggestion they carried to me--nor to any of us. Fact is,
+though, we didn't give the matter very much attention. That chap was
+dead--finished,--while the other white man and the girl--to say nothing
+of forty or fifty niggers--were alive. Then, with the excitement of
+finding we had the great Hartley Allen on our hands--and, on top of
+that, having the girl run _amuck_ and give us the slip complete,--there
+was enough else to think about. The only--"
+
+"The girl gave you the slip?" I interrupted. "How was that? You didn't
+mention it before."
+
+"Bolted and drowned herself in the creek," he replied; "or at least
+there's every reason to believe she drowned herself, though they haven't
+found her body yet. She wasn't going to leave the Skipper, even when we
+started to take his body away for burial.... And of course we couldn't
+allow her to leave the Station until her period of quarantine was over.
+Had to take her away from the body by main force. She fought the whole
+lot of us with tooth and nail and a wicked little curly-bladed dagger.
+Stood us all off, too, and looked like getting ready to use the knife on
+herself when the big Malay (who chanced to be there, but had taken no
+part in the shindy up to that moment) stepped in, caught her wrist and
+took the nasty little toy away from her.
+
+"The big yellow man seemed to have rather a quieting effect on the girl.
+Blind mad as she was, she didn't try to stick him. It seemed to steady
+her a good deal when he talked to her in her own lingo. She was panting
+like a cat coming out of a fit when we left her, but was quite over her
+raving--wasn't even sobbing aloud. She was coming out of her
+hysteria--getting rational again. Her eyes, though still wild and almost
+throwing off sparks of anger, were quite free of the crazy look. It
+looked like our trouble with her was about over, but, to be on the safe
+side, we locked her up in one of the 'mad' rooms. That was the last
+anyone has seen of her alive--or any other way, for that matter.
+
+"You wouldn't have believed the thing possible!" he ejaculated
+feelingly, turning back from the door and slapping the table
+resoundingly with his portfolio. "That room was made to confine
+dangerous lunatics in, and it had fulfilled its purpose, too--up to
+night before last. To make it perfectly secure, it had been constructed
+without windows--nothing but a two-by-two hole up against the
+twelve-foot-high ceiling admitted light and air. There were no beds or
+chairs to be broken up when the occupant had tantrums.... Just sleeping
+mats, a sheet, a blanket and a mosquito net. No more. Even the wash
+basin was brought in and taken out by the attendant.
+
+"In locking the girl in, no precautions were omitted except that of
+strapping her in a strait-jacket, and we had never resorted to that save
+in violent cases. The window--or rather air-hole--was so high and so
+small that it had never been considered worth while to put bars on it.
+But as it was the only conceivable way she could have got out (the
+attendant is absolutely trustworthy, and the key was not in his hands
+more than a minute or two anyway), we would have been forced to conclude
+that the girl had reached it with wings--had not we found the lower four
+or five feet of wall marked with the prints of the toes and balls of the
+bare feet which had apparently been violently projected against it. That
+led us to get a ladder and light and examine about the window more
+closely. For a foot or more below it the wall was splashed with blood
+and slightly scratched, where lacerated fingers had clawed at the narrow
+ledge.
+
+"It did not take us long to figure that, taking the whole length of the
+room to get going in, the girl had flung herself up the wall something
+in the way that a terrier will run six or eight feet up the side of a
+house for a ball or handkerchief fastened there. That's the only way we
+could account for the toe-prints on the wall, though it is quite
+possible that, after failing to pull off the trick in that fashion--it's
+a stunt that looks dead hopeless for anything but a monkey,--she managed
+it with a straight spring, high enough to get her fingers over the
+ledge. Even from there, not one woman in a million could pull herself
+up. But we had already remarked on the extreme wiriness of the girl (a
+regular human ape she was for agility), and so found it a bit easier to
+accept the evidence of our eyes. In some way or another she had managed
+it.
+
+"The air-hole opened out under the eaves of the sheet-iron roof," the
+Doctor went on, forgetting his waiting launch in the interest of the
+story, and seating himself again at the table. "It must have taken some
+jolly snaky wriggling to crawl through the hole, out over the eaves and
+on top of the roof; but she did it, else she could never have jumped
+across the big banyan, where we found some twigs broken at the point she
+hit, and some wisps of silk floss. The other side of that banyan--a
+hundred feet from the wall of the hospital--spreads until it comes to
+about fifteen feet from the station wall. The wall is ten feet high, has
+broken glass on the top of it, with three or four strands of barbed wire
+above that.
+
+"Swinging to the ground by a pendent air-root on the side she had landed
+in, the girl crossed under the tree--the marks of her bare feet showing
+plainly in the soft earth--and used a similar ladder with which to mount
+on the other side. To be sure of clearing the barbed wire, she had
+climbed to a firm perch fully twenty-five feet from the ground, and made
+her final jump from there. Luckily for her, the cane field on the other
+side of the wall had been flooded but a day or two before--though I
+don't doubt she would have jumped just the same if it had been to a
+cobblestone pavement.
+
+"We found the deep prints of her feet, knees and hands where she had
+sprawled on striking. Her tracks down to the edge of a sprouting row of
+seed-cane, and the marks where she had crawled up out of a deep
+irrigating ditch to the road, were all we had to indicate the direction
+she had taken. As she had seemed plumb daft about the dead Skipper, we
+figured that she had probably broken out with the idea of going to his
+grave, and perhaps making an end of herself there. If that was it, she
+failed. There were no signs whatever of her having been near the fresh
+mound we had tucked the big fellow away under. It was some distance away
+from the Station, and, in the night, it isn't likely she would have met
+anyone to ask the way of. The only grave she found was her own, and not
+a very restful one at that, I'm afraid.
+
+"We had noticed that she seemed to set great store by a big yellow shawl
+she wore--rather a fine old piece of Oriental work it looked, with a
+dragon or some other kind of wild animal embroidered on it. Well, when
+we found that lying on the bank of Ross Creek, just a bit inland of the
+town, we felt so sure that it marked the jumping-off place for her in
+more ways than one. For that reason, what search has been pressed since
+has been in the form of shooting alligators, and seeing if one of them
+appears to have enjoyed anything extra-special in the way of tucker
+lately."
+
+An impatient toot from his launch carried the Doctor to the door again,
+where he paused long enough to assure me for the third or fourth time
+that it would be most unlikely that permission would be granted me to
+see the Mate or the Boatswain of the _Cora_ until their spell of
+quarantine was over. If I was really anxious about it, he would gladly
+put in a word for me with the Chief. I would have to show good reason
+for my request, of course. Perhaps, if it chanced that I was able to
+shed any light on how the schooner came to get into such a mess--I cut
+him short by saying that I might call at the Quarantine Station when I
+came ashore a little later. What I knew about the sailing of the _Cora_
+from Kai happened to be the one thing I didn't care to confide to
+anyone--just yet. Asking the Mate to order my boat to stand by for me a
+few minutes longer, I went to my cabin to be alone while I turned the
+fresh developments over in my mind.
+
+I had been prepared to await the coming of the _Cora_ indefinitely. In
+fact, what I expected above anything else was that the final news would
+be a report that she had been found piled up on any one of a thousand
+reefs that spread their coral claws all the way from the Louisiades to
+the Great Barrier. And in case she did get through, I was quite prepared
+to learn that both of the white men and the girl had succumbed to the
+plague. But to be told that, after the schooner had avoided disaster,
+and all three of them the plague, that the two upon whom my interest and
+affection had centred were gone--dead,--was just a bit staggering. It
+was now up to me to determine upon a definite course of action, and,
+since it was now out of the question attempting to follow my first
+impulse of going to Allen at once and forcing a showdown, I wanted time
+to think.
+
+What the Doctor had told me of the way Bell appeared to have died had
+instantly reawakened my suspicions of Allen. Had the _kor-klee_, working
+with a recurrent effect, finally proved fatal? Or had Allen, perhaps,
+administered a second and stronger dose? He would have had a hundred
+opportunities to do that had he desired to. Rona's attacks on the Mate,
+indicating the deadliest hatred, seemed to prove that her first
+suspicions of him had not weakened during the voyage--more likely,
+indeed, had hardened to a certainty. The belief I had been entertaining
+that Allen had made up his mind to play the game out on the square was
+not very deeply grounded.
+
+My sense of personal loss in the passing of Bell and Rona was not a
+thing I cared to let myself dwell upon for the moment. There was no
+question that the news of Rona's death had shocked me even more than
+that of Bell's. Not that there was anything more between us than I have
+already told. I had never let myself think of her in terms of physical
+possession, though the sheer animal attraction of the girl was beyond
+anything I had ever experienced in a woman. But her appeal to the
+artistic side of me had been stronger even than that. Just as the thrill
+I felt at the first sight of her bathing in the pink-lipped bowl of the
+reef had made the very world itself seem more wonderful and beautiful,
+so now the depression that filled me on realizing that I was never again
+to have sight of her made the world seem emptier and drearier.
+
+Another thing: there was no denying that Bell, splendid fellow that he
+was, had shot his bolt. A real come-back with him was too much to
+expect. The most that could have been hoped for was that he would
+"finish in style," and that I was assured he had done, no matter in what
+agony of soul and body his brave spirit had taken flight. But Rona's
+bolt was still unsped. The girl had hardly begun to finger Life's
+bowstring. It was almost as hard to think of the flaming, soaring spirit
+of her as quenched, as it was to believe that the matchless perfection,
+the supple gracefulness of her body--_shooting alligators to see if any
+of them had been enjoying anything extra-special in tucker lately_! I
+could not pursue that line of thought any further. I agreed with the
+Doctor that the fact that the girl had parted with her beloved shawl
+indicated that she had reached a jumping-off place--a point where she
+had no further use for it. I could not picture her--living--without its
+amber-bright flame streaming about her limbs. The wonder was that she
+had not kept it for a shroud. As I came out upon the deck to go to my
+boat, the intermittent crack of rifle shots along the shore told me that
+the "search" had not been abandoned.
+
+Beyond deciding to go ashore and see if anything further could be
+learned, I had made no plans. It seemed that about the best I could do
+would be to wait in Townsville until Allen and Ranga were out of
+quarantine, and then let things shape as they would; but always assuming
+that, in case the former could not satisfy me he was innocent of Bell's
+death, I should do what I could to settle the reckoning with him. That
+would be my atonement--to Bell and to myself--for my sorry failure to
+"measure up" the day the _Cora Andrews_ came to Kai Lagoon.
+
+Captain Tancred, who had never quite settled it in his own mind how a
+man who openly admitted he had been living in the Kai colony for months
+would not have to be smuggled ashore on the quiet if he expected to
+avoid arrest in Australia, met me at the gangway.
+
+"Best to leave the luggage aboard, lad," he began genially; "then
+that'll be ain less thing ye'll hae to bother wi' if ye're haen' to cut
+an' run for it. If ye're not back ag'in by the time I'm gettin' awa',
+than I'll be sendin' it in for ye on the Company's launch. But ye'd best
+be hangin' on wi' me a bittie, an' tak' me to see them pictur's ye've
+been tellin' me aboot in Sydney toon."
+
+My pictures! The Exhibition had slipped my mind completely, driven out
+by the news of the _Cora_ and the anxieties that had followed in its
+train. I had told Captain Tancred something of my coming show, but had
+hardly convinced him. He was far too considerate to say outright that he
+didn't believe me, but my Kai origin could not be ignored. If I was to
+have an exhibition of paintings in Sydney, then why was I stopping off
+in Townsville? On that point--since I didn't want to go into the _Cora_
+affair with anyone until I knew how things were going to shape--I had
+hardly been able to reassure the old sceptic. I might be an artist all
+right enough--I don't think he had any serious doubts on that
+score,--but I must also be some kind of a crook. He was plainly
+convinced in his own mind that I was trying to slip into Australia on
+the quiet, and was rather hurt because I would not take him into my
+confidence and let him help me.
+
+But why not take in the Exhibition? In nine days, with any luck in
+connections, I could go to Sydney and back, with a day or two to spare.
+Even if the trip ran over that time, it was not likely that the man I
+wanted to see would be getting away immediately.... And, in any event, I
+would know how to find him, whether in Australia or the Islands.
+Further, it could not but have a salutary effect on my nerves to get
+quite beyond the attraction I felt that Quarantine Station would have
+for me if I lingered within physical reach of it. Nothing but absinthe,
+and more absinthe, and then more absinthe, could be depended upon to
+relieve my nerves once they were fully wrought up, as I knew they must
+be if I remained in Townsville in enforced inaction, fretting my heart
+out with impatience. And too much absinthe would mean only one
+thing--that I would begin the day on which I was to meet "Slant" Allen
+for a final showdown in a condition of mind and body precisely similar
+to that in which I had entered upon another day of accursed memory--and,
+doubtless, with equally shameful consequences to myself.
+
+These thoughts flashed through my mind in a fraction of the time I have
+taken to set them down. My reply to Captain Tancred followed close upon
+his suggestion that I leave my luggage aboard.
+
+"I think I'll be going through to Sydney with you, Captain--or at least
+as far as Brisbane," I said, motioning to the steward to bring up the
+bags he had already stowed in the waiting boat. "I know no one whose
+opinion on my daubs I'd rather have than yours. But I'll pay my little
+visit ashore here just the same, counting on you to get my kit landed in
+the unlikely event of my not being aboard again when you get under way
+this afternoon."
+
+I was not long in coming to the conclusion that there was nothing new to
+be learned ashore, that is, with respect to what had happened on the
+_Cora_ in the course of her voyage from Kai. This was not because the
+story was not on everyone's lips.... Quite to the contrary, indeed, the
+town was agog with the dramatic suddenness of the arrival of the plague
+ship and its astonishing sequel. But as no one had been allowed to see
+any of the survivors, such accounts as were current were only those
+which had been passed out by the quarantine people, and about all the
+latter knew I felt that I had already gathered that morning from the
+Doctor on the _Utupua_. Bell's name was not mentioned, and not a man I
+talked with knew that the dead white man had been the Skipper.
+
+For Townsville--for all of Australia--the overwhelming appeal of the
+event was in the fact that a black-birding schooner had been brought
+into port by an ex-Ticket-of-Leavester, who had _volunteered_ to risk
+his life in an attempt to save those of half a hundred plague-stricken
+niggers. That one circumstance in itself was wonderful enough, but when,
+on top of it, the announcement was made that the hero was none other
+than the former idol of sporting Australia, the Hon. Hartley Allen,
+popular imagination was stirred as rarely ever before. What man in all
+the Antipodes had not envied Allen, the supremely successful owner,
+rider and sportsman? What woman had not been intrigued by the romantic
+dash of him? What boy had not dreamed of growing up in his image?
+
+Townsville, delirious with the dramatic appeal of this splendid act on
+the part of a man who had tasted the wine of adulation as he had drunk
+the dregs of infamy, was but a microcosm of Sydney and Melbourne,
+Brisbane and Adelaide, to all of which the news had been flashed by
+wire. Every town and hamlet, from Cairns to Hobart, from Perth to
+Woolongong, were dispatching telegrams of congratulation to a man who
+was still muttering in his drunken sleep behind the walls of the
+Townsville Quarantine Station. Sydney was competing with Brisbane for
+the honour of being the first to bestow the "Freedom of the City" upon
+the man both of them had had some share in transporting. A special from
+Sydney to the local sheet, hinted darkly of what might happen to the
+misguided official who attempted to revive any of the old charges
+against the man "whose sublime courage had emblazoned his name upon the
+tablets of undying fame.... A hand that is raised today against the Hon.
+Hartley Allen is a hand that is raised against the noblest traditions of
+Australia."
+
+I had to elbow through half of a densely packed block to read that last
+on the bulletin in front of the _Trumpet's_ office. The mob cheered
+wildly as the message was chalked up on the blackboard--cheered the
+stirring sentiment and growled ominously at the suggestion that any hand
+would dare to be raised against the Hon. Hartley Allen and the noblest
+traditions of Australia. As I elbowed my way out again, I wondered just
+what the Charters Towers miner, who had manifested his exuberant
+approval by slapping me on the back, would have thought--nay, what he
+would have done--had he known that the hand fingering the guard of the
+revolver in the right side-pocket of my shooting jacket (I had brought
+the useful little weapon on the off chance that it might be needed) was
+rather more likely than not to be raised against at least one of those
+cherished institutions he was so anxious to uphold.
+
+I began to perceive that the line between dealing out retributive
+justice to a blackguard of a murderer and assassinating a national hero
+in cold blood might easily become too hairlike in its tenuousness for a
+red-eyed Australian jury to admit the existence of it. For it was
+nothing less than a national hero that "Slant" Allen was becoming, even
+before he roused from the heavy sleep which had held him ever since he
+collapsed over the wheel as the _Cora_ came to anchor. That
+circumstance, I told myself, complicated my task beyond measure, though
+I couldn't, of course, allow it to make any difference in my program in
+the event Allen wasn't able to satisfy me that he was guiltless of the
+murder of my friend. But if things should transpire which might make
+Allen anxious to put _me_ out of the way--if he, not I were the
+attacking party--that would simplify things greatly. I began to ponder
+that felicitous possibility.
+
+Would not the fact that I was the only living man (Ranga, whatever he
+had seen or heard, would hardly need to be reckoned with as a witness)
+who knew the actual facts about the way he had "volunteered" to join the
+_Cora_ at Kai awaken a desire in Allen's lawless breast to seal my mouth
+for good and all, now that he had so much to lose by the truth's coming
+out? The feeling that such would be the case--that the dizzily mounting
+fortunes of the ex-beach-comber would ultimately impel him to seek me
+out for an understanding--grew on me more and more as I turned the
+situation over in my mind, until at last it became a certainty, against
+which I felt justified in preparing as a boxer trains for a definitely
+scheduled prize fight.
+
+I did not reckon it worth while to call at the Quarantine Station, which
+was some distance from the town and not easy to reach. I did, however,
+just before I put off to the ship, meet the young doctor with whom I had
+talked in the morning. The only thing which he was able to add to what
+he had already told me was in connection with the question I had raised
+respecting the cause of Bell's death. To be certain that he had been
+correct in stating that the latter had not died of plague, he had made a
+special inquiry. In response to this he had been shown a slide made from
+a smear they had taken of the late Skipper's blood. The bacteriologist
+had seen to that immediately the body was landed. It showed no traces
+whatever of plague bacilli. I could be quite assured on that point. The
+Chief was unwilling to hazard an opinion as to what the real cause of
+the man's death might have been. He seemed rather to regret that he had
+failed to order a post-mortem. Allen was still sleeping heavily, but
+would be right as a trivet beyond a doubt as soon as he woke up and gave
+them a chance to sweat some of the alcohol out of his hide. Pulse steady
+as a church.... Temperature a shade sub-normal. Marvellous
+constitution.... Wonderful fellow altogether. Any word of the girl? No,
+nothing. Ten pounds reward had been offered for the recovery of her
+body, or any recognizable part of it. Search was still going on, and he
+pointed across to the opposite foreshore, where a couple of spindling
+Hindu coolies--evidently sugar plantation contract hands--were earnestly
+engaged in performing "_hari-kiri_" upon a plethoric 'gator they had
+just bagged and towed to the beach.
+
+The Doctor was already beginning to look ahead. Did I fancy Allen would
+be able to wangle it so as to get an entry in for the Melbourne Cup in
+the short time that remained before that classic was run? Entries closed
+some time ago, of course. He'd have to square it with the stewards some
+way. They might make a special exception, seeing who Allen was, and what
+he had just done. Any horse with his colours would carry a barrel of
+money, just out of sentiment if nothing else. Did I think he would
+wangle an entry?
+
+"No," I replied, stepping down into my boat. "No, I'm afraid the chances
+are all against it." My mind had been torn with doubt over a number of
+things that day.... It was a relief to be asked to express an opinion on
+a matter respecting which I had no doubt.... Not a shred of it.
+
+Captain Tancred welcomed me back to the _Utupua_ with a significant
+grin. "So ye didna find the outlook ashore to yer likin' lad?" he boomed
+boisterously, thumping me on the back. "Weel, dinna ye mind, since ye
+wasna nabbed. I'll be findin' a wa' to slip ye aff in Sydney sae they
+wan't be puttin' nose to yer trail till ye're clean awa'." The look on
+the old boy's face was a study when, a few days later, after the tugs
+had nosed his ship into her berth at the Circular Quay, I stalked
+brazenly off down the gangway, with no more regard for the two Bobbies
+guarding the dock gate than they had for me. He had exacted two promises
+from me before he let me go: one, that I was to take him to see my
+pictures, and the other, that I would not fail to let him know if there
+ever came a time when he could be of Service to me.... "Real sarvice,
+lad; you'll be twiggin' wha' I mean." I gave both promises freely, just
+as I kept them later--yes, both of them.
+
+As I had trunks, with all the common accessories of civilization, stored
+at the _Australia_, my transformation from a beach-comber to a fairly
+correct imitation of a comfortably heeled artist was the matter of but a
+few hours. My appearance at the Exhibition could not have been better
+timed. The affair had been extremely well handled from the first. I had
+been sending pictures to Sydney from all parts of the South Seas for the
+last eighteen months, packing them up as completed and getting them off
+whenever opportunity offered. Two or three had been lost, but, on the
+whole, I reckoned the plan safer than trying to take them round with me
+in one lot, at the risk of losing the bunch.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X
+
+                            ART AND SUSPENSE
+
+
+Nothing had been further from my mind than an Australian exhibition. I
+cared little for the provincial approbation of the Antipodes, and I was
+hardly ready for Paris--not quite yet. It was only at the reiterated
+requests of friends (two of them were young Australian artists I had
+known in my student days in Paris), to whom I was under real obligations
+for their kindness in receiving and storing my pictures as they dribbled
+into Sydney, that I finally gave consent to a public showing. In doing
+this, I had stipulated particularly that they were to take all the
+troubles and responsibilities of the affair, and that under no
+circumstances was I to be expected to appear in person--unless, of
+course, it suited my convenience and inclination at the time.
+
+As I have said, the affair had been most intelligently handled from the
+first. There had not been enough of my canvases comfortably to fill the
+wing of the big New South Wales Government Museum and Art Gallery which
+was available for exhibitions, but my friends, rather than pull the show
+off at a less pretentious and worse lighted gallery, had added enough of
+their own pictures to relieve the coldness of otherwise blank walls.
+These were also South Sea marines--it was a straight seascape show
+throughout,--but more or less conventional in inspiration and execution.
+Benchley might have been painting marine backgrounds for an aquarium, so
+faithfully did he labour to reproduce every detail of jutting coral
+branches and floating seaweed. Crafts, on the other hand, had fallen
+early under the influence of Turner, and persisted in bulling the yellow
+ochre market by drenching his Great Barrier Reef seascapes with such a
+flood of golden light as was never seen save at the head of the Adriatic
+and now and then on the coasts of Tripoli and Algeria.
+
+I would hardly characterize my own work as a compromise between these
+two extremes.... It was _not_ that, though I _was_ less of a slave to
+form than Benchley, and by no means so emancipated from it as Crafts.
+Rather, I should say, I was striving, independent of either classic or
+contemporary influence, to paint such depth, warmth and atmosphere into
+my tropical seascapes as would make them convey an _intenser_ suggestion
+of reality. I did not expect water spaniels to pay me the subtle
+compliment of trying to gambol in my breakers, nor children to try to
+launch their toy sailboats in my lagoons.... Benchley's "colour
+photograph" effects were more likely to attain to those distinctions
+than my comparatively impressionistic sketches. What I was striving for
+was an effect that would compel some such comment as old Jackson had
+made the first time he stood off and conned my "Swells and
+Shells"--"Gawd bly'me, that's _it_! That water's wetter 'n a swept deck,
+an', s'elp me Mike, but I c'n bloomin' near sniff them bloody clams!"
+
+Very naturally, then, since the sea was what I was painting, the
+impressions of anyone who didn't know the sea as intimately as did my
+beach-combing cronies of Kai wasn't going to worry me much. The opinions
+of men who knew less about the subject of my pictures, and more about
+how pictures in general were painted, didn't strike me as anything that
+counted very seriously. Nevertheless when, at Brisbane on the voyage
+south, I got the Sydney papers with the account of the opening of the
+show, it was a good deal of a satisfaction to find that my work appeared
+to have got over with the art critics. These had, of course (since they
+were denied Jackson's facility of expression), to confine themselves to
+the jargon of their kind. It was plain, however, that they had been
+favourably impressed, and were doing the best they could with their
+comparatively restricted vocabularies. Mere city dwellers, too, most of
+them, one had to allow for their limited capacity of appreciation for
+something--the sea--which they knew only from other pictures. But even
+allowing for that, it was reassuring to find that they were coming
+across so whole-heartedly. Such capsules of praise as they had in stock
+were scattered with lavish hands for whoso would to swallow. "The soul
+of the sea palpitates through every canvas," said the _Herald_; "you
+leave the gallery with the tang of blown brine fresh in your nostrils,"
+said the _Telegraph_; "Australia is honoured with having the first
+chance to see this brilliantly distinctive work," said the illustrated
+_Australasian_, and promised four full pages of reproductions of the
+"gems of the collection" in its next issue. The young lady (I judged she
+was young) who was on the job for the Melbourne _Age_ gushed
+breathlessly for a column and a half. This was a sample: "In
+'Mother-of-Pearl' he has woven with a warp of sunbeams and a woof of
+rainbow--a shimmering brocade of exultantly sentient brightness!"
+Capsules of praise, every one of these; but they were from the top shelf
+beyond a doubt, and the fact that they had been reached for indicated
+that at least something of my message had dribbled over the frames.
+
+The _Bulletin_ had done rather better than the others in commissioning
+for the occasion an "art critic" who (as transpired in the course of his
+half-page article) had sailed his own sixty-footer to Auckland and back.
+He, at least, had met the sea on more intimate terms than was possible
+through Sunday mixed-bathing at Coogee and Manley (with occasional
+ferryboat passages, about the limit the others had gone, I reckoned).
+Said he, in speaking of "The Seventh Son of a Seventh Son": "The beat of
+the eternal sea was behind every slash of the brush with which this
+Franco-American wizard of light and colour painted that rolling mountain
+of water. I felt my fingers involuntarily clutching at the spokes of the
+wheel to bring her up to meet the menace of that curling crest. I forgot
+where I was ... I almost felt the heave of a deck beneath my feet...."
+
+I rather liked that, I must confess; though perhaps it didn't give me
+quite the double-barrelled thrill of "Heifer" Halligan's comment when I
+sent for him to pass judgment on that same picture before the paint of
+my finishing touches upon it was dry. A month before, as I have already
+mentioned, I had given the "Heifer" a pretty severe pummelling with the
+four-ounce gloves, and, like the good sport he was, to show that there
+was no hard feeling on the score of his battered optics, he had
+volunteered to sail me in his sloop to Tuka-tuva (the reef on which Bell
+lost the _Flying Scud_, it may be recalled) so that I could make some
+close-range studies of hard-running waves at the point of breaking. And,
+just to show that there was no hard feeling on _my_ part over the wallop
+below my belt with which the "Heifer" had finally brought the bout to a
+close, I accepted. The studies had been made--just a few slashes on
+oil-cloth with a rather useful waterproof paint I had mixed specially
+for "sloppy" stunts like that--with my shivering anatomy lashed to the
+_Wet-Eyed Susy's_ bowsprit, while the "Heifer" tacked back and forth
+just beyond the line where the pull of the shoaling reef, dragging at
+their bases, let the green-black tops of the combers tumble over in a
+thunderous roar. As he was really taking a good deal of a chance of
+losing his handy little pearler, if nothing else, it was only right that
+the "Heifer's" request for a first look-see at the completed picture
+should have the call.
+
+He studied it in silence for a minute or two, legs wide apart and his
+bullet head cocked judicially to one side. Then his fine teeth were
+bared in a broad grin and he vented a throaty chuckle of amused
+admiration. Said he: "Mister Whitney, that hulkin' ol' lalapalooser
+there looks like he has all the kick behint him of that bally wallop on
+the solar plexus you floored me with the other day." Not even the Sydney
+_Bulletin's dilletante_ yachtsman could do quite as well as that--from
+my standpoint, at least. But of course I had a weakness for the Kai
+viewpoint.
+
+The Exhibition had been opened early in the week--the usual affair of
+the kind, "Under the Patronage and in the Presence of His Excellency,
+the Governor General and Lady X----," and a long list of specially
+invited guests. Amiable old Lord X---- had made one of the happy little
+speeches for which he was famous. Then they had all had tea and a look
+at the pictures. This inevitable formal session out of the way, the show
+was opened to the general public. Under the stimulus of the
+astonishingly enthusiastic press, the public had come through beyond all
+expectations. For the next three days the crush at the gallery was, as
+the _Bulletin_ had it, like a "bargain day rush at _Morden's_." On
+Friday, it was advertised, Sir Joseph Preston, R.A., a very
+distinguished English artist visiting in Australia, had consented to
+speak at the Exhibition on "The Painter with the New Method and the New
+Message." This was the day of my arrival in Sydney. It did not occur to
+me at first just who the subject of the discourse was to be. When it
+finally came home to me, I began speeding up my transformation process
+at once. By dint of rushed valeting and dressing, I just managed to
+reach the gallery as Sir Joseph was getting under way.
+
+I won't endeavour to set down his speech, not even in outline. It was
+highly complimentary from first to last--and not even condescending,
+which was as surprising as pleasing when one considered how lofty an
+eminence Sir Joseph occupied in the art world. One thing I was just a
+bit disappointed about, though, was that the speaker seemed to assume
+that the pictures on exhibition represented my ultimate expression, the
+best I could do, or could be expected to do; whereas I knew that I had
+hardly got my foot well planted on the first rung of the ladder. I
+regretted without resenting this. I hadn't painted my hopes and
+ambitions into the pictures, so how was Sir Joseph Preston, more than
+anybody else, to see what I was driving at? I rather wanted to tell him
+about it, though. I hadn't talked with an artist of the old boy's
+calibre since I was in Paris, and not often there.
+
+I was just screwing up my nerve to push in and introduce myself, when
+Benchley pounced upon me with a joyous whoop and did the thing as a
+matter of course. Totally oblivious of the widening circle of wondering
+cackle that arose as the news of my unexpected, and not undramatic,
+appearance spread outward through the jam, I held forth to the beaming
+Royal Academician on the things that had been passing through my mind.
+The great man fired as though he had been of tow and my words--my
+ideas--were a torch laid to the inflammable mass of him.
+
+"Magnificent! Perfectly ripping!" he exclaimed with enthusiasm; "but
+what a shame I didn't know that ten minutes ago so that I could have
+told them! By Jove, I'll tell them now! Better yet--jolly good idea;
+_you_ tell them. Just the things you've been telling me."
+
+Benchley, Crafts and my other sponsors descended upon me like a pack of
+hounds at those words, and the first thing I knew I had been hustled up
+onto their little dais, and Sir Joseph was introducing me as "a
+gentleman who can make a few pertinent additions to my late remarks."
+
+I hadn't been called upon for a speech since I won the middle-weight
+boxing championship of Harvard in my Junior year, and speaking was by no
+means my long suit even in those days. I bucked up and went through it
+now though, just as I did on that first occasion. It's no very difficult
+thing to get away with when you know what you want to say--and have the
+crowd with you. I spoke briefly, but very earnestly--very much to the
+point, too, I think. When the crowd had quieted down a bit, tea was
+served. The next morning, when I read the papers in bed, it was to
+discover that I had become a fully fledged--or perhaps maned is the
+proper word--lion.
+
+In one of those same papers there was an interesting item of news about
+another lion. The special representative the _Herald_ had rushed to
+Townsville immediately the news of the _Cora Andrews_ affair had been
+received, wired that the Hon. Hartley Allen, replying from the
+Quarantine Station to a note the correspondent had addressed him there,
+announced definitely that it was his intention to pay a visit to his old
+home town of Sydney. He would leave by the first steamer sailing after
+the doctors had certified him free of the danger of plague infection.
+
+That was good news. The best I could have hoped for. It confirmed my
+growing belief that I was not going to have to do much, if any, seeking
+in order to meet my man. And it was a hundred to one that the doctor
+with whom I had talked on the _Utupua_ had told Allen of the
+conversation as soon as the latter came out of his long sleep, I was
+even inclined to the opinion that his decision to go south as soon as he
+could had been influenced by a desire to find out once and for all what
+attitude I was going to take toward him. This was all to the good. There
+was no need of my hurrying back to Townsville now. I could stay in
+Sydney and enjoy my triumph while watching that of the Hon. Hartley
+Allen develop. With a lighter heart than I had known since the rumble of
+the _Cora's_ anchor chain awakened me on that day of hateful memory in
+Kai, I tumbled out of bed, took a cold bath, and went down to the
+dining-room for breakfast--the greatest burst of early matutinal energy
+I had shown in years.
+
+The avidity of the interest of the public in the Hon. Hartley Allen
+increased day by day as the time approached for the hero to come south.
+All of the important papers had special men on the job in Townsville,
+and every scrap of news bearing the least relation to the man of the
+hour was instantly put on the wires and rushed into print. Save for that
+one announcement that he intended visiting Sydney, Allen himself gave
+out nothing. The correspondents had to confine themselves to reports of
+his continued improvement in health, as passed out to them by the
+doctors, and to speculation--columns of it--as to what effect Allen's
+return might be expected to have upon racing. His elder brother--Sir
+James, who was now in England--had allowed Hartley's stable to run down
+a good deal after the latter had been shipped off to the Islands. There
+were a few good horses left after the best of the string had been sold
+to pay off debts, and these would form a nucleus which could not fail to
+develop quickly into a factor to be reckoned with in the meets of next
+season. There was no limit to the discussion of this phase of the
+affair, Melbourne and Sydney racing experts devoting even more space to
+it than the special men in Townsville.
+
+Of the story of the _Cora Andrews_ there was nothing new whatever being
+brought out. If Allen was telling the doctors at the Quarantine Station
+anything, it must have been in confidence, for these professed to have
+learned nothing further every time the correspondents pressed them for
+details. The schooner herself, it was reported, had broken from her
+mooring during a gale and been driven upon the beach of Cleveland Bay,
+some miles from the town. A hole had been stove in her bow and it would
+be impossible to get her off before considerable repairs were carried
+out. As she had not been disinfected since the removal of the plague
+victims, there would probably be some delay about the repairs,
+especially as the question of her ownership was in doubt. She had
+belonged to the man who sailed her in the labour-recruiting trade, and
+he was dead. So was the Skipper who had taken her over in the
+Louisiades. It looked like the Hon. Hartley Allen had the most valid
+claim to her, but that was a matter to be adjusted by the courts in any
+event. In the meantime, the schooner, as she was lying in fairly quiet
+water, was probably safe until the next gale. Thus the papers.
+
+When Allen finally came out of quarantine it transpired that he would
+have a wait of three days on his hands before there was a steamer
+departing for the south. The delay was unavoidable, although an
+enthusiastic Sydney paper had suggested that the Admiral commanding the
+Australian Naval Station should detach a gunboat to bring the hero home.
+Allen, it appeared, had actually tried to avoid meeting the newspaper
+men, and consented to do so finally only on the condition that he would
+not be expected to give out anything in the way of an interview in
+respect to his past, present or future. As they had no alternative in
+the matter, the correspondents accepted the ultimatum, but only--as most
+of them confessed--in the hope of getting it modified when action was
+joined. They were doomed to disappointment.
+
+Allen received them on the veranda of a house that had been put at his
+disposal by a prominent local shipping man--a detached bungalow in the
+grounds of the latter's home on the outskirts of the town. They reported
+him looking rather soft--a good two stone heavier than his former riding
+weight. He was heavily browned from the tropical sun, showed a tinge of
+yellow--doubtless from malaria and _dengue_,--and his face was deeply
+lined about the eyes and mouth. He looked to have aged rather more than
+the five years of his absence: but life in the Islands was hardly the
+rest cure most Australians fancied it. No, not by a long shot.
+
+Except for his refusal to tell anything whatever of the story of how he
+had brought the plague ship through the Great Barrier Reef, Allen had
+been very courteous and agreeable to the pressmen. They all agreed that
+he was in good fettle--quite full of beans. Indeed, it was Allen who did
+all of the interviewing. Persistently refusing to answer any questions
+about himself, he was avid of interest concerning all that had happened
+in the racing world during his absence. What were the real facts behind
+the breakdown of the Colchester filly after she had won the Victoria
+National so handily? Who was that colt _Ballarat Boy_ out of?--the one
+that had upset all the dope in the spring meet at Adelaide. Were Tod
+Sloan and Skeets Martin still piling up wins in England? What was the
+secret of their success? Was there any chance of these or any other of
+the Yank jockeys coming to Australia?
+
+Answering such questions as these for an hour was the way that bunch of
+high-salaried feature writers interviewed the Hon. Hartley Allen. And
+when, as one of them put it in somewhat mixed simile, they were "pumped
+dry as a last year's dope sheet," the hero announced that the interview
+was over.
+
+Disappointed in their endeavours to pry any pearls from the oyster
+into which Allen (for reasons best known to himself) had metamorphosed
+himself, the correspondents made the best of a bad job by playing up
+the modesty of the man they had been sent a thousand miles or so to
+interview. Modest was an adjective that--in the light of what most of
+them knew of Allen's past--it hadn't occurred to any of them to use
+before. Now, however, they made up for lost time. The modest hero did
+this, or the modest hero said that.... There was modesty in the way he
+stroked his chin, in the shrug of his shoulders, in the way he crossed
+and uncrossed his legs when sitting. His habit of looking sideways
+when speaking was rated as a sign of modesty; so was the trick of
+stroking his cheroot between thumb and forefinger as he smoked.
+_Modest_--_hero_--those words became permanently wedded in my mind
+during the week that I was reading leaders written with them for an
+inspiration, the report of sermons preached with them as a text. I
+cannot hear the one of them to this day without thinking of the other.
+_Modest hero!_ In the estimation of the public "Slant" Allen, whom I had
+always thought of as the most egotistic man I had ever known, remained
+that to the--until public estimation ceased to interest him.
+
+There was one little item of news telegraphed from Townsville which I
+read with a good deal of grim amusement. The day before his departure
+Allen was given some kind of a send-off in the Town Hall. As he was
+riding down the main street on his way to this affair, a man ducked
+under the rope holding the crowd back at the curb, rushed at the open
+carriage and aimed a blow at the breast of the hero with a knife. No
+whit perturbed, the latter had coolly deflected the thrust by striking
+up the assailant's elbow with his left hand. Then, seizing the ruffian's
+wrist with his right hand, he had brought it sharply down on the edge of
+the carriage door, shattering the bones and causing the knife to fall
+from the relaxed fingers to the pavement. Infuriated by the dastardly
+attack, the crowd had set upon the would-be assassin, who was only saved
+from being mauled to death through the interference of none other than
+Allen himself.
+
+The correspondents were much impressed, not only by the behaviour of the
+generous-hearted hero in intervening to save the life of the man who had
+just tried to take his own, but also--and especially--by a curious
+little circumstance in connection therewith. It was observed, in short,
+that, while Allen had defended his own body most effectually with his
+bare hands, as soon as he saw that the man who had attacked him was on
+the verge of being killed by a bloody-minded mob, quite beyond police
+control, he whipped out a revolver and used the menace of it to clear a
+space around the trampled body of his late assailant. The correspondents
+all thought that was rather fine; indeed, I was inclined to think so
+myself.
+
+Allen had flatly refused to lodge a complaint against the man who had
+tried so desperately to knife him, and even declined to help the police
+in their attempt to identify the fellow. "Just an old Island affair, the
+big-hearted hero had explained with a careless laugh, as he turned on
+his way to receive the Golden Key symbolizing the Freedom of the Queen
+City of Northern Queensland." That was the way the _Herald_ man had it.
+
+At the Police Station the prisoner was recognized at once as a man named
+Saunders, who had been convicted of a series of bullion robberies in the
+Kalgoorlie gold fields of Western Australia some years previously.
+Because of his diabolical practice of throwing red pepper and vitriol to
+blind his victims, he had gained the sobriquet of "The Squid." He had
+escaped after serving but eighteen months of his twenty-five-year
+sentence and made his way across the "Never-Never" to Port Darwin, where
+all trace of him was lost for the time. He was supposed to have slipped
+away to the Islands. This was confirmed a few months later, when a
+boatload of out-bound placer miners were held up and robbed of the
+fruits of their season's work in the Fly gold fields of New Guinea. Even
+if one of them, who had once been in Western Australia, had not
+identified Saunders, the fact that a jar of sulphuric acid had been
+thrown into the midst of the miners would have connected "The Squid"
+with the crime beyond a doubt. Australia had but fragmentary record of
+his later crimes, but he was known to have been mixed up in a number of
+pearl robberies in and about Thursday Island. He had continued to
+practise his vitriol-throwing trick (varying it occasionally with a
+fiendishly original stunt with some native concoction), and was still
+known as "The Squid." How long he had been lying low in Australia, or
+why he ventured there, he refused to tell; neither would he offer any
+explanation of his savage attack upon the hero of the hour. All he had
+said in the latter connection was: "'Slant' 'll twig why I took a flyer
+at returning the pig-sticker to him--it was his onct."
+
+I understood at once that the root of "The Squid's" grudge against Allen
+struck back to that affair of the old pearl pirate's missionary-reared
+daughter--a copper-haired, ivory-browed Amazon of a girl who had become
+one of the most consummate sirens in the pearleries after a three-months
+trip with "Slant" to Singapore had broken her in. Amazing story the
+whole thing, from its beginning with the girl's mother--a teacher in the
+Gospel Propaganda Society's school at Thursday Island who had fallen
+afoul of one of "The Squid's" tentacles long before his conviction--to
+its ghastly finish, when the girl herself settled her accumulated
+account against all mankind with the body and soul of one--a hot-headed
+lump of a young missionary just out from London.
+
+According to the version current in Kai, Allen had not been greatly to
+blame in the affair with the temperamental rack of bones and red braids
+that the girl was when she burst upon the Islands from the Auckland
+convent; but "The Squid" evidently felt that the man who had set the
+snowball (not a very apt metaphor, for I never heard the girl compared
+to anything so frigid) rolling was the one to settle with. I had heard
+of three or four rather ingeniously thought-out attempts he had made to
+square the account, all of which, however, had failed as a consequence
+of Allen's quickness of wit and hand in sudden emergency. The knife
+figuring in the Townsville attack, it occurred to me, was probably the
+one the resourceful "Slant" had put through "The Squid's" shoulder at
+twenty paces a fraction of a second before the latter had delivered a
+flask of red pepper from his upraised hand.
+
+I also thought I understood why Allen had bluntly refused to make any
+explanation of the attack. A veritable Turk in his relations with women,
+that Island Lothario had also the Turk's dislike for discussing his
+women in public. When sober, Allen rarely if ever boasted about
+anything. When very drunk, he would occasionally toot a horn anent his
+racing wins; and once, when he was all but swamped--awash to the rails
+with "Three Star"--I had heard him give a maudlin monologue on men he
+had put away. But I--and no one else, so far as I knew--had ever heard
+him talk of the girls he had bagged, though the Lord knows there had
+been enough of them. (The nearest he ever came to it was in that little
+joke of his I have mentioned--the one about having "a son and a saddle
+in every island group in the South Pacific,"--and that was only a sort
+of delicate implication.) His close-mouthedness about women was one of a
+number of little things I couldn't help but liking in the rascal.
+
+Since Allen and Saunders would not talk, and since the knife that
+figured in the affair--a heavy dirk, with a shark's hide handle and the
+mark of a Lisbon cutlerer on the blade--could not talk, the ever-baffled
+Townsville correspondents had been able to gather practically nothing
+about what their journalistic noses told them was a red-hot human
+interest story. Blocked on that trail, they devoted a lot of space to a
+discussion of the interesting revelation of the hero's Island nickname.
+More or less ingenious theories as to "Why 'Slant'?" filled the columns
+of the papers for a number of days. None of them was within a mile of
+the mark. One of the correspondents fancied the name had been given
+Allen because of his "aquilinity, his wiry slenderness, so that he clove
+the air like a slant of sunbeams as he rode." Another writer was sure
+the name was suggested by the hero's peculiar crouching seat--the slant
+of his back as he urged on his mount. They were quite incapable of going
+beyond Allen's physical characteristics, or of visualizing him save on
+horseback.
+
+That added another little item to the list of things I could have
+enlightened the press and the public on about "Slant" Allen, and, in
+this particular instance, I wouldn't have minded passing on the facts at
+once. Indeed, I made rather a hit at a Government House luncheon one day
+by telling how the nearing hero (he was expected to be landing at
+Brisbane on the morrow) had qualified for his queer nickname. Jackson,
+who was responsible for the title, had confided to me how he came to
+bestow it. There was no story behind it, as some of the papers had
+hinted. Old "Jack," after having known Allen pretty intimately for a
+couple of years, came to the conclusion one day that the lanky
+Sydney-sider was the first man he ever met who persistently and
+consistently kept him guessing. Given a situation, and the foxy old
+highwayman had discovered that he could usually tell in advance how any
+given man would be likely to meet it. It was after he had guessed wrong
+about Allen some dozens of times, without once guessing right, that
+Jackson made up his mind that there was no forecasting the "slant of his
+course from the slant of the breeze." And because something in the
+mellifluous sound of the word struck pleasantly on the trader's ear, he
+began applying the name to the man who had inspired it. "No re'l reason
+for it," he explained; "but it sure do seem to fit 'im like a new copper
+bottom does a schooner."
+
+The Governor General's Aide-de-camp, who was something of a follower of
+the ponies, confirmed Jackson's opinion and the fitness of the
+sobriquet. Said the gaily uniformed "Galloper": "The great secret of
+Allen's astonishing success as a point-to-point rider was his amazing
+faculty for bringing off the unexpected. Once, at Launceston, I saw him
+win on a hundred-to-one shot (how he happened to be riding the skate I
+don't know) by deliberately bolting the course and putting his mount
+full tilt through a thorn thicket. He was in tenth place, with a mile to
+go when he did it, and he won the race by a dozen lengths--his own and
+the waler's hide in tatters.
+
+"Another unexpected win of Allen's," he continued with the wry grin of a
+man who speaks of dearly bought experience, "was that 'Totalisator' coup
+of his at Adelaide. His pals got in on the 'Tote' somehow, and--" A
+warning cough from Lord X---- checked the loquacious "Galloper's" tongue
+in mid-flight, and, with reddening gill, he faded away with: "Sorry,
+sir, but I forgot it isn't quite--quite the thing to remember that
+little chapter of Hartley Allen's past. Quite right, really. My mistake.
+Dead sorry, sir...."
+
+There was no doubt that Allen was going to have a clean-scored slate to
+begin writing anew on. I was thinking of that, and "Why 'Slant'?", as I
+walked back to the hotel an hour later. "No forecasting the slant of his
+course from the slant of the breeze!"... "Faculty for bringing off the
+unexpected." I hoped that he wasn't going to disappoint me in the matter
+of bringing things to a showdown on his arrival in Sydney. But no.... My
+every instinct told me that he would not side-step that. So I made all
+preparations properly to receive "Slant" Allen, and, on the day of his
+triumphant home-coming, was waiting for him in my room at the
+_Australia_, as I have already told.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XI
+
+                          A HERO'S HOMECOMING
+
+
+It was two o'clock when I began powdering and screening the yellow-hued
+inner lining of my sea shells. Subconsciously, I must have set three in
+my mind as the time my caller would come, for it was not until that hour
+that I ceased my absorbingly interesting labours and looked at my watch.
+So far as I can recall, I felt no concern one way or the other. I simply
+noted that the hour had gone by without bringing my expected visitor,
+and went back to my work.
+
+As a matter of fact, having just made a most gratifying discovery, I was
+rather glad that the interruption had not come. I had isolated a new and
+wonderful colour--a dark coppery gold that I had yearned for every time
+I saw sunlight filtering through brine onto the gently undulating leaves
+of reef-rooted kelp. Now I had it; and it was not an accident--I could
+do it again. By standing on edge a fragment of one of the big bivalves I
+was experimenting with, I discovered that a sharp blow with the side of
+my pestle caused the thinnest of chips to fly from its enamel-like
+lining. These, glassily translucent as they fell, when reduced in the
+mortar gave a warm, almost glowing powder of exactly the hue I sought.
+Now if I could only devise a way of mixing it effectively....
+
+So well were my innermost faculties set to respond to that expected
+knock, that, when it came, not even the mazes of exultant speculation in
+which my discovery had set my brain--my outward wits--to wandering,
+prevented instant ganglionic reaction. I didn't have to think. That had
+all been done an hour before, and the necessary orders given. At the
+alarm, these had only to be carried out as prearranged. My legs and arms
+simply obeyed the directions that had been registered for them in some
+convenient little nerve-knots strung along my spinal column. That
+carried me, stepping softly, out of the bathroom, through the bedroom,
+and past the middle of the sitting-room, well beyond the direct line of
+vision of anyone opening the door from the hall. It was a position from
+which I must see anyone coming in before he was able to locate me. The
+rest of the order--carried out simultaneously--had to do with laying the
+pestle lightly on the bathroom table and thrusting the hand that had
+been wielding it deep into the right-hand pocket of my old shooting
+jacket.
+
+In the second or two that it had taken me to reach the middle of the
+sitting-room from the bathroom, my wits had relinquished their rainbow
+dreams and were back on their workaday job. They it was which, now the
+limit of ganglionic action had been reached, stepped in and took
+command. It was not from nervousness that I swallowed once and flashed
+my tongue across my lips before speaking. I only wanted to be sure my
+voice was as firm as I knew the resolution directing it to be. Speaking
+sharply, but in a tone not above the ordinary, I said: "Come in, Allen!"
+
+Among the several little surprises in store for me in the course of the
+next few minutes, not the least came when the man on the other side of
+the door coughed and cleared his throat as his hand began to turn the
+knob. I was just telling myself that such palpable symptoms of
+nervousness were very unlike "Slant" Allen to display, when the door
+swung inwards and "Slant" Allen stepped into the room. Allen, but not
+the Allen I had known. Absolutely nerved to readiness as I was, the
+contrast of this flushed, slightly embarrassed, almost diffident young
+chap and the ruthless, cold-blooded badman I had made every
+preparation--physical and mental--to meet came nigh to taking me aback.
+It was like clambering up out of a companionway, all set for a hurricane
+sweeping the deck--and finding it calm. For an instant my jaw must have
+come near to sagging in the amazement that swept over me. I pulled
+myself together quickly, though, and if Allen noticed my momentary
+lapse, he gave no sign of it.
+
+He was the first to speak. "So you were expecting me?" he said, but not
+as though greatly surprised.
+
+"Ra-_ther_," I replied with emphasis. "Look at this!" and I pulled out
+the revolver from my right-hand pocket, released the hair-trigger
+adjustment, slid the safety-catch, and laid it on the table by the
+window. I would not have been guilty of such an obvious act of bravado
+had not my preternaturally acute senses told me that, so far as Allen
+was concerned at least, there was not going to be any occasion to use
+the weapon. That feeling persisted even when, as Allen turned slightly
+in the act of closing the door, I noticed a very perceptible bulge where
+the flimsy corner of his pongee coat swept his lean right flank. The
+instant he entered the room I knew that, whatever motives had brought
+him there, the intention of trying to kill me was not among them.
+Scarcely less strong were my doubts that I would be able to establish
+any valid grounds for killing him. My old sneaking liking for certain
+things about the debonair rascal was not dead.
+
+He grinned appreciatively at the sight of the gun, and then, with a
+perfunctory "You don't mind, do you?" stepped over and picked it up. I
+watched him without misgivings, my mind still busy adjusting itself to
+the new aspect.
+
+"Was that the toy you used the day you put a bullet hole through the
+crown of my new hundred-dollar Payta hat?" he asked, fingering the
+exquisitely turned barrel admiringly. "My own fault, of course. I egged
+you on by expressing some doubts of your ability to do it from your
+jacket pocket. This looks like ..."
+
+"Same gun--same jacket--new pocket," I cut in laconically; adding: "I
+was prepared to repeat the operation just now--with about half a finger
+less elevation on the muzzle."
+
+It was the real old Allen grin that opened out as the significance of
+those concluding words sunk home. Not the mocking smirk which had curled
+his lips so much of the time, but a good, broad, healthy grin that
+betokened genuine inward enjoyment. The fellow--I had remarked it
+before--had a really keen and inclusive sense of humour--even inclusive
+enough to permit his hearty participation in a laugh that was on
+himself. But that irritating sneer (which had died on his lips as a full
+realization of Bell's bigness in giving him his choice of going on the
+_Cora_ or remaining at Kai came to him)--that sneer, with the amused
+contempt for all the world it connoted, did not reappear. Indeed, I am
+not sure that I ever saw it again. Had there been some inward change in
+the man to dry up the fount of contempt from which that ironic smirk
+rose to his lips? I wasn't clear on that point yet: but certainly he had
+been profoundly shaken--deeply stirred.
+
+Save for that expansive grin of real amusement, Allen made no comment on
+my implication that I had been waiting to send a bullet--a few inches
+below the crown of his hat. "Sweetest balanced little piece of light
+artillery I ever trained," he remarked inconsequentially, holding the
+revolver at arm's length and squinting along the sights to where his
+reversed image menaced back from the depths of a full-length mirror. He
+really admired the little gun--I could see that by the way his fist
+closed on the checked vulcanite grip, by the caressing touch of his
+forefinger on the locked trigger.
+
+"Made to order by the S. and W. people for my father," I explained,
+trying to fall in with his mood as far as I could. If he had come to
+talk about revolvers--well, who in Australia knew more about them than I
+did? I continued:
+
+"There's two or three of the Governor's own little gadgets on it, and
+one or two I had added myself. The one that I like best is that
+safety-catch.... Stranger can't release it till he's been shown how. You
+never can tell who may be picking up a gun that's left lying around, you
+know. You'll have to admit it would be doubly painful for a man to be
+plunked with his own revolver."
+
+I couldn't for the life of me have refrained from that last little
+sally, and Allen seemed to enjoy it as much as I did. His broadened grin
+showed an extra tooth or two at each end as he relaxed his extended arm.
+"I haven't the least intention of trying to impose that indignity on
+you," he laughed. "Besides, you needn't fear that the significance of
+that sag in your left-hand pocket has been lost on me. Had me covered
+from there all the time, didn't you?"
+
+"As a matter of fact, I had," I replied, beginning to grin myself; "but
+this confounded sawed-off _Mauser_ automatic has an upkick that makes
+anything like delicate work quite out of the question. I could wing you
+with it from there, no doubt; but the job wouldn't be a pretty
+one--nothing that I could take any pride in."
+
+I laid the stubby automatic on the table where the other weapon had
+been, saying that I always did hate the drag of a gun in my pocket.
+Then, letting my glance wander to the bulge on Allen's right hip, I
+added pointedly: "... especially when I can't see any immediate use
+ahead for it."
+
+Either missing the point of that gentle hint, or else ignoring it
+completely, Allen went on playing with the little S. & W. Breaking it
+gently with practised hand, he studied with bent head the smooth, easy
+action of the automatic ejector. Just a bit more of a bend, and the six
+cartridges slid noiselessly forth and fell into his hand. He commenced
+shoving them back, one by one. It was the last, or the next to the last,
+of the greasy cylinders that slipped from his fingers, struck the floor
+and rolled under the table. I remarked with admiration the magnificent
+swell of the flexed saddle muscles as the thin _pongee_ tightened over
+the bent thighs; the narrow hips, the lean, powerful back, the--
+
+"Good God!"
+
+The voice, hoarse with awe and surprise, was mine; but my own mother
+would hardly have recognized it. For an instant my quaking knees almost
+let me collapse to the floor; then my faltering inward control stiffened
+and clapped the brakes on my skidding nerves. By the time Allen,
+startled by my sudden exclamation, straightened up from his scramble
+after the still unretrieved cartridge, I had myself fully in hand again.
+I could not be sure whether his flush and quick breathing were from
+surprise or the stooping posture in which he had been.
+
+"Did you speak, Whitney?" he asked, after running his eyes over the room
+and assuring himself that no one had entered. I held his eyes with my
+own till I was sure my voice was steadied. When I spoke, it was
+deliberately and evenly. "So Rona came back," I said.
+
+The train of lightning mental processes by which I had arrived at that
+astonishing conclusion had not much of an edge on Allen's quick
+comprehension of what had started that train going. For only the
+briefest instant his eyes were blank with surprise. Then, with a look of
+complete understanding, he clapped a hand to the side of his neck and
+began smoothing straight the limp collar of his soft silk shirt. The
+ghost of what would have been a sheepish grin flickered up and died
+away, and to his face came something of that half-embarrassed,
+half-eager look that had sat upon it when he entered the room, as he
+said: "Yes, Rona has come back. That was one of the things I came to see
+you about. She--we--the both of us have a bit of a favour to ask of
+you."
+
+Quite the master of myself now (and of the situation, too, I thought), I
+came back banteringly with: "If it's that red, white and blue neck of
+yours you want tied up, I have one of B. and W.'s little First Aid
+cases in my bag...."
+
+It was the shockingly torn and bruised neck that had been revealed when
+Allen's collar had slipped back as he stooped to recover the rolling
+cartridge that set my swift train of thought going. This must have been
+something of the order of it, but electrically rapid of action:
+Lacerated neck--old Chinaman at Ponape whose neck was scratched when
+Rona ran away from him--Rona a specialist in neck-scratching--probably
+scratched Allen's neck (Question--Was it done in the course of one of
+the attacks she was known to have made upon him on the _Cora_?)--Could
+not have been done on the _Cora_, as they had left her over two weeks
+ago and these half-healed scratches were not over five or six days
+old.--Hence, Rona had scratched Allen's neck inside of the last week,
+and, therefore, could not have drowned herself in Ross Creek a
+fortnight ago. Conclusion--Rona has come back.
+
+It had taken not over a second or two for my quickened mind to run that
+devious course, and Allen's must have covered a good part of it in even
+less time. The wits of the both of us were keenly on edge. There could
+not but have been a fine display of sparks had he been in his wonted
+aggressive mood. But he had not come for fighting, physical or mental,
+it seemed. He had come to ask a favour--"for the both of us."
+
+"_For the both of us!_" The significance lurking in those words had
+eluded me for a moment in the sudden adjustment my mind was called upon
+to make in coming to a realization of the fact that Rona--the lissome
+lovely Rona--was not dead--that the bright flame of her was unquenched
+after all. But: "_a favour for the both of us!_" A sudden chill checked
+and throttled the thrill that had started to flood my being. "_A favour
+for both of us!_" "So--Bell dead--'Slant' Allen takes the girl in the
+end!" I said to myself. Then, the echo of Kai's estimate of Allen's
+track strategy: "An easy starter but a hell of a finisher, 'Slant'.
+Don't worry about what he's doing when the starting flag drops; watch
+him head into the stretch." "... _head into the stretch_," I repeated to
+myself. "Then what about the finish? Is he already under the wire?"
+
+These thoughts, like the train preceding them, must have flashed through
+my mind very quickly, for it was Allen's voice replying to my badinage
+about First Aid for his lacerated neck that brought me out of them.
+
+"The neck's doing very well, thank you," he was saying, "considering
+that its windpipe was closed for all of sixty seconds, and that most of
+the hide was clawed off from it all the way round."
+
+That was really very interesting intelligence, but my mind, deep in
+another channel, was quite incapable of compassing the significance of
+it for the moment.
+
+"So you've landed the girl after all," I said woodenly, cursing
+myself inwardly for the gallery play that had left both guns beyond
+my reach. For of course he had deliberately put Bell out of the
+running--shouldered him in the stretch.... Reviving suspicions brought
+also a realization of what it was up to me to do, now that there was no
+longer doubt....
+
+"That depends very largely upon you." Allen's quick reply cut short
+further conjecture.
+
+"Depends upon me?" I interrupted incredulously. "What do you mean by
+that? Oh, I see. Now that you've put Bell out of the way, perhaps you
+think that I, as his closest friend, ought to--to distribute his estate,
+so to speak. If that is the way you figure it, let me tell you that all
+the distributing you can count on me for will take the form of spraying
+lead over your worthless hide. You won't mind handing me one of those
+guns, will you? I don't mind which."
+
+It would have been sheer madness--straight suicide,--that outburst,
+had Allen been moved by the least desire to get me out of his way. I
+have never been quite able to make up my mind as to whether it was
+my instinctive feeling that he had no such desire that prompted me
+to take more leeway than prudence--nay, the commonest motive of
+self-preservation--would have dictated; or whether I simply lost my
+head--let my feelings get away with me. It may well have been the
+latter, for shocks had been crowding pretty thick, and it was hardly to
+be expected that the gears of my self-control wouldn't slip a cog now
+and then under the strain.
+
+Allen's brows drew together in a black scowl for a brief space, and his
+eyes contracted and grew hard as steel. Then, slowly, the scowl smoothed
+out, leaving only a deep flush behind it. It was not replaced by his
+former look of anxious embarrassment, however. Rather his expression was
+one of a serious, controlled determination.
+
+"That matter of my putting Captain Bell out of the way, as you choose to
+phrase it," he said sharply, "is one of the things I called to talk with
+you about. Since you've stated so plainly what you intend to do about
+it--assuming it's a fact,--perhaps it would be in order to take it up
+before--before the other matter. As for these pistols.... Since they're
+yours, help yourself to both of them." Stepping back from the table,
+well out of reach of the guns, he added: "But I'd rather appreciate it
+if you could see your way to refraining from using them until I'm
+through with what I've got to say; after that ..." (he gave his
+shoulders an indifferent shrug) "it's up to you. Do what you think best
+with them. I don't want them--neither one of them."
+
+"Of course not," I sneered. "Quite naturally, you'd prefer to use your
+own. Quite right, too. Get it out of your hip-pocket while you've got a
+chance. That's a new chum's way of carrying a gun, anyhow. I'm just a
+bit surprised to see a practised killer like Mister 'Slant' Allen
+resorting to it. No chance in the world to make an even break of it with
+a man with a gun in his side-pocket. Tail of your coat's always getting
+mixed up with your fingers just when you want to use them."
+
+Allen had braced himself after my first taunt came so near to getting
+him going, and this second one--galling as it must have been--hardly
+moved him. Only the faintest flutter of a corrugation between the brows
+told that another scowl had been repressed. The half-surprised tap he
+gave to the bulge on his hip--a gesture that would most certainly have
+drawn a shot from me had I had a gun in hand--suggested that he really
+had forgotten that there was anything there. I am positive that I could
+have grabbed a revolver from the table and beaten him to it on the draw.
+A move so naive on the part of an old gunman convinced me, even before
+he had spoken a word, that I had let my feelings send me off at
+half-cock.
+
+"I haven't a pistol in my hip-pocket," he said evenly. "Never did carry
+one there, and wouldn't be likely to begin it if I was going gunning for
+a specialist like you. You'll have to take my word for that. Yes, and
+since I'm going to ask you to take my word--my unsupported word--for a
+number of other things, it may be in order to try to make you believe
+that my word, when I give it to you straight, isn't quite--that it isn't
+on just the same plane with the rest of my doings."
+
+I was just a bit surprised that he didn't take out whatever it was that
+created that bulge in his hip-pocket, but hardly reckoned it worth while
+mentioning. I was fully assured that, far from seeking trouble, it was
+the one thing he had steadfastly resolved to avoid. That was enough for
+the moment. He was also about to speak of the one thing I was interested
+in above all others--the doping of Bell. There was every reason why I
+should encourage him to speak of that. The matter of Rona would come up
+in due course. He evidently had something to say about her also.
+
+"Sit down," I said, and extended my cigarette case.
+
+He declined my fat gold-tipped Egyptians, heavily salted with _kief_
+(another accursed habit I had picked up in Paris), and lighted a slender
+Sumatra cheroot from his own case. It was not as a move of precaution (I
+was through with all pretence of that now) that I set the big lounging
+chair I shoved up for him so that he would sit facing the light. I
+merely wanted to watch his face. Yet even that was not necessary to
+satisfy me of his sincerity, at least for the moment. His every tone and
+gesture was sufficient proof of that.
+
+"In the matter of the value of my word...." Allen was losing no time in
+getting to the point. "In the time you have spent mooching about the
+Islands, Whitney, you have doubtless heard me referred to by a good many
+hard names, such as pirate, murderer, thief, blackguard, jail-bird,
+crook, and so on without end. You've heard all of these, haven't you?"
+
+"All, and many others," I assented readily. His frankness rather
+appealed to me just then.
+
+"Quite right. Yet I dare say you didn't happen to hear the name of liar
+included among the number. If you did, it was used by some cove who had
+a grudge against me, and didn't care whether he stuck to facts or not. I
+don't mean that I haven't put over a lot of crooked deals in my time,
+nor that I haven't come out with a gratuitous falsehood now and then
+when it suited my purpose. I don't claim to be a George Washington. But
+I do mean just this: that when I have deliberately assured a man that a
+thing was, or was not so, I was giving him the dead straight of it to
+the best of my knowledge. And that's the way I'm speaking when I tell
+you that I haven't a revolver on me, and that that dope I slipped into
+Bell's whisky at Kai had nothing to do with his playing out on the
+voyage. As for the reason of that ..."
+
+Allen frowned slightly and ceased speaking for a few seconds. When he
+resumed it was not to take up the thread where he had dropped it.
+
+"I don't know whether you'll have difficulty in believing it or not,
+Whitney," he went on after a half-dozen puffs at his slow-burning
+cheroot; "but this is the first time since I was packed out of Australia
+five years ago that I've tried to explain to anyone anything I've said
+or done--tried to make out a case for myself. That was simply because I
+didn't give a damn whether anyone approved of it or not. The reason I am
+doing it now--well, there are two reasons."
+
+He puffed quietly for a few moments again, as though gathering his
+thoughts. Then he continued: "The first reason is that I owe it to you
+for the consideration you showed in the matter of not telling them at
+Kai what an ass I'd made of myself. That was dead white, Whitney. I've
+got to give it you for that. No one but a thoroughbred could have held
+his tongue for five minutes about a thing like that, especially seeing
+you were under no obligations of any kind whatever to me. And, for all I
+can learn, you've held your tongue for a month. How do I know? Well, I
+know about Kai (the only ones I care much about anyway) through a letter
+Jackson got off to me from Samarai--after he'd delivered you over to old
+'Choppy' Tancred to bring south. Got it the night before I left
+Townsville. It wasn't much of a literary effort, but he managed to say a
+few things that--things that I knew he wouldn't have said if you had
+given them the facts--all the facts about my departure in the _Cora_. As
+for Australia.... If you had been dishing up any inside dope in this
+nest of old women and busybodies, no fear that it wouldn't have come to
+me before this. I know them. Their tongues will waft gossip from
+Melbourne to Port Darwin quicker'n the telegraph. My word, don't I know
+them!"
+
+Quickened puffs registered the bitterness of unpleasant memories as
+Allen fell silent for a brief interval. "I'm not fool enough to believe
+that you kept quiet here out of any regard for me," he went on
+presently. "That wouldn't be it, for you haven't any. I don't blame you.
+As a matter of fact, I don't seriously care what Australia thinks
+anyway. I'm through with them here for good and all. But the Islands are
+different. The rest of my life, such as it is, is going to be lived
+there, and the only men I have ever had any great respect for are living
+there now. So, whatever reason there was behind it, Whitney, I'm deeply
+grateful to you for not showing me up in Kai. It was dead white of
+you.--I say it again. I've thought of it a good many times since I got
+Jack's scrawl, and it was the first thing I intended to speak to you
+about today. Only, my slate got a bit upset. That little gun of yours
+deflected my thoughts, and then--but you saw how I got forced off on
+another tack.
+
+"The other reason" (Allen hurried on as though anxious to avoid hearing
+any observations I might feel impelled to make on what he had just said)
+"why I am going to the trouble of trying to clear up your suspicions in
+the matter of Bell's death is because, if I don't, there will be no hope
+of your granting the request I have come to make of you--and I can't run
+any chances of failure with that.
+
+"I didn't want to kill Bell, but--well, it seems that I was equal to
+playing a damn dirty trick to get him out of the way. I won't need to
+tell you why. I hate to drag the girl into it, but it can't be helped.
+She must have bewitched me, I'm afraid. Not intentionally. Quite to the
+contrary, she never gave me a look. I admired Bell--in spite of his
+rather standoffish way with me--as much as any man I ever met. That was
+the only reason I held myself in about the girl as long as I did. I
+don't know just what would have happened if the schooner hadn't come.
+Chances are, since I was getting pretty near the limit of my
+self-control, I would have blown off some other way.
+
+"The opportunity which I saw to get rid of Bell in the schooner was too
+great a temptation to be resisted. So far as getting him clean away with
+the _Cora_ was concerned, I have only my own hot-headedness to blame for
+failing. I was simply asking for trouble when I went prancing down to
+take over the girl before the schooner even had her hook broken out; and
+I found it. No more than I deserved, though."
+
+Allen paused while the old humorous grin spread over his face for a
+moment. Then: "I trust you won't mind if I don't go into details about
+how I came to put my head into the noose," he said, still grinning. "It
+wasn't very edifying, you know--from my standpoint, I mean.
+
+"But it would have made no difference even if Bell had got away, while
+the girl and I remained behind on the island. She wouldn't have had
+anything to do with me anyway--at any rate, not while she had any reason
+to hope that Bell was still alive,--and probably she would have knifed
+me at the first chance for the part I had in getting him away. She would
+have found the chance, too, let me tell you. That girl creates her own
+opportunities--there's no holding her once she takes the bit in her
+teeth. What she wants to do, that thing she does. And what she wants a
+man to do for her, that thing _he_ does. She'll put through what she's
+after if she has to go through hell for it--and no minding whom she
+takes with her."
+
+The queer unnerved look on Allen's face drew my first interruption. "So
+it's come to that?" was all I said.
+
+"Yes, it's come to that," he assented, the seriousness of his eyes
+belying the whimsical smile on his lips. "But I'll be returning to that
+presently.
+
+"About that dope I gave Bell," he went on--"it was absolutely harmless.
+I bought the stuff in Macassar a few months ago, more out of curiosity
+than anything else. The old Sultan at Ternate had told me about it, and
+I was just a bit interested in its effects. It was pretty concentrated,
+though not a hundredth of the strength of the essence from the same
+plant that Rona took it for--the deadly poison, which has the same
+pungent smell. It was a considerable overdose of the stuff I took one
+night that put me on to the fact that, after a short spell of rather
+pleasant mental stimulation, it would drug a man to sleep for an hour or
+two. Hardly any after-effects at all, except a deuce of a thirst for
+liquor for a few days. I had talked about it with Doc Wyndham two or
+three times, and am perfectly certain of what I tell you.
+
+"It was the only stuff I could lay hands on that promised to do the
+trick. You see, I was afraid that if Bell wasn't drugged, he would
+become suspicious when I failed to return to the schooner, and come to
+look for me--perhaps even chuck up the stunt entirely. If he hadn't been
+pretty drunk (much the furthest along I ever saw him--probably on
+account of the beastly heat--you remember it?) he must have sniffed the
+half-dozen drops I put in his half-emptied glass of whisky while he was
+conning that old chart he had on the wall. It was a light dose (I've
+taken twice that much myself), and though he went under jolly fast--due
+to his being so far gone with whisky, probably--he was up and taking
+command of the schooner inside of an hour. And you'll remember how he
+was going right on ahead getting under way to catch the tide, even
+though I hadn't returned. The best nerves I ever saw in a man, bar none,
+that chap had. Will of iron and eyes for nothing but the thing he set
+out to do. There was a lot in common between him and the girl on that
+score. No wonder they were so strong for each other."
+
+Allen fell silent again, stroking his cheroot between thumb and
+forefinger--the habit the correspondents had characterized as a sign of
+modesty. "I hope you won't insist on my telling any more about the
+voyage than I have to in connection with Bell's death," he said at last.
+"I hate to speak of it at all. The thing is almost as much of a
+nightmare in memory as it was in fact. You saw how things were on the
+schooner when we got away. Well, just picture them getting worse and
+worse day by day for--how long was it?--something over a week, I
+believe, but it seemed a lifetime. The whisky I kept bracing up with
+made it a lot easier for me to stand--kept me from going crazy and
+jumping overboard, as so many of the niggers did. But Bell--he didn't
+have the whisky--wouldn't have it. Yes, he kept up that mad joke of his
+about being a 'soba skippa' to the end. That was what killed him--just
+that, and nothing else. It was beyond a being of flesh and blood to do
+what he set himself out to do--and live. He tried to (my God, how he
+tried!)--and died.
+
+"I never felt such pity for any living thing, unless it was old Recoil,
+my first steeplechaser, when he lived for twenty-four hours after
+staving in his chest against a stone wall. I was hardly more than a kid
+then. I lay in the straw of his box all that time with his battered,
+bleeding frame, and swore I'd kill the first man that tried to shoot
+him. Then I pulled myself together and did the humane job myself. But I
+couldn't shoot Bell, and he wouldn't shoot himself. That would have been
+the easy way out (since he had steeled his will against taking another
+drink), but he wouldn't follow that short-cut either. Said he was--how
+did he put it?--'goin' to ride the wata wagon all the way to po't, an'
+then fall off good and plenty.' Some Yankee expression about keeping
+strict teetotal, wasn't it?
+
+"It got to me worse than the crazy niggers--watching the agony of his
+mind and body contorting the muscles of his face, as he tried to hide
+what he was going through. The girl was a good deal of help to him for
+the first day or two, and he admitted that he was glad she had decided
+to join his 'li'l' pa'ty at the last minnit.' But even she failed to
+create a diversion as his cravings for whisky became more and more
+intense, and he seemed to try to avoid her as much as he could toward
+the last--probably because he couldn't hide his suffering from her. I
+saw that it was killing him--that he would never last out the voyage on
+the course he was heading,--and tried hard to make him see that it was
+only reasonable to allow himself at least enough whisky to ease off the
+tension on his breaking nerves. But he wouldn't listen to it.
+
+"'I gave it out official,' he said, 'that I was goin' to keep soba on my
+next ship, if I eva got one. An' soba's the wo'd.' To put an end to the
+matter, he turned his back on me and went for'ard among the niggers.
+
+"After that I tried to explain to Rona (I had managed to get on speaking
+terms with her as soon as she became satisfied that Bell had not been
+poisoned) how things stood, in the hope that she would fall in with a
+plan I had for giving him small doses of whisky with the coffee he had
+taken to drinking with increasing frequency as the craving for liquor
+grew on him. She flew into a temper at once, however. Said that, far
+from helping me to give him whisky on the quiet, she would taste every
+cup of coffee after it was poured for him in the galley, and then take
+it to him herself. She ended by saying that if I tried that trick she
+would knife me with her own hands: in fact, rather regretted that she
+hadn't done it when she had a chance at Kai. I couldn't for the life of
+me see why the girl should take that attitude, when it was so plain that
+whisky was the only thing that would pull Bell through; but take it she
+did, and that was the end of it, at least as far as co-operation from
+her was concerned, I mean. That simply left it up to me to watch my
+chances and do the best I could on my own.
+
+"Bell had insisted on standing watch-and-watch with me from the first,
+usually, in his own watch, taking the wheel himself, probably because it
+gave him something to occupy his mind--and his hands. (He was beginning
+to tear the skin of the palms of his hands from clenching and
+unclenching his fingers.) What broke him finally was discovering that he
+was no longer fit for a trick at the wheel. His eyes went bad rapidly
+under the strain, and it was not long before he could not distinguish
+the readings on the compass card. He told me about it at once, but was
+confident he could manage to hold a course by the stars. This went on
+all right as long as it was clear. But one night, when it was squally
+and overcast, he lost the 'Cross' (which had been giving him a shifting
+but fairly approximate bearing), and fell back on trying to keep her a
+couple of points off the wind. This would have done all right if the
+Trade had held from the southeast. But it hauled up to east in a squall,
+and Bell, following it around by the 'feel' of it on his face, had the
+schooner all but onto the Baluka Reef and shoal at daybreak. I let him
+extricate himself to save his feelings; but he knew that both the Bo'sun
+and I had twigged what had happened, and why, and it must have been the
+realization of the fact that he had become quite useless in navigating
+the ship that hastened the final collapse.
+
+"He came on the following night for his watch--the 'graveyard,' from
+midnight to four in the morning,--but made no objection when I stuck on
+at the helm. We were closing the tangle of the Barrier Reef by then, you
+see, and it wouldn't have done to trust the wheel to a nigger. In fact,
+when I went on at eight the previous evening, it was practically the
+beginning of the thirty-six-hour trick at the wheel that ended when we
+anchored off Townsville.
+
+"When Bell let me stay on at the wheel at midnight, he showed the first
+voluntary signs of giving in, not in the matter of closing his lips to
+whisky--nothing could affect his decision on that score,--but to the
+other alternative. I mean that he gave up hope of holding on till he had
+brought his ship to port--gave up hope of living to the end of the
+voyage. Up to that time he had always tried to pass the whole thing off
+as a sort of a joke, running on with patter like that about the 'wata
+wagon.' But he dropped all that from the moment I refused to give way to
+him at the wheel.
+
+"'Youah quite right, Allen,' he said in a weary sort of voice, and went
+over and sat down on the rail of the cockpit. His voice was hollower
+still when he spoke again, maybe ten minutes later. 'Allen,' he croaked,
+'I've got a hunch I'm not up to pullin' my weight in this heah schoona
+any longa. I'm all in--no mo'n so much ballast. Just a dead drag.'
+
+"I didn't reply to that. I was too much awed--yes, awed--even to urge
+him again to take the drink I knew would be the saving of his
+mind--perhaps his life. He didn't speak again till after I roused him to
+prevent the main boom giving him a crack on the head as I put her about.
+(We were working through a nasty patch of broken coral--the outskirts of
+the Barrier--but scant seaway and fluky airs.) As he settled back on the
+weather rail of the cockpit he said, speaking very slow as though hard
+put to control his voice: 'Allen, I make it about two hundred miles to
+Townsville by youah noon position. Say thirty-six to forty hours'
+sailin', with the wind holdin' up. Do you reckon you an' Ranga--good
+man, Ranga--do you reckon you an' he ah up to pullin' it off alone?
+I'm--damn it all, I'm seem' hell-west-an'-crooked just as we hit the
+dirty navigatin' Allen, take my wud fo' it, this soba skippa stunt ain't
+all it's cracked up to be--not by a long shot. I'd rather ha' had the
+plague by a damn sight, Allen.'
+
+"He wouldn't mention the other alternative--whisky--even then, and I
+simply didn't have the nerve to take advantage of the opening and
+suggest it to him outright. But I did what I thought was the best thing
+under the circumstances--waited for a stretch of open sailing, gave the
+wheel to a nigger, fished up a convenient bottle of whisky, and set it
+down just behind him against the cockpit rail. I didn't speak even
+then--just pressed his shoulder, tilted the neck of the bottle against
+his hand where it clutched the rail, and went back to the wheel.
+
+"I had the feeling (and I still have) that I was doing the decent and
+humane thing, just as I did when I put old Recoil out of his misery;
+though the cases aren't quite parallel of course. But I knew it would
+force a crisis one way or the other, and that was what, in all
+sincerity, I thought was the kindest thing to do. If Bell drank (though
+it well might be that he would go on drinking until he fell in a
+stupor), it would surely save his life. What if he did get dead drunk?
+He wouldn't be any more useless in navigating the schooner than he was
+already. On the other hand, if he still refused to drink, the heightened
+temptation of the handy bottle would increase the tension and hasten the
+collapse of mind and body, which was now but a matter of a few hours at
+the outside. I think you'll agree with me, Whitney, that I did the
+kindest thing possible under the circumstances."
+
+"I wouldn't venture an opinion on that offhand," I temporized; "but, in
+any event, it's the thing I would undoubtedly have done myself had I
+been in your place. There's no question in my mind on that point at
+least."
+
+"I'm glad to hear you say that," he said warmly; "especially as there
+was one person--a rather important person to me--who didn't approve of
+my action.
+
+"Bell's only acknowledgment of what I had done," Allen went on, "was a
+sort of disjointed muttering. 'Many thanks, ol' man. Nothin' doin'. Good
+intentions. Soba skippa to the fareyewell!' (I think that was the word).
+He shoved the bottle along out of easy reach, but didn't even make a
+bluff at throwing it over the side. I have an idea that the reason for
+his restraint on that score was due to the fact that he remembered I had
+told him that the supply was running low (I had been putting an awful
+crimp in it), and didn't want to deprive me of it. He was quite
+considerate enough to think of that sort of a thing, even with his
+senses toppling, as they must have been from the beginning of the watch.
+
+"It was a moonless night, and heavily overcast, so that I could just
+make out the blur of Bell's head and shoulders against the deckhouse
+where he sat hunched up on the port rail of the cockpit. But there was a
+crack opening up in the beastly binnacle, and through it an inch-wide
+welt of light slashed diagonally across his tortured face. One eye, the
+side of his nose and half of his mouth were sharply lighted up. The rest
+was a shadowy blank. The vivid gash of light, like a magnet, kept
+drawing my gaze away from the compass. That one eye, wide and staring,
+never blinked in the bright beam. The nostril, distending and
+contracting jerkily, was red, like that of a horse that has been
+galloped to the point of death. The teeth looked to be clenched through
+the lower lip, and blood was trickling over the lighted streak of
+clean-shaven chin. Not all his sufferings had made him miss his morning
+shave. Almost like a rite with him, that was."
+
+"Holdover from his Naval life," I suggested hastily, fearful less he
+should be tempted to digress upon irrelevant details.
+
+"I don't know just when it was that the end came," Allen resumed. "I was
+expecting every moment that he would jump up and begin his restless
+pacings, as he had done on previous nights. But at six bells his
+position was still unchanged, and to blot out that beastly slash of
+light across his drawn face I threw a piece of canvas over the top and
+back of the binnacle, so that the beam from the crack was cut off. Just
+as the morning watch was called a nasty bit of a squall was threatening
+to bore in and give us a raking, though it finally passed astern of us
+and spun off down to leeward. My hands were full for some minutes
+preparing against the imminent onslaught, and it was not until the
+menace was past and I had taken over the wheel from Ranga (who had
+relieved me when I went for'ard to have a squint ahead for myself), that
+it struck me that Bell had been paying no attention whatever to all that
+had been going on--didn't appear to have shifted at all, in fact.
+
+"I was just going to call to him to suggest that he go below and turn in
+for a spell, when the nigger on the lookout in the bows sung out
+'breaka--dead ahead!' It was a near thing, but I managed to sheer off
+and avoid grounding on a patch of barely submerged coral, just becoming
+visible in the shimmer of the false dawn. As I knew that the main wall
+of the Great Barrier must be close at hand to lee, I was chary of
+letting her fall off very far in that direction. I had just ordered a
+man to stand-by to heave the lead at the first sign of shoaling water on
+the starboard bow, when the tail of my eye caught a glimpse of Rona
+stepping out on deck from the cabin companion way. (We had sulphured out
+the Agent's cabin and made it fairly comfortable for her use. It was out
+of the question her sleeping on deck, on account of the incessant
+squalls.) She headed straight for Bell, who was still hunched up on the
+weather rail of the cockpit, the outlines of his face just beginning to
+show in the ashy light of early morning.
+
+"As her hand touched his shoulder she let out a shrill squeal and
+plumped down on her knees beside him. In doing this she must have bumped
+the whisky bottle, which had been rolling back and forth on the deck
+with the lurches of the schooner. It was with more of a hiss than a
+scream that she grabbed it up and flung it straight for my head. Oh, I
+should hardly say _straight_," Allen corrected himself, "for Rona
+evidently can't throw any better than the run of her white sisters. The
+bottle smashed against the wheel, deluged the cockpit with broken glass
+and one of my last half-dozen quarts of whisky. If I had not been pretty
+sure that Bell was already dead, the fact that the smell of the old
+familiar juice welling up from the deck didn't bring a twitch to his
+nostrils would have been enough to drive it home to me.
+
+"Without waiting to observe the effects of her throw, Rona launched
+herself right on after the bottle--only a shade better aimed. Unluckily,
+the cross-cut she took to my throat carried her right over the
+wheel--and at the very instant that the appearance of a second line of
+foam down to leeward confirmed my fears about our desperately scant
+working room. The instinctive lifting of my right arm to block the
+girl's grab at my face came near to bringing disaster. I fended the
+clutch from my throat all right, but the weight of her body falling
+across the wheel tore the spoke from my left hand and threw the schooner
+up into the wind.
+
+"Ranga's quick presence of mind was all that saved the situation.
+Jumping into the cockpit regardless of the broken glass cutting his bare
+feet, he grabbed the girl about the waist, disentangled her flying arms
+and legs from the wheel, and smothered her struggles against his side. I
+threw the wheel back an instant before she jibed, and then, for two or
+three seconds, things hung in the balance. Finally, very slowly, she
+filled away on the port tack again, and the immediate danger was over.
+Had the schooner gone about, nothing could have saved her from running
+onto the reef. There was not enough room left in which to wear her
+round.
+
+"Bell must have given up the fight along toward the end of the
+'graveyard' watch. I heard him muttering off and on for a while, but the
+last coherent words that came to my ears were, not unfitly: 'Nothin'
+doin'. Soba skippa to a fareyewell.'
+
+"That rub with the reef was the nearest squeak we had--though I can't
+say that I remember much about the navigation that took us through the
+Barrier and on to Townsville. Drunken man's luck doubtless. I was sure
+drunk, and no mistake, though both my legs and my head were grinding
+right along to the finish--only ceased functioning when there was
+nothing more to do.
+
+"The girl--when Ranga let her go again--went back and settled down by
+Bell's body. Wouldn't let anyone come near it. Only left it on the two
+or three further occasions that she took to fly at my throat when she
+thought I wasn't looking. I didn't want to lock her up (it was inviting
+the plague to force her to stay 'tween decks for too long), but managed
+to get around the difficulty finally by having one of the crew stand-by
+to push in and absorb the impact whenever she made a break in my
+direction. She gave up trying after that. Seemed to loathe the touch of
+a nigger. But with Ranga it was different. She grew quiet as soon as he
+picked her up--something like a kid with its nurse.
+
+"The big fellow was wonderful, by the way. Always doing the right thing
+without waiting for an order, always cool and quiet, always
+good-natured. Spent his spare time sitting on the taffrail and peeping
+to the sea-gulls on a queer little Malay flute he always carried in his
+belt--some kind of hollow stem, full of little wooden balls that gave a
+weird sort of ripple to the notes. First and last, Ranga was the man to
+whom the bulk of the credit was due for taking the schooner through. I
+still feel a bit guilty that I didn't divide the whisky with him. But
+perhaps it was best to stow it where I did.... You never know how a
+yellow man or a black man will react to the stuff. It's hard enough
+guessing with a white man sometimes."
+
+Allen smiled whimsically as he lighted a fresh cheroot. He was through
+with the worst of the story and seemed a good deal relieved. It was
+plain enough that he spoke the truth when he said that the memory of it
+was still a nightmare, and that he hated to have to speak of it. He said
+a few words more in explanation of why he had not buried Bell at sea,
+which appeared to have been mainly because he was afraid the girl would
+have followed the body over the side. He had no misgivings about keeping
+it aboard, he said, as he was quite certain that it carried no plague
+infection. He mentioned incidentally, that they had found a lot of stick
+brimstone among the stores, and that the thorough smudging they gave the
+after quarters with this was probably responsible for the fact that the
+plague had not reappeared there. It had been impossible to devise a way
+to disinfect the big 'midships hold where the labour recruits were
+housed, on account of the more or less crazy condition of all of the
+niggers.
+
+Allen looked at his watch, but went on with his story as though in no
+particular hurry. "You're doubtless impatient to hear about the girl's
+turning up again," he said. "You've already heard of the rather
+remarkable escape she made from the Quarantine Station--Butler, one of
+the doctors, mentioned that he told you about it on your steamer. At the
+Station it was the theory that the girl had broken out so that she could
+kill herself on Bell's grave--that she was more or less off her head
+anyhow. That was a mistake, though a natural one. She had just one thing
+in view when she clambered out of the mad cell and over the wall: that
+was to lie low until I came out and then, watching her chance, try to
+make a better job of polishing me off than she had done on the schooner.
+She realized that they were on their guard against her at the Station,
+and that she might be kept under restraint indefinitely, or at least
+until I was out and gone beyond her reach.
+
+"Her mind was working well enough to make her reckon that that Chinese
+shawl (which everyone would have noted) was the one garment she had that
+could not fail to be recognized. So--it must have been something of a
+wrench for her--she left it on the bank of Ross Creek and went to seek a
+hiding place.
+
+"Luck was with her in the search. Locating the native quarter after
+wandering for a while, she circulated around until she came upon the
+signs--in Hindustani, I fancy--in front of the shack of an old East
+Indian drug seller and money changer. How she got around him I don't
+know; but at any rate she persuaded him to keep her there until I was
+out of quarantine. She even contrived to get the old rascal to spy out
+the refuge I had flown to--a bungalow just out of town, where I figured
+I would be a bit quieter than at the hotel. Then she took a hand in the
+game herself.
+
+"It was on the second night after I came out, and I had turned in early.
+I had taken no precautions of any kind against attack. Never have
+bothered much with that kind of thing. The doors and windows were wide
+open. I had a servant--a Chino,--but he was sleeping in his own hut in
+the rear of the grounds.
+
+"It was the window she came in by, though she could just as well have
+used the door. I was more than half awake (hadn't been sleeping very
+well any of the time since my two-day snooze after landing from the
+schooner), lying on my back under the mosquito net, with no covers over
+me. It was probably her intention to slip up quietly and get her hands
+under the net before disturbing me. She had no knife, by the way. They
+had taken that little Malay dagger away after she had tried to stick me
+at the Quarantine Station. As she would have had no difficulty in
+raising another through old Ratu Lal had she wanted it, I take it that
+she felt confident enough of doing the job with her hands. No idle dream
+that, either; you know something of the strength of them.
+
+"I sat up in bed in a dazed sort of way as her shadow darkened the
+window. (There was a bit of a moon, shining on that side of the house.)
+It must have been my movement under the netting that made her change her
+plan. Very naturally, she counted on my shooting first and asking
+questions afterwards. It was the rational and proper thing to do, and it
+is probably what I would have done had my pistol been handy. But, not
+dreaming of an attack (this was the day before old 'Squid' Saunders
+turned up and took a jab at me), my gun was in my coat pocket. I have
+always carried it there--when I had a coat on--ever since I saw your
+little exhibition of pocket gunnery at Kai," he added with a humorous
+smile.
+
+"As I was saying, the stir I made under the mosquito net forced the girl
+to speed up her schedule a bit. You saw the jump she made the time she
+caught up the schooner at Kai. Well, it must have been about that same
+kind of a spring over again. She never touched the floor between the low
+window ledge and my bed. Landed right on my chest, bringing down the net
+under her weight, and went to my throat with an instinct as sure as that
+of a fighting bulldog. She was choking me right through the net before I
+really knew what had happened.
+
+"Of course, taking it for granted that she was dead, I didn't have the
+ghost of an idea it was Rona who was sprawling on my chest and shutting
+off my wind with steel fingers that seemed closing in to meet at the
+base of my brain. I didn't even know that it was a woman. In fact, the
+deadly pressure of that grip argued all the other way--that I was being
+throttled by a man, and a deucedly powerful one at that. If I did any
+speculating at all, I probably figured it as some kind of a thieving
+stunt. But a man fighting for his life--and that is precisely what I was
+doing--doesn't waste much time in conjecture. My immediate problem was a
+simple one. If that grip wasn't broken inside of a minute, it might stay
+there forever as far as my shaking it off was concerned. I had been
+choked before, and also done a bit of choking on my own account; so I
+knew to within a few seconds how long it is before the head of a man
+whose wind is shut off begins to reel.
+
+"Still quite the master of myself, I tried on, very deliberately, the
+best thing I knew for breaking a strangle grip--that simple little
+_jujutsu_ trick of thrusting your arms between those of the man choking
+you, and then throwing back your shoulders and expanding your chest.
+Stiffening the chest muscles, I mean--of course you can't expand it with
+air while your windpipe is closed. That never fails if you are both on
+your feet, and will sometimes work even when you are on your back. Here
+the tangle of the net blocked the up-thrust of my arms, and I failed to
+get enough leverage to break the hold on my neck.
+
+"Then I tried my next best bet--that of turning over and over and sort
+of unwinding the grip on your throat. I was a shade less confident now.
+Time was getting short. I did some jolly active wriggling in trying to
+work along far enough to roll over the side of the bed, but again it was
+the net that defeated my effort. I was getting a good deal peeved with
+that bally canopy; and yet, in the end, it was the very thing that got
+me clear.
+
+"Nine times out of ten a man being held down and choked by another
+man--that is, if the choker knows his job--has no chance of doubling up
+in a ball and kicking his assailant off by straightening out his legs.
+If the man choking you flattens his body closely enough against yours,
+you simply haven't the room to start doubling your knees. My assailant
+knew his business right enough, but the folds of the net (some of the
+corners of which were still clinging to its frame), prevented his
+flattening in close to my legs. The sag of the woven bamboo bed springs
+also gave me a few inches of leeway.
+
+"There was nothing deliberate or confident in the jerk with which I
+began drawing my knees up against my chest. I had already failed twice
+with what I rated as decidedly better bets than that one, and the time
+limit was nearly up. My head was already beginning to swim. It was neck
+or nothing this heat. The sheer desperation of my effort won out for it.
+The push of my knees against the chest of the incubus did not lift it
+quite enough to break its hold, but it did enable me to squirm my right
+foot up and get it firmly planted in the pit of the creature's stomach.
+Then, with all the strength left in me, I straightened out in a terrific
+kicking push.
+
+"In reverse, the flight of the muscular body that had been holding me
+down must have been fully equal to that opening jump from the window.
+Indeed, I am almost sure that it hit the further wall before it did the
+floor. The hold on my neck was the only point of contact that did not
+break readily, and there the result was--as you saw a moment ago. As
+those steel-claw fingers would not give an inch, they simply ripped out
+through the flesh. I can consider myself dead lucky that they didn't
+hook onto my windpipe or jugular. Both of them would have come right
+along with all the flesh and hide those unrelaxing talons took with
+them.
+
+"It didn't occur to me for a few moments that I might have knocked out
+my assailant, and I was a good deal surprised when he neither returned
+to the attack nor made any break to escape. The laboured gasping in the
+darkness on the other side of the room quickly told me the reason,
+however. I had knocked the wind out of him with my mighty kick. I knew
+that spasmodic gasping for air meant that I wasn't going to be greatly
+troubled for a minute or two at least, so took my time about fumbling
+for my automatic and lighting the lamp.
+
+"A bit dazzled by the light for a moment, I took the lanky yellow figure
+huddled up against the wall to be a Hindu coolie. The thin legs and arms
+were like those of the East Indian indentured labourers of the sugar
+plantations, and the two or three yards of white cloth trailing off
+along the floor suggested a Madrassi waist and shoulder rag.
+Presently--for that one rumpled wrapping was all she had worn--I saw
+that it was a woman; and then--but as a matter of fact I think that the
+girl spoke before I recognized her face.
+
+"'"Slant,"' she piped out in that bird-like chirrup of hers; '"Slant," I
+guess I make a meestake. 'Scuse me, ple-ese, "Slant."'
+
+"Could you beat that for cheek? Trying to tear a man's throat out one
+minute, and asking him to 'ple-ese 'scuse' her for it the next. And what
+do you think of a man who would tumble for it, especially after the way
+she had made me jump through and roll over at Kai? But that's Rona; yes,
+and that's me. I tumbled, and--I may as well admit it--I am still
+tumbling.
+
+"Having the girl turn up like that--after I had been thinking of her as
+dead for a week or two--didn't give me quite the shock it would have if
+that voice had come out of the darkness without my seeing her first. It
+was a deuce of a surprise even as it was; but, when all is said and
+done, a pleasant one, in spite of the rather startling way she chose
+to--to re-materialize. I was glad to find that she was alive, whether it
+meant anything more to me than that or not.
+
+"We didn't talk much that night--there wasn't much talk left in either
+of us as a matter of fact. Rona continued to croak and hiccup, while my
+own swollen vocal chords smothered every other word I tried to get past
+them. I managed to assure Rona that I quite understood her feelings
+against me (though I didn't entirely, and don't yet), and begged her to
+give me a chance to explain the way Bell had come to his finish. She
+admitted that she had begun to believe that she might have been hasty in
+her decision and action, and said she would be glad to hear what I had
+to say. She told me where she was in hiding and asked me to come there
+in the morning; also to do what I could to square her with the
+quarantine authorities for breaking out of the Station ahead of time,
+and on no account to let anything happen to old Ratu Lal for giving her
+refuge. She seemed to take it as a matter of course that I would do
+these things. You'd have thought I was some sort of a _mayordomo_ taking
+orders.
+
+"It was not very late and, luckily, the bungalow (which Ralston had
+occupied himself at times) had a telephone. I ordered a closed carriage
+sent out, and also got the Quarantine Station and arranged for one of
+the doctors--Butler, the chap you talked with on the steamer--to come to
+the landing and wait for me to pick him up. They had been very decent to
+me at the Station, and I wanted to avoid having to explain things to a
+strange doctor.
+
+"Rona tied my neck up for me--very handily, too--and when the carriage
+came I bundled her in and gave the driver the direction which carried
+him along the edge of the 'foreign quarter.' I dropped her at a corner
+not far from Ratu Lal's joint, promising to look in on her early the
+next morning. Butler was waiting for me at the landing when I got there,
+and I told him about Rona's coming to life, and its sequel, as we drove
+back to the bungalow. After he had dressed my neck I told him what I
+wanted him to try to do for me and sent him back to the landing, where
+his boat had hung on for him.
+
+"Rona was looking a bit white about the gills when I called the next
+morning, and complained that her stomach 'got mad' every time she sent
+food down to it. I told her that she still had the best of me, as I
+didn't expect to be able to get any food down to my stomach for a couple
+of days yet. That seemed rather to buck her up, and she had a good laugh
+over it. Then we got down to business, and had an hour's yarn in the
+drug-scented quiet of old Ratu Lal's back room.
+
+"As my Malay is fairly good, we talked without difficulty. I told her
+more or less what I have just told you about Bell and why I had given
+him the whisky. She said, rather grudgingly, that she thought she could
+understand why I had done as I did. Then I said a few things
+about--well, about my personal feelings toward her. Finally, I asked her
+point-blank if she would go back to the Islands with me. Told her she
+could live anywhere she wanted, and in any way that she wanted. I didn't
+say that I was willing to marry her, because (since, if she has any
+religion at all, it's Hindu or Mohammedan) I felt that would make no
+difference to her one way or the other.
+
+"Am I really willing to marry her?" (It was the lift of my eyebrows that
+suggested the query to Allen, for I did not speak.) "Well, yes, I think
+I am, if she made that a condition. But I don't think the question is
+one likely to arise.
+
+"The girl took in the whole thing without giving away by word or look
+how it impressed her. When I had finished, she coolly suggested that I
+run along and square matters up with the quarantine people about her and
+Ratu Lal. She added that she would be obliged if I'd look up her Chinese
+shawl for her. She also started to speak about her dagger, but changed
+her mind and said to let that go for the present. As for what I'd been
+telling her.... Well, perhaps if I could see my way to dropping in again
+toward evening she might have an answer for me. High and haughty as a
+Sultana, she was, sitting cross-legged on a mat and pulling away at one
+of Ratu Lal's big 'hubble-bubbles.'
+
+"I went to the Quarantine Station straightaway, and, in spite of the red
+tape tangling up a thing of that kind, managed to get them to agree to
+discharging the girl without anything more than a perfunctory call from
+a doctor to certify her free of plague. That done, the rest was easy. I
+told the story--omitting, of course, the girl's attack upon me--at the
+Police Station, and they agreed not to arrest Ratu Lal as long as the
+quarantine authorities were satisfied and lodged no complaint against
+him. They said they were only too glad of a chance to do me a favour.
+Then I got them to let me have the shawl, and begged them to keep the
+news of the girl's turning up quiet as long as they could.
+
+"'Squid' Saunders's little diversion that afternoon gave the pressmen
+something else to take up their minds, and the matter of the missing
+girl was forgotten, at least for the remainder of my time in Townsville.
+The fact that she did not drown herself must have leaked out since, but
+they probably haven't been enough interested in it--now that the hunt
+has followed me here--to wire it south.
+
+"When I broke away from the official reception committee and dropped in
+on Rona at the end of the afternoon--impatient enough, I can tell
+you--she gave no sign that the matter I had come for an answer about was
+in her mind at all. She grabbed the Chinese shawl out of my hand with a
+yelp of delight, but almost dissolved in tears when she saw how the
+embroidery had been smudged and ruffled in her scrambles over trees and
+walls and ditches the night she escaped from the Quarantine Station. You
+may remember that it was a big peacock that was embroidered on the
+shawl--pretty nearly life-size--rather a fine piece of work, it always
+struck me. Well, ignoring me entirely, she spread that old peacock out
+over her breast--something in the way she used to display it when she
+wore the shawl in Kai--and began chirping and crooning and muttering to
+it like a dove to its nestlings. She would nuzzle into the plumage,
+smoothing the ruffled feathers with her lips, just like she was the old
+peacock preening himself. Every little bit of torn floss she would try
+to put back where it came from.
+
+"Stiff with funk, I sat quiet until she had gone all over the moulting
+old bird, but when she started in working down from his crest again, I
+thought it was time to remind her of my presence. I had never sat around
+waiting on anybody like that before, Whitney; even my old nurse couldn't
+make me do it. So I cut in and told her that I had arranged things at
+the Quarantine Station--that she wouldn't need to go there again; also
+that old Ratu Lal need not worry any longer about a visit from the
+Police. Incidentally, I mentioned that I was making him a present of ten
+pounds to show my appreciation of his consideration in not claiming the
+reward offered for her.
+
+"She took no notice of anything I said. Just went on crooning and
+preening and stroking down the ruffled feathers, giving a little sob
+every now and then as she came to a place where they were badly mussed
+up. Then I went off on another tack, saying that I knew of a shop in the
+town that carried Chinese embroideries, and suggesting it was possible a
+skilled needle-worker might be found there competent to undertake the
+restoration of the bird's damaged plumage. She deigned to cock up an ear
+to listen to that, but her only reply was a disconsolate shake of the
+head, as though anything like proper restoration was a matter beyond all
+hope.
+
+"That quieted me for a while, but after twirling my thumbs through ten
+or fifteen minutes more nuzzling and crooning, my patience gave out. I
+jumped up to the accompaniment of a good lively string of oaths, and
+asked her point-blank if she had made up her mind about the matter we
+had been speaking of in the morning. She broke into a ripple of smiles
+at that, and cooed sweetly: 'Ye-es, I think 'bout that plenty, "Slant."'
+Then she slipped into voluble Malay and laid down a perfectly simple and
+direct proposal, on the fulfilment of the conditions of which she was
+willing to return to the Islands with me. It was not what I had
+expected,--not what anyone would have dreamed of expecting under the
+circumstances; yet ridiculously easy of fulfilment in the event a
+certain third party fell in with the idea. That third party is you,
+Whitney. That's the main thing I have come to see you about. Everything
+is up to you now. Perhaps that will make it easier for you to understand
+why I rattled on for an hour or more in the hope of putting myself right
+with you about Bell. I've never tried to justify myself with any living
+man before, and probably will never do it again. But it had to be done
+this time, Whitney, and I hope I've been successful."
+
+My nod might have meant almost anything, but I was not unwilling that
+Allen should interpret it in his favour. As a matter of fact, he had
+convinced me wholly that--after the abortive attempt at drugging in
+Kai--he had played straight with Bell. As for Rona--well, if he was also
+ready to play straight with her (and he had just about convinced me on
+that point, too), what was it to me? If she could forget Bell so easily,
+it was her own affair. If Allen were trying to carry her off against her
+will--that would be a different matter of course. But he was not.
+Plainly it was the girl herself who held the whip hand. The whole thing
+was a bit obscure yet, but what Allen had still to say might do
+something to clear it up. Without committing myself by more than that
+one nod, I waited for him to go on.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XII
+
+                            A BAD MAN'S PLEA
+
+
+The expression of nervous anxiety I had noticed several times since he
+came was on Allen's face again as he started to speak. "It's a queer
+enough proposition," he began. "You see, it's like ..." He hesitated,
+stopped, got up and walked to the window, where he stood for a few
+moments, frowning and biting the end of his cheroot. Suddenly he turned
+to me with: "Whitney, what do you say to a bit of a turn in the fresh
+air? I've been talking more than I'm used to, and this stuffy room of
+yours is getting on my nerves. We might walk out through the gardens to
+the Domain. I can tell you all that I have to tell out there."
+
+I did not need to look at my watch to know that it was getting on toward
+five o'clock. Only the absorbing interest of Allen's narrative had
+prevented my becoming conscious of that fact before. My own nerves were
+less under control now, and the inevitable end-of-the-afternoon
+restlessness was surging strong upon me. But I was anxious to hear Allen
+out, and no reason occurred to me why it should not be in the open air.
+If there was any decision to be arrived at, that could be made on the
+morrow, or whenever I felt up to it.
+
+"Right-o, Allen," I cried; "I'll be glad to get out myself. I shall want
+to be back in about half an hour though."
+
+I was grateful for his restraint in not greeting that last with an
+indulgent smile, for I knew that he fully understood what it was that
+focussed my interest upon five o'clock. It was very evident that the man
+had retained all the finer instincts of a gentleman, little opportunity
+that he had had to exercise them in the last five years.
+
+I got my hat and stick, and, feeling sure I would have no use for them,
+put both the revolver and the automatic pistol into the drawer of the
+table upon which they had been lying. I was rather glad of the chance to
+show Allen that I had confidence in him to that extent anyhow.
+
+Anxious to avoid recognition, Allen pulled on a pair of dark spectacles
+and drew the brim of his Panama low down over his forehead. Turning out
+of crowded Pitt Street, he removed the spectacles, and as we passed the
+entrance of the Botanical Gardens took off his hat and fanned his brow
+with it as he walked. He had not spoken so far, but with the deep breath
+he inhaled as he felt the springy turf underfoot his restraint passed
+from him.
+
+"It's a great relief to get clear of those damn walls and pavements," he
+said fervently, opening his coat to let the cool breath from the Bay
+strike his chest. "I can't get used to them again. I've been free of
+them too long now. But I'm finished with them for good, I hope." Then,
+as we came out upon a broad path: "Bear away to the left, if you don't
+mind. I want to take a squint at that bunch of palms as we pass."
+
+As we came abreast of a big bed packed with a riot of dense tropical
+growths, he pulled up and appeared to be searching for something. "Ah,
+there she is!" he ejaculated presently, and pushed in close to a queer
+little dwarf palm, which straggled drunkenly on a half-dozen spindling
+legs set something like those of a camera tripod. Pulling up the stamped
+metal marker, he gave it a quick glance and then handed it to me with a
+grin. "The fruits of my first and only dip into botanical research," he
+remarked. "What do you think of it?"
+
+"_Pandanus Bensoni Allensis_," I read in large letters, and below:
+"Habitat: Portuguese Timor. Very rare. The only other catalogued
+specimen is in the Royal Dutch Gardens at Buitenzorg, Java."
+
+"So that _Allensis_ stands for you, does it?" I said, not a little
+impressed, as I handed him back the metal disc. Then added: "And racing
+and polo cups weren't the only objects you collected."
+
+"The merest accident," he replied. "I had always liked plants and
+flowers, ever since my nurse used to wheel me down this very walk in my
+pram. I suppose that gave me an interest in the tropical growths of the
+Islands, after they packed me off there. I thought this little fellow
+looked a bit on the unusual when I chanced upon it one morning in a low
+valley back of Deli; so I dug it up and shipped it to Sydney direct on
+the China Line steamer, which touches in there. It turned out to be a
+real find. Benson of Kew Gardens, the great authority on tropical palms,
+described it, and tacked my name on as the discoverer. The old cove's
+letter contained the only kind words addressed to me from the outside
+world in the last five years. And now look at them ..."
+
+I had come to expect that note of bitterness in Allen's voice every time
+he spoke of the past, and especially of his "transportation" to the
+Islands. He evidently thought that he had been badly treated; too badly
+for even the present wave of frantic adulation to make atonement. He was
+through with it for good. Several little things he had let drop
+indicated that.
+
+The incident of the palm was interesting in throwing an illuminative
+crosslight on the gentler human side of a man who had generally been
+rated as without either gentleness or humanity. So, also, was the very
+evident appeal to Allen's sense of natural beauty made by the matchless
+panorama of the Bay as it unfolded to us from the far end of the point.
+
+We had skirted the Naval anchorage of Farm Cove, picked our way along
+the path below the ledges where benighted "sundowners" were wont to boil
+their "billys" and spread their "blueys" in the shallow wave-worn caves,
+and climbed up through the gums to the rocky lookout on the outermost
+tip of the sharply-jutting point. The clocks in the town behind us began
+chiming the quarters heralding the hour of five, and presently, on the
+first of the heavier strokes, the flotilla of trans-bay ferry-boats slid
+from their slips at the inner curve of the horseshoe of the Circular
+Quay and "fanned" out on their divergent courses to points on the
+opposite side of Port Jackson.
+
+"That sight has never failed to quicken my pulses from the time I used
+to wait and watch for it as a kid down to today," Allen said with almost
+a thrill in his voice. "It is the one picture that has remained clearest
+in my mind all these years I've been--shut out from it. Did you ever
+read Henry Lawson's lines to 'Sydney-Side,' written from somewhere in
+the West, I believe? Something like this they go:
+
+    "'Oh, there never dawned a morning in the long and lonely days,
+        But I thought I saw the ferries streaming out across the bays--
+    And as fresh and fair in fancy did the picture rise again
+    As the sunrise flushed the city from Woollahra to Balmain:
+
+    "'And the sunny water frothing round the liners black and red,
+        And the coastal schooners working by the loom of Bradley's Head;
+    And the whistles and the sirens that re-echo far and wide
+        All the light and life and beauty that belong to Sydney-Side.'"
+
+"A sentimentalist, too," I muttered to myself, the surprise of that
+revelation checking for a few moments the rising tide of my
+absinthe-hunger.
+
+Allen led the way back to where a flat ledge of rock made a rough
+natural seat. "'Lady Macquarie's Chair,'" he explained, motioning me to
+sit down. "Named from the wife of a former Governor who was supposed to
+slip away out here and enjoy the view. The Domain runs right back behind
+the Government House, you know. I always used to mooch along out here
+for a look-see every time I got a chance, partly for the fine prospect
+of the Bay and partly for the comprehensive visualization it permitted
+of what I might call 'The Rise and Fall of the House of Allen.'
+
+"Haven't you an expression in the States to the effect that it's 'three
+generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves'? Well, here in
+Australia we put the same natural law of evolution in the form of a
+conundrum and answer. It goes: 'How long does it take for an arrow to
+become a boomerang?' The answer varies, but for the 'House of Allen' it
+is: 'Four generations.'
+
+"The arrow, you understand, is the 'Broad Arrow' that marked the
+transported convicts, while the boomerang merely suggests something that
+rises, circles and returns to the point of departure. Well, from this
+place where we sit I can trace the full circle of the 'arrow-cum
+boomerang-cum arrow' of the Allen quiver. Look! I'll show you. Follow me
+closely.
+
+"Over there," he said, pointing seaward and easterly, "are the Heads, in
+through which sailed the brig bearing Jim (alias 'Crab') Allen, convict,
+with a few hundred more of the scum of London, to the shores of
+Australia. That is, I've always liked to fancy my distinguished
+progenitor sailed in through the Heads, though it's quite possible that
+the brig beat around into Botany Bay direct. Now" (he pointed westerly
+to where the Paramatta wound out of sight between green hills) "at the
+end of that deep cove over there is the slaughter house where the
+convict's son, James Allen, dealt in hides and hoofs and horns and laid
+the foundation of the family fortune, the fortune that wasn't seriously
+dented when the convict's grandson gave a hundred thousand pounds to a
+drought-relief fund and drew down a Baronetcy. That big red-brick pile
+among the trees on Darling Point" (Allen was pointing east again) "is
+the mansion of the late Sir James Allen, Bart., and now owned by his
+eldest son, the New South Wales Agent in London. Old Sir James' second
+son, Hartley, was born in the south wing of that unsightly heap of red
+bricks.
+
+"And here" (this time he turned and pointed south where a sharp
+dagger-blade of inlet plunged deep into the heart of Sydney's lowest
+slums) "is Wooloomooloo, where young Hartley Allen, descending from the
+soft refinements of Darling Point, found his level, organized his own
+'push' of rock-throwing, head-smashing larrikins and completed the
+social circle. The cycle of metamorphosis had begun its round. I was the
+throwback, Whitney. Old 'Crab' Allen, the transported convict of
+Houndsditch, lived again in young Hartley Allen, whom most people
+thought of as a racing man and polo player, but who had all the natural
+qualifications of an out-and-out crook.
+
+"I can trace all of my little moral obliquities, Whitney, back to old
+'Crab,' and, everything considered, I think he would rate me as rather a
+credit to his name, whatever contempt he might have had for my
+comparatively law-abiding father and grandfather, to say nothing of my
+pillar-of-the-state elder brother. 'Crab' was transported as a
+consequence of his persistent disregard of his fellow townsmen's rights
+to their lives, wives and silver plate. I--well, I never did care much
+for silver plate."
+
+All this would have been intensely interesting to me an hour earlier,
+but now the fervour of my longing for my "_solitude a trois_" (as I was
+wont to call my seance with the long green bottle and the glass of
+cracked ice) was getting beyond control. The flowing lines of the
+reaches of cove and inlet glowing in the slanting light of the declining
+sun were becoming jerky and jagged and intershot with dazzling little
+spurts of light like one thinks he sees after receiving a crack on the
+head. The evening breeze lapped clammily about my chest and I fumbled
+clumsily with the buttons of my coat, trying to shut out the chill.
+
+"I ought to have been back at the hotel before this," I mumbled, getting
+to my feet. "You had something more to tell me, hadn't you? You can do
+it as we walk back. I've got to be going now."
+
+By this time I wasn't in a state to observe things very carefully.
+Undoubtedly (as I've thought it over since) Allen had been stalling to
+gain time and screw his nerve up to advancing the plan he had in mind.
+This being so, it must have jarred him a bit to have me call the turn so
+suddenly. I don't remember whether his face showed consternation or not.
+The one thing I recall was the quick movement of his hand to that hump
+on his right hip.
+
+I did not recoil an inch. I am sure of that, for I felt no apprehension.
+I was beyond apprehension--save over delay. But Allen's hand came back
+empty. "I'll tell you at once," he said brokenly. "But please sit down.
+Don't go just yet. We'll have to come to a decision straightaway." Then,
+seeing I was turning to go: "It's just this: Rona wants you to paint her
+picture--on the schooner--the _Cora_. Wants a picture done of the whole
+layout--ship, Bell, her, me, Ranga, niggers, everything. Says she'll
+pose for it on the schooner. Says I must pose too. Seems to be bitten
+with the idea of perpetuating the event for posterity, or something of
+the kind. Crazy scheme, but she's set her heart on it. Says when it's
+done, if she likes it, she may go back to the Islands with me. Nothing
+certain for me, but it's a chance and I've got to make the most of it.
+Will you do it, Whitney? She says you've always wanted to paint her
+picture, and now she's all for it. You won't turn it down, Whitney?"
+
+The incongruity of "Slant" Allen in the role of a plaintive pleader
+struck me with scarcely less astonishment than his strange and
+unexpected request. I was, however, totally unfit to cogitate upon
+either just then.
+
+"I'll think it over and let you know tomorrow," I said dully. "Got to go
+now."
+
+"It has to be decided here and now, once and for all," Allen answered
+firmly. "Here!--" This time there was no hesitation in the movement of
+his hand to the hip-pocket hump. When it came back it was holding a fat
+stubby flask--one of the thermos type, just coming into general use at
+that time.
+
+"I know what's calling you away, Whitney," he said steadily, unscrewing
+the top of the flask and pouring into it a bright green liquid with a
+familiar smell and sparkle. "On the off chance that we might be detained
+beyond the hour when you're used to depending upon it, I had this cooled
+at the Marble Bar--old hangout of mine--and brought it along with me.
+Don't use the stuff myself, but I know the hooks it throws into a man
+who does use it. Drink hearty!"
+
+He handed me both the brimming screw-top and the flask itself. The
+contents of the former might have been drugged heavily enough to kill a
+horse for all I cared. It was absinthe beyond a doubt, and cold enough
+to frost the outside of the little nickled cup that held it. I gulped it
+down hungrily; replenished and repeated. The third cup I drank less
+greedily, letting my eyes rove slowly where the jerkily jagged zigzags
+of hill and headland and foreshore were smoothing into a softer fluency
+of contour. Sipping the fourth cup, I unbuttoned my coat to give more
+intimacy to the caress of the milk-warm evening breeze.
+
+"Not bad stuff, Allen," I breathed at last. "Very good of you to think
+of it. What was it you wanted me to do just now?" Five minutes later I
+had promised to meet "Slant" Allen at the railway station in time to
+catch the nine-thirty train for Brisbane, en route Townsville.
+
+It appeared that Rona's ultimatum had stipulated that Allen was to be
+back in Townsville with me, ready to begin arranging for the picture,
+inside of ten days. The only northbound boat, the _Waga Tiri_, which
+would arrive within the limit, had already left Sydney but could be
+overtaken at Brisbane by entraining at once. Allen had booked sleepers
+for the express and wired for cabins on the steamer before he called on
+me at the _Australia_. There was nothing left to do but throw together
+what things I wanted and get to the station.
+
+It was rather a wrench, checking myself after getting all poised for
+flight with the "Green Lady," but not so hard as it would have been had
+I really "got off the ground." The contents of Allen's flask were hardly
+more than a strong bracer. Once I got back to the hotel and into my
+packing, it was easy going, especially as my enthusiasm was mounting for
+the work ahead. To have Rona for a model at last! And for such a
+picture!
+
+The dramatic appeal of the thing grew on me with every passing minute.
+It was not, to be sure, quite the kind of a work I was best prepared to
+do. With my ambition to become a marine painter, I had gone in more for
+colour than for anatomy and drawing; but I was still confident that I
+could make good with anything that gripped my imagination strongly. And
+"The Saving of the Black-birder" (I had already given it a tentative
+name) fairly took me by the throat. I would not fail with it. Nay, more,
+I would triumph. Perhaps--why not?--Paris! Yes, "The Black-birder"
+should open a short-cut to my goal. The rails beneath the wheels of the
+speeding Brisbane Express were clicking _black-bir-der_--_black-bir-der_
+when I dropped off to sleep that night somewhere along toward the
+Queensland boundary.
+
+That the morrow should bring some reaction from this fine frenzy was
+inevitable, but it was a comparatively slight one. That Allen had
+deliberately planned to draw me away and take advantage of my weakness
+for absinthe to gain my intervention in his favour was evident enough.
+Indeed, the consummate manner in which he turned the trick argued an
+almost pathological intimacy with the reaction of the insidiously subtle
+essence of wormwood upon the human brain. But I did not hold this
+heavily against him. It was plain that he had only done it to play safe
+in a matter respecting which he did not dare to take any unnecessary
+chances of failure. I could not but admit to myself that I would
+probably have fallen in with the plan ultimately in any event. There was
+no disloyalty to my friend in making him (as I intended to do) the
+central figure in a picture that I hoped would become famous in two
+hemispheres. On the contrary, what greater tribute was there I could pay
+to his memory? If Rona cared to flaunt that memory by going off to the
+Islands with Allen, it was her own kettle of fish. Besides, she had not
+gone yet; didn't even appear to have committed herself definitely in the
+matter.
+
+To minimize explanations and the possibility of complications, Allen and
+I had agreed to defer wiring our Sydney friends of our departure until
+after we were aboard the _Waga Tiri_ in Moreton Bay. His message to the
+Chairman of the Reception Committee, and mine to Benchley at my
+Exposition, went ashore on the tender that brought us off, and the
+steamer was under way before they could have been put upon the wires. It
+was not until the next northbound boat brought the Sydney papers to
+Townsville that we learned what a wave of surprise and speculation had
+been started by our joint hegira.
+
+In the course of the voyage Allen told me some few further details of
+developments in Townsville. Before his departure he had managed to
+induce Rona, for her own comfort, to move her headquarters from Ratu
+Lal's joint to the Medical Mission of the London Bible Society. The head
+surgeon of the Mission he characterized as "a good old sport" he had
+knocked up against in the Straits and the Dutch Indies. He was just like
+an ordinary missionary to look at, but redeemed in "Slant's" eyes by a
+real love of horses, and even--very much on the quiet--a shrewd interest
+in racing. "It's in his blood. He can't help it," Allen explained
+laconically but comprehensively.
+
+Explicit instructions had been left at the Mission that Rona was not to
+be worried about her spiritual future. She was to be just a "straight
+boarder" until Allen's return. She was well provided with money, as he
+had seen to having everything Bell had with him at the time of his death
+deposited to her account at a local bank. This had included eighty gold
+sovereigns, found in a money-belt around Bell's waist, and some hundreds
+of Chilean silver _pesos_ he had brought off to the _Cora_ in a canvas
+sack.
+
+Ranga had been put up at the Sailors' Home. There had been a flat
+refusal to receive him at first, on account of his colour, but this was
+promptly withdrawn when it was found the request came from Allen, whom
+the town was going pretty strong on delighting to honour just at that
+juncture. Allen, who seemed very fond of the big fellow, also saw that
+the latter was comfortably provided with money.
+
+Allen did not speak again of the proposed picture until the steamer was
+nosing up to her buoy in Cleveland Bay. Then, after inquiring if I had
+everything I needed to go ahead with, he intimated that he would
+probably find Rona fretting to get things under way. "She seemed to have
+some wild sort of an idea," he said, "that the whole thing would be done
+on the schooner--that we all might move out there, bag and baggage, and
+make it our head-quarters until the picture was completed. She even
+wanted me to go out to that plague-rotten wreck with her and look the
+ground over before I left. I had no time for it, of course, and am jolly
+glad I didn't. Can't see what the good of it would have been anyhow. I
+was hoping I had seen the last of the damned hulk, though I suppose I
+can stick it for an hour or two in a pinch. I fail to see what she's
+driving at, but whatever it is you may as well make up your mind that
+she will have her way about it."
+
+I assured him that the picture would probably be mostly studio work as
+far as he was concerned, though I myself might want to sketch a few
+details on the schooner. It might save time, however, I suggested, if
+the whole lot of us went aboard before I began work so I could figure
+out a tentative grouping and get a general idea of the composition. Then
+I could make notes and sketches of whatever parts of the schooner would
+be included, and be ready to work on the individual figures as soon as I
+rigged up a studio.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIII
+
+                      THE SCENE OF THE FINAL DRAMA
+
+
+We spent the night at the hotel and went together to call on Rona at the
+Mission the following morning. The change in the girl was startling, far
+too great to be accounted for by the baggy Mother Hubbard that had
+replaced the close-clinging _sarongs_ and _sulus_ in which I had grown
+accustomed to seeing her at Kai. Her face was thinner and the former
+peach-like bloom of her cheeks had given way to a dusky sallowness. The
+curve of her lips had flattened--and hardened; hard, too, was the fixed
+stare of her great sloe eyes. To a stranger the pucker of concentration
+between her eyebrows might almost have suggested sullenness. The lines
+about her eyes and mouth, which spoke to me of suffering, might have
+seemed to another as stamped there by hate. She was still beautiful, but
+in a new way. It was a wild, fluttered sort of loveliness that haunted
+rather than allured. The woman before me could never "sit Buddha," I
+told myself; those dreamy spells of repose had not punctuated her
+present life with intervals of Oriental peacefulness.
+
+Decidedly reserved in her manner toward Allen, Rona tried to be warm in
+her greeting to me, but quickly showed signs of restraint and
+embarrassment. She became even more ill at ease when "Slant," after
+genial old Dr. Oakes invited him out to see a new saddle horse that had
+just arrived from Singapore, excused himself and left us alone. She
+sheered off so sharply from my first mention of the name of Bell, and
+became so palpably nervous at a couple of attempts I made to lead round
+to him by degrees, that I gave up trying to induce her to speak of him
+out of sheer pity. Even my inquiry after the health of "Peeky" of the
+embroidered shawl drew only a weary little smile and a sad shake of her
+riotous tumble of blue-black hair.
+
+She was ready enough to talk about the picture, though even in that
+connection I was at once conscious of a lack of real enthusiasm on her
+part. She seemed anxious to get it started, however, and said she
+supposed we would be going to live on the schooner in a day or two. She
+even confessed to having worried a good deal for fear the _Cora_ would
+be broken up by a storm before the picture was made. When I told her
+that we would not need to live on the schooner, and perhaps would not
+have to make more than one or two short visits to it, she appeared a
+good deal put out for a few moments. She scowled angrily and started to
+speak; then thought better of it, bit her lip and held her tongue. She
+appeared a bit mollified when I said we would make our first visit, to
+plan the picture, just as soon as the quarantine people would disinfect
+the schooner for us. (That this had not been done yet I had already
+learned through 'phoning to the Station the night before.) She observed
+impatiently that she thought disinfection was a needless precaution, and
+I had to explain that it was not a matter of precaution at all on our
+part; that it was against the law for anyone to board a ship that had
+carried plague until it was disinfected, and that if we tried it on the
+_Cora_ the whole lot of us would probably be clapped in jail and
+quarantined afterwards.
+
+She softened a little as I got up to go, and her "Next time I show you
+'Peekie,' Whit-nee--'Peekie' is a ver-ee sick bird," sounded almost like
+old times. The hand she gave me was hot and dry but unshaking, and the
+almost cutting grip of it tense with nervous force. I noticed that her
+finger nails, though trimmed closer than of old and no longer stained,
+were still of unusual length.
+
+I found Allen, his face flushed with enthusiasm, putting the doctor's
+new colt up and down the sward before the Mission chapel in sharp bursts
+of terrific speed. The animal, Oakes explained to me, had been given to
+him by a petty Rajah of the Federated Malay States as a token of his
+appreciation of the doctor's success in removing a troublesome appendix
+from a favourite dancing girl some months previously. It was a chunky
+bay gelding, only his small head, full neck and a certain trimness of
+hock bearing out Oakes' claim that he was out of a Mameluke imported
+direct from Bassorah by the Sultan of Johore. For the rest he favoured
+his Timor dam, and looked built for endurance and handiness rather than
+speed. The instant Allen was on his back, however, his sure instinct
+told him that the powerful little beast had swiftness as well as staying
+powers, and he was already itching to put his judgment to the test. A
+week later, having quietly entered him in the race of the day--the
+Planters' Handicap--at the Townsville midsummer meet, he rode the
+gelding himself and gave the local betting public the worst jolt in
+North Queensland track annals by winning at two-hundred-to-one. Every
+pound that the wily Allen cleaned up on the race went to build the good
+Doctor Oakes, shortly transferred to Fiji, the largest and best equipped
+Medical Mission in all of Polynesia. The full story of what the winning
+of that race meant to the game old missionary with the sporting blood
+has yet to be written.
+
+My plan of visiting the _Cora_ to make a preliminary study of the
+"Black-birder" met with an unexpected check. The quarantine people had
+readily consented to give the schooner a rough disinfection, one that
+would make it quite safe for us to board her as long as we kept clear of
+the holds, which would require more drastic treatment. Before the
+formaldehyde squad got away, however, several cases of smallpox were
+reported in the native quarter, and all the available disinfecting
+apparatus was called upon for use there. It would be at least a week or
+ten days, we were told, before an outfit would be free for the _Cora_.
+
+Personally, I didn't mind the delay in the least; for one reason,
+because Rona's strange mood had quenched my initial surge of ardour for
+the picture, and, for another, because I had still to find a suitable
+place in which to work. Allen seemed to be worrying very little over the
+forced wait. "I've laid my bets to win or lose, and I'll be there to
+cash in after the finish," he said philosophically. He spent most of the
+time in the saddle, getting out mornings at daybreak to give the
+"Missionary Colt" (as he called the Oakes gelding) workouts on the
+quiet. As far as I could observe, he saw very little of Rona.
+
+It was the girl who really chafed under the inaction of waiting. Two or
+three times she sent for me to urge that we disregard the quarantine
+regulations and go off to the schooner. Allen mentioned that she had
+also begged him to take her out for a look-see at the _Cora_ on the
+quiet. How she spent her time I did not know. Oakes told me that she
+went out for long walks every day, sometimes going toward the hills and
+sometimes along the shore. I found freshly picked tiger-lilies on Bell's
+grave the day I visited it, and it occurred to me that the gathering of
+these might have furnished the motive for the solitary walks. But if she
+was still devoted to Bell's memory, why wouldn't she speak of him?--and
+why the plan to go off to the Islands with Allen? The girl's conduct was
+quite beyond my understanding. That was one thing I was sure of, at
+least.
+
+Meanwhile I went ahead looking for a place I could turn into a studio.
+It had been Allen's idea that the suburban bungalow he occupied after
+coming out of quarantine would be suitable, but I was compelled to veto
+it on account of the poor light--a consequence of the dense tropical
+growth surrounding it. The same difficulty--light--ruled out a number of
+other attractive places that were offered me, and I was about to close
+with a rather squalid little shack near the beach as a last resort, when
+Allen got wind of a temporarily vacant house on a big sugar estate, some
+miles from town.
+
+This little gem of a hillside bungalow had been built by the sugar
+people for a sub-overseer of the plantation, who had gone to Melbourne
+to meet and marry a girl from home. As the lucky chap had been given a
+three-months holiday for a honeymoon in New Zealand, the local manager
+of the sugar company decided that there could be no objection to my
+occupying the nest in the interim; in fact, he was sure his directors
+would be highly honoured to have their property used by so distinguished
+an artist, and for so laudable a purpose. He hoped I would not hesitate
+to call upon him for help at any time. He would see to it that the
+servants already hired against the return of Borton and his bride
+reported at once, and that Borton's trap and saddle horses were placed
+at my immediate disposal.
+
+I was greatly pleased with my find for a number of reasons besides the
+fact that it had a large and well-lighted living-room that could be made
+all I could ask to work in. Not the least of these was its location.
+Several hundred feet above the sea, its wide verandas caught cool
+currents of the Trade wind that the sultry lower levels never knew.
+Infinitely refreshing, too--both in fact and in suggestion,--I found the
+splendid stream which circled close under the rear wall, forming, where
+a mossy ledge reared a natural dam, a deep, clear pool to which I could
+jump from my bedroom window. The revitalizing effect of an early morning
+plunge, I had found by long experience, was beyond comparison the best
+antidote against the insidious absinthe poisoning paralyzing body and
+brain at the end of the night.
+
+A couple of hundred yards further down the stream took a swift run
+through a verdant tunnel of fern fronds and overhanging palm leaves,
+before it leaped in a fine compact spout of green and white over the
+verge of a creeper-clad cliff, to a lucent hyacinth-lined basin thirty
+feet below. From there, quieter of mood and mind after its hillside
+gambols, it meandered by pleasant reaches across a broad belt of
+shimmering sugar cane, beyond which it disappeared in tangled growth of
+primeval bush. By dark ways and devious, broadening and deepening in the
+lower levels, it finally lost itself in the mangrove swamp that fringed
+the sea fifteen miles to the northward.
+
+I mention this stream particularly because of the part it was destined
+to play in the final act of the drama of the _Cora Andrews_. For a
+similar reason it may be in order to say a few words about the great
+flume, which took off from the stream at the pool below the waterfall
+and led down to the big central sugar mill on the shore of the first
+deeply indented bay north of Townsville. It was built, following the
+successful Hawaiian practice, for the purpose of floating the cut cane
+from the fields to the mill, a method which, wherever the natural
+conditions were suited to it, had proved both cheaper and more
+expeditious than the old system of transporting the succulent stalks by
+tramway and bullock carts.
+
+The flume itself was built of imported Oregon pine planks, and was
+carried on a trestle of rough-hewn blue-gum and _jarra_ trunks. In
+section, the box of the flume was about four feet wide by three feet
+deep. The water it carried--about a quarter of the normal flow of the
+stream that fed it--varied in depth according to its velocity. The
+latter, of course, depended upon the grade of the flume, this varying
+from two or three per cent. in the broad upper valley to all of fifteen
+per cent. in a couple of short steep pitches near the coast.
+
+I was interested in this flume from the first time I saw it. In the
+course of a visit to Hawaii some years previously, I had found no end of
+sport in what was called "sugar-fluming"--riding from the mountainside
+plantations down to the mills seated on a water-propelled bundle of
+sugar-cane. On my inquiring of the local manager if the highly diverting
+stunt was practicable here, he had answered with a most emphatic
+negative. "You could go down the flume all right," he said, "but the
+volume of water is so great that you could not stop yourself by holding
+to the sides even where the grades are the slightest. On the sharp
+inclines, where the flume runs down to the mill, a team of bullocks
+couldn't hold you back. Only one man ever tried the feat deliberately,
+and we were picking fragments of him out of the _bagasse_ for a month.
+Also spoiled a lot of sugar--everything from the juice in the vats to
+the unfinished article in the centrifugals had to be thrown away. Same
+thing has had to be done on the several occasions coolies have fallen
+into the flume while at work. Jolly costly accidents for the company. I
+hope that you're not contemplating...."
+
+I hastened to assure him that, after what he had told me, I most
+certainly had ceased any contemplations I might have allowed myself to
+indulge in up to then. Still I couldn't help picturing in my mind what
+sport could be got out of the thing if only some sort of buffer were
+rigged up at the lower end. That prompted me, a day or two after I was
+settled in the bungalow and while time was still hanging on my hands, to
+put my horse down the bridle-path along the flume when I went out for a
+ride in the cool of the afternoon. After that I lost all interest in
+"sugar-fluming" as a sport. It was just conceivable that a man of great
+strength and agility might stop himself by gripping the sides of the
+flume at several points in the first five or six miles, but from where
+the sharp descent to the coast began I was inclined to agree with the
+manager's statement, that the drag of a man's body in the pull of the
+racing stream would take a team of bullocks off their feet.
+
+I dismounted and leaned over the edge of the flume where it ran through
+a narrow cut in the rock at the brow of the great basaltic cliff that
+followed the curve of the beach of the bay. This was the upper end of
+the first of the two sharp drops and the water, which was running within
+a foot of the top of the flume a hundred yards above, and here flattened
+down to a scant six inches in the bottom, grey-green and solid like a
+great endless belt of flying steel. The butt of my riding-whip was all
+but jerked from my hand as I touched it lightly to the speeding water,
+and a curving fan of spray was projected up into my face and over the
+sides. The evidence of such a solidity of kick in running water seemed
+almost beyond belief, until I recalled having heard how a jet escaping
+from the pressure pipe of a hydro-electric plant somewhere in the
+American West had penetrated a man's body, cleanly, like an arrow.
+
+My desire to ride the flume died then and there, though even yet I
+couldn't help regretting that there wasn't a level stretch above the
+jump-off, where a man could check his headway and crawl out. It would
+have been rattling good sport down to there, but beyond--sheer suicide.
+There was, it is true, a couple of hundred yards of perhaps five per
+cent. grade between the first steep pitch over the edge of the cliff,
+and a second one, even steeper, that seemed to run almost directly upon
+the roaring, churning mass of cane-crushing machinery that began at the
+upper end of the big mill. Even there the water was lightning-swift,
+however, so that a man, once over the edge of the first pitch, looked to
+be less than a thousand-to-one shot in bringing up before going on into
+the second. And that would have been--how was it the manager put
+it?--more "spoiled sugar"--another "jolly costly accident for the
+company."
+
+The bridle-path I had been following continued on along the flume to the
+mill, but, desiring to strike the main highway to Townsville as quickly
+as possible, I put my sure-footed little Timor mare down what appeared
+to be an abandoned road graded into the face of the cliff. When I
+finally came out in the rear of what was plainly the remains of an
+ancient water-driven cane-crushing mill, I realized that the old grade
+by which I had descended must have been the bullock-cart road from the
+plantation. The mill was a picturesque old ruin, with its mossy
+water-wheel, crumbling roof and sprawling pier, and I made mental note
+of the lovely little cove as a place well worth returning to with
+paintbox and easel when opportunity offered.
+
+Returning through the town, I had the good luck to be hailed from the
+sidewalk by my bluff old friend, Captain "Choppy" Tancred. He was
+southbound with the _Utupua_ again, he said, but she was going to go to
+drydock immediately on arrival in Sydney and he was going to command the
+_Mambare_--a new steamer just turned out on the Clyde for the
+company--and start north the following day. It was hard luck missing his
+week at home with the wife and nippers at Manley, but his promotion to a
+ship on the Singapore run was some consolation. He would be back in
+Townsville again in a little over a week, and, as he had a lot of sugar
+to load for the Straits, hoped to have the time for a good yarn with me.
+It must have been more from habit than anything else (for the old boy
+should have read enough about me in the papers by this time to be
+convinced that I was not a fugitive from justice), that he repeated his
+injunction that I must not fail to let him know if there was ever
+anything he could do for me--"ye'll ken wha' I mean, lad." And, equally
+from habit, I assured him that I "kenned wha'," and would not fail to
+call upon him in my extremity.
+
+As I had nothing but what I had brought with me on the steamer to move,
+and as the house was practically ready for occupancy, I was comfortably
+settled in my hillside bungalow at the end of the third day after our
+arrival from the south. A Chinese cook and house-boy, a Hindu groom, a
+couple of New Hebridean blacks as roustabouts, and Ranga as general
+factotum, gave me a very tidy and self-contained establishment. Ranga I
+had taken to at once. He was quick-minded and quick-handed, extremely
+good-natured, and ready to do anything at any time of the day or night.
+I resolved to keep him with me indefinitely as a personal servant--that
+is, if it fell in with his own inclinations after he had given me a fair
+trial.
+
+I made a number of rather successful studies of Ranga by way of getting
+my hand in again, and that suggested that it might be profitable to put
+in the days of waiting by trying what could be done along the same lines
+with the others who were to figure in the picture. Allen, although busy
+with his secret training of the Oakes colt (all unknown even to the good
+missionary, by the way, who thought that "Slant" was merely borrowing
+the gelding for his morning ride), found time to come up and give me
+several sittings. It was easy to see that he hated the whole thing, and
+was only going through with it as a part of the bargain with Rona. The
+latter, after promising me faithfully to come, was reported missing on
+all of the three occasions I sent the trap for her. As her whim was at
+the bottom of the whole mad plan, I was not a little mystified at the
+girl's action. Also, as it was she whom I was most anxious to do full
+justice to in the picture, I was a good deal annoyed. Allen had no
+explanation or excuse to offer for her, saying the girl had him pocketed
+at every turn anyhow, but volunteered to try and round her up for me
+himself as soon as the Planters' Handicap was out of the way, and he had
+a bit more time on his hands. For all of his light way of speaking, I
+knew that he was as hard hit as ever, and had thrown himself into the
+training of the "Missionary Colt" only to give him something else to
+think about.
+
+Two unostentatious acts of kindness on the part of Allen in the course
+of the week which followed added fresh refulgency to his halo of
+popularity. Townsville had gone madder than ever about him following his
+sudden and unexpected return from the south, and the same appeared to be
+true of the rest of the country. In all sincerity, he had tried to do
+both of the things I have referred to strictly on the quiet, and that
+they became public was only a consequence of the zeal of the fresh army
+of "war correspondents" that had been rushed north again to camp upon
+the hero's trail.
+
+One of Allen's little kindnesses was an appeal, in his own name, to the
+Governor of Western Australia to have dismissed the proceedings that had
+been instituted to bring "Squid" Saunders back to be locked up for the
+twenty-three and a half years which still remained to be served of his
+original twenty-five-year sentence. This appeal was accompanied by a
+promise to send the ex-convict, immediately he was released, back to the
+Islands at Allen's expense.
+
+Doubtless the momentary magic of Allen's name had something to do with
+the Westralian Governor's complaisance. In any event, "Squid" Saunders
+was out of jail and off as a first-class passenger on one of the Solomon
+Island boats inside of a week. Allen, the correspondents were not long
+in learning, had bought the ticket, footed all of the very sizable
+telegraph bills, and given the purser of the steamer a hundred pounds in
+gold to be handed to "Squid" when he was disembarked at Bougainville.
+The correspondents, long baulked of any real "Allen stuff," went to that
+story like hungry hounds.
+
+But scarcely was the "Squid" Saunders story onto the wires before it was
+followed by the news of Allen's astonishing win of the Planters'
+Handicap with the rank outsider, Yusuf, at two-hundred-to-one. That win
+was spectacular enough in itself, but when, on the heels of it, was
+flashed the word that not only the thousand-guinea purse hung up for the
+race, but approximately twenty-five hundred pounds paid to Allen by the
+"tote" as well, had been donated to the owner of Yusuf to forward the
+realization of his long-cherished dream--the erection of a modern
+medical mission in Fiji--the climax was capped. Australia echoed anew
+with acclaim of the "philanthropist hero" (it was now), and press and
+pulpit moralized and maundered afresh on the Hon. Hartley Allen's
+goodness of heart and greatness of soul. The clamour of the people of
+the country to see their idol in the flesh fused the Townsville wires
+from every direction. It was all very well that the incomparable heroism
+of the saving of the _Cora Andrews_ should be perpetuated upon canvas,
+but why should the pushful American artist drag the hero off before his
+own people had a chance to do him homage? Let the artist rise to the
+occasion with a display of that famous "Yankee hustle" they had heard so
+much about and get the job over "right quick." It was the man himself
+they wanted; let the picture wait if it couldn't be finished
+straightaway!
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIV
+
+                           HELL'S HATCHES OFF
+
+
+That may give some hint of the state of mind of Australians when,
+waiting on the tip-toe of expectancy for word of the next dashing act of
+their hero, they received a message of quite another tenor. It was the
+Sydney _Herald_ man who sent the message that swept the country like the
+blast of a hurricane. He wired just the bare facts and no more. His
+imagination, even his reasoning faculties, as he confessed in a later
+dispatch, were numbed for the moment, temporarily paralyzed by the
+staggering shock of the horror he had looked upon.
+
+"The Hon. Hartley Allen was found at an early hour this morning" (ran
+the telegram) "bound, gagged and lashed to the wheel of the schooner
+_Cora Andrews_, which has been aground for some time at a lonely spot on
+the beach of Cleveland Bay, several miles north of Townsville. Allen,
+who was taken to the General Hospital as soon as he was brought back to
+town, is a raving maniac and not expected to live out the day. From
+information in the hands of the police, there is no doubt that the
+worse-than-assassin was the ex-convict, 'Squid' Saunders, recently
+released from jail and deported to the Solomons through Allen's generous
+efforts on his behalf. He is known to have escaped from his northbound
+steamer at Cairns, stolen a fishing sloop, and is believed to have
+headed back to Townsville to carry out the dastardly act his disordered
+brain has evidently nursed for years. As the police seem likely to yield
+to the popular pressure to employ bloodhounds in running down the
+fugitive, his capture is probably the matter of but a few hours."
+
+It was a fairly sane, reasonable-reading dispatch, that. None but a man
+who had felt his blood turn to ice-water at the sight the _Herald_ man
+had looked upon that morning could appreciate how much credit he
+deserved for stating the facts so coherently. For myself, at the moment
+the launch brought us back from the _Cora_ and put us ashore at the
+landing, I would have been incapable of writing my own name correctly.
+There was only one thing I could do--nay, would have had to try to do if
+the world had been disintegrating beneath my feet--and I did it. That is
+why so much of the next thirty-six hours is a blank in my mind.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was on a Saturday that Allen had made his spectacular killing in
+winning the Planters' Handicap, and on Sunday afternoon, to escape the
+importunities of Townsville generally and the correspondents in
+particular, he had ridden up to pay me a visit at my hillside bungalow.
+I had missed the race (through another appointment for a sitting with
+Rona, which, like the others, she had failed to keep), and so took the
+occasion to get some account of it at first-hand from Allen. He was in
+high spirits over his success, but rather inclined to be put out with
+the impulsive Oakes for breaking down in church that morning and
+proclaiming to all and sundry the real source of the thirty-five hundred
+and odd pounds that had fallen at his feet like manna from the skies.
+What had come nearest to flooring Melanesia's leading bad man, I think,
+was that the missionary had publicly announced his intention of naming
+the new medical mission at Suva after the donor!
+
+Allen also, somewhat to my surprise, was not averse to speaking of the
+"Squid" Saunders episode. "The only redeeming thing about the old
+ruffian," he observed, "is his affection for that girl of his--the
+red-haired one, I mean--the black-and-tans don't signify. Rather a
+remarkable girl, that one, Whitney. She was one of the kind that must
+either soar to the high places or wallow in the low ones, and I've been
+sorrier than I can tell that I was slated to--well, not to start her
+winging for the heights exactly. I really wasn't a lot to blame in the
+matter, but--that isn't either here or there. Old 'Squid' _thinks_ I
+was, and will go on thinking so till his dying day--or mine. I tried to
+get the old reprobate to call it quits when I shipped him off the other
+day. Do you think he would? No fear. Not the 'Squid.' Indeed,
+considering the bother I had wangling him out of serving that Kalgoorlie
+sentence of his, he was rather nasty. He asked me if I was trying to buy
+him off for fear he'd get me in the end. There wasn't much I could say
+to that under the circumstances, so I just let him go. Now the purser of
+the _Nawarika_ wires me from Cooktown to say that the 'Squid' slipped
+ashore at Cairns and failed to show up again before sailing time. Purser
+says he still has the hundred quid I gave him to slip Saunders when they
+put him off in the Solomons. I have turned the wire over to the police,
+but have asked them to sit tight unless Saunders shows up in this
+section again. I hate to drag the old fire-eater into a new mess,
+especially after all the trouble I had getting him out of the old one.
+So I hope he won't be fool enough to come mooching south again. Don't
+suppose he will, but--I'll be keeping an eye lifting just the same
+against the loom of a vitriol bomb on the weather skyline."
+
+Allen tapped his coat significantly at those last words, and that
+reminded him that there were two or three little things about
+"pocket-gunnery" he wanted me to coach him up on. Nailing a foot-square
+of discarded canvas to the swelling bole of a bottle tree down by the
+stream, we put in a half-hour of "by-and-large" practice at it. Allen,
+thanks to his natural gift for judging distance and angle, proved a very
+apt pupil.
+
+By way of return for his gunnery lesson, "Slant" volunteered to show me
+a few tricks of knife-throwing, in which he was reputed to have no equal
+in the Islands. "I'm about as much of a walking arsenal as you were the
+time you waited for me at the _Australia_, Whitney," he said with a
+grin, as he produced a broad-bladed dagger from a sheath slung
+unobtrusively on his right hip. "This knife, by the way," he went on,
+tilting it lightly across his forefinger, "is balanced especially for
+throwing. They are made in Lisbon, mostly for export to Brazil I
+understand, where they seem to go in for that kind of stunt a good bit.
+I bought it from the skipper of a Portuguese gunboat at Deli, who also
+taught me the principles of chucking it. First and last, I've had a lot
+of sport out of practising with it, and have an idea I would have an
+even break with the _Capitano_ himself when my hand's in. I was very
+grateful to old 'Squid' for handing it back to me the other day. I only
+hope he won't be forcing me to pass it on to him again."
+
+Allen's skill with the wicked-bladed _facon_ was decidedly impressive.
+If anything, he was a shade more accurate in planting the point of it
+than I was with a bullet from my pocket. Little luck as I had in
+throwing it, I was quite as fascinated with the appearance and "feel" of
+the formidable weapon as Allen had been with my target revolver in
+Sydney. "I trust you won't have to part with it again, to Saunders or
+anyone else," I said as I handed it back to him.
+
+Before he mounted for his ride back to town, I mentioned to Allen that
+Rona had left me in the lurch again the day before, and intimated that,
+unless she began to show more interest in the picture, I would have to
+consider packing up and going back to Sydney. As a matter of fact, the
+girl's perversity had already been responsible for effectually dampening
+down my first flush of enthusiasm, and I began seriously to doubt my
+ability to make a success of the picture when the way was clear to work
+at it. Allen begged me not to be discouraged, and assured me again that
+he would look up Rona himself on the morrow and see if he couldn't get
+some line on what she was sulking about. He also said he would see if
+the quarantine people couldn't be prodded along to get at the job of
+disinfecting the _Cora_.
+
+Rona still failed to show up on the following day, and in the evening I
+was unable to get 'phone connection with Allen's bungalow in an
+endeavour to learn if he had seen her. Dr. Butler, whom I got on the
+wire at the Quarantine Station, said that Allen had rung them up that
+morning, urging them to get a move on with the _Cora_. They had told him
+that they were planning to send a squad off before the end of the week.
+As word had just come to them, however, that men were seen climbing over
+the schooner that afternoon, they had decided to clean up the job in the
+morning. As long as the ship remained in her present condition, he said,
+she would continue a possible spreader of disease. She should have been
+attended to before. If I cared to go off with them, he added, he would
+pick me up at the landing at eight o'clock. I thanked him and told him I
+would be glad of the chance to look things over before going to work.
+
+I drove down early in the morning, taking Ranga with me on the chance
+that Allen and Rona might care to go off and plan a tentative grouping.
+A black boy cutting weeds with a sickle in front of Allen's bungalow
+told me that "white marster stop townside" for the night and had not yet
+returned. At the Mission I found Oakes a good deal perturbed. The day
+before, he said, Allen had called just after lunch, talked with Rona a
+few minutes, and then borrowed Yusuf and gone off for a ride. He had not
+returned at dusk, but during the night the horse, dangling a broken
+bridle rein, had come galloping back to his stable. The missionary was
+fearful the rider had been thrown and stunned, and had been lying all
+night on the road. He had sent out boys to search soon after daylight.
+He was not sanguine of an early report from them, as Allen on his rides
+always avoided the metalled main highways to save his horse's feet. No,
+Yusuf's knees showed no signs of his having stumbled. He was as
+sure-footed as a goat and as gentle as a kitten. Not in the least given
+to shying or bolting. Besides, the colt wasn't foaled that could unseat
+Hartley Allen. Of course, he must have struck his head against a
+low-hanging limb in galloping some bush path, but that was unlikely.
+Hartley had his wits too much on the alert to be caught like that. He
+was beginning to be just a bit suspicious of foul play. Had I heard that
+"Squid" Saunders had left his steamer at Cairns and was believed to have
+sailed south in a stolen fishing-boat? He was just about to call up the
+Police Station and tell them of Allen's disappearance when I came.
+
+Rona had been off on one of her long walks the previous afternoon, Oakes
+said in answer to my inquiry, and was not yet up. He had spoken with her
+through her window, just after Yusuf came back, in the hope that she
+might be able to give him some hint of the road Allen had taken. The
+latter had not mentioned where he was going, she said. She herself had
+been "away inland"--Oakes had encountered her on his weekly round
+through the plantation villages. She was a tireless walker, and very
+restless--altogether a strange character. I did not disturb the girl, as
+I reckoned there was no use in taking her off to the schooner until
+Allen was along to talk our plans over.
+
+It would have seemed that this word of Allen's disappearance, taken in
+conjunction with the fact that men had been seen on the wreck of the
+_Cora_ the previous day, might have given me just a shade of preparation
+for what I saw as I followed Butler and the _Herald_ man over the
+schooner's side an hour later. But it was not so, probably because my
+mental faculties were at their dullest at so (for me) unwontedly early
+an hour. If the news had come to me in the afternoon, possibly I would
+have traced some connection between the two events, and so have been at
+least slightly braced and stiffened for the coming shock. As it was, I
+bumped into it all unset, and the staggering impact of it came near to
+bowling me over.
+
+It had been Dr. Butler's theory, propounded as the launch put away from
+the landing, that the figures descried on the _Cora_ the afternoon
+before were those of blacks or coolies, attracted to the hulk by the
+hope of loot. As a matter of fact, he said, they would doubtless have
+made quite a haul, as nothing but the ship's papers had been taken
+ashore on the day of her arrival. Considerable "trade" and all of the
+personal effects of her former officers had been left for removal after
+disinfection.
+
+As we came out into the bay the coast to the northward began to open up,
+and presently the wreck of the _Cora_, heeled sharply to port with the
+foremast over the bows, became visible against the deep green of the
+mangroves a couple of miles distant. Butler studied the hulk closely
+through his glasses as we closed it.
+
+"Looks as though I had another guess coming," he remarked finally,
+lowering the binoculars with a puzzled air. "Someone aboard her now.
+Seems to be jiggering the wheel. Can't be a pirate stunt, can it?
+Wouldn't be possible to drop a petrol engine into her, block up the hole
+and get off to the Islands on the quiet? But of course not. That's a
+drydock job--'count of the propeller and shaft."
+
+At a quarter of a mile he raised his glasses again. "Chap at the wheel's
+the only man in sight," he reported. "He don't seem to have spotted us
+yet. Must be deaf, not to hear the explosions of our exhaust. Ah,
+perhaps that accounts for it! He's an old cove--big shock of white hair.
+'Bout time he was getting his helmet on, though, with this sun beginning
+to bore into the back of his neck. Ahoy, there!..."
+
+But there was no reply. The lone white-haired figure was still jiggering
+at the wheel when the launch, nosing in cautiously in the up-boil of
+reversed propellers, slid past the _Cora's_ stern and the loom of her
+counter cut it off from our view.
+
+A moss-shiny Jacob's Ladder hung over the starboard side amidships,
+where a section of the "nigger-wire" had been cut away, doubtless when
+the labour-recruits were disembarked. Butler climbed up first, then the
+_Herald_ man (who had come off on the Doctor's invitation to see the
+ship made famous by the great exploit of the Hon. Hartley Allen), and
+then myself. Butler lingered at the ladder for a few moments, giving
+orders to his men about bringing the disinfecting paraphernalia aboard;
+so it was given to the newspaper man to be the first to go aft and
+discover that the moving, gibbering white-haired wretch lashed to the
+wheel of the schooner represented the sum total of the mental and
+physical remnants of the man whose doings he had been detailed to
+chronicle.
+
+The horrified reporter uttered no sound--simply froze and stood rooted
+to the deck in amazed consternation. It was as though the basilisk stare
+of the maniac's eyes had turned the flesh and blood of his rangy frame
+to stone. When he stirred finally, it was to tip-toe softly back two or
+three paces to where I, in turn, had frozen in my tracks. It was his
+hand on my shoulder and his white face thrust close to mine that broke
+my own trance. Then the both of us must have retreated another step or
+two, until we bumped into Butler, similarly petrified with horror.
+
+I am almost certain that not one of the three of us made any outcry, or
+even uttered a word, so paralyzing was the effect of the apparition at
+the wheel. The first sound I definitely recall as breaking in upon those
+muffled mowings from the cockpit was a booming gasp as Ranga's mighty
+chest sucked in a lungful of air, and then the big Malay's quiet "'Scuse
+me, Tuan," as he started to shove past between me and the deckhouse.
+
+The yellow giant had seen too many men, white and black, lose their
+minds and their lives on that reeking old schooner to let the snapping
+of one more brain, or the parting of one more life-line, ruffle unduly
+his solid Oriental composure. He had been fond of Allen, however, and I
+could see that he was shaken, though not, like the rest of us, unnerved.
+There was a rumble of concern and anxiety even in that respectful
+"'Scuse me, Tuan," as he started to push past the blockade the cowering
+forms of three lesser men had made in the narrow passage.
+
+Ranga's steadiness was good for the rest of us. Butler checked the Malay
+with upraised hand and, muttering something about his duty as a doctor,
+started aft, the _Herald_ man and I pushing in his wake. If it had been
+possible for the fear-distorted features of the wreck of "Slant" Allen
+to express extremer terror, that heightened degree was registered when
+Butler extended his opened clasp-knife to begin severing the lashings. I
+have no wish to attempt to describe that hell-haunted face. Indeed,
+there will be scant need of my doing so, for there can be few readers of
+this record who are not already familiar with its tortured lineaments.
+It seared itself into my brain with a white heat of intensity that left
+no room for any other image. At the moment it seemed as though it must
+be blazoned there as long as my body was quick with the spark of life,
+or at least until my reason recoiled at the horror of it and tottered
+from its throne. A little later, when the dread face itself had been
+hidden from my sight, a light seemed suddenly to flash out in the
+distance, and in groping toward it I found relief.
+
+The ghastly shadow of the Hon. Hartley Allen was standing wedged in
+between the wheel and the binnacle-stand, his wrists lashed to the
+spokes of the former and a maze of tangled line binding his knees to the
+latter. The lashing was a length cut from the taffrail-log-line, another
+piece of which had been used to secure a gag of wadded oakum. The only
+wound visible (save for the wrists chafed through to the white cords of
+their tendons in his desperate tuggings to tear free) was a
+half-inch-wide incision on the right inner side of the neck, evidently
+made by the point of a knife pressed in close to the swell of the
+jugular vein. As this cut was hardly more than a deep prick, it seemed
+probable that the knife had been used, not to inflict injury, but rather
+to compel the victim to remain quiet while he was being secured.
+
+As the wrist lashings fell away, Allen lurched savagely forward with a
+throaty "g-rrr" and did his best to claw Butler's throat with his
+fingers. His strength was spent by his night-long struggles, however,
+and Ranga easily smothered the attack in the crook of his interposed
+arm. The removal of the gag did not, as might have been expected from
+the way the chest had been labouring, release a frantic scream. The
+passages of the throat, although the neck revealed no evidences of
+having been choked--recently, that is,--appeared to be swollen almost
+shut. The windpipe would carry air to the lungs, but every effort to
+expel it violently seemed to clap a sort of automatic muffler on the
+vocal chords.
+
+Allen collapsed limply into Ranga's arms when his leg lashings had been
+cut, but he would not swoon. The dread of the damned continued to stream
+from his staring and unbelievably dilated eyes; those hoarse heavings of
+throat-throttled shrieks continued to issue from his gaping mouth; every
+time a hand or foot was freed, he continued to strike or kick with it to
+the limit of his pitifully drained strength.
+
+Butler said that the only hope of saving the man's mind, and probably
+his life as well, was to rush him to the hospital and put him under an
+opiate as quickly as possible. Ranga picked up the tortured body
+carefully, as he might have handled a struggling kitten, and passed it
+down to the launch. Butler had the forethought to have us all sprayed
+with the disinfectant before we went over the side, so as to minimize
+the chances of our carrying off any plague germs.
+
+Just as the launch was about to shove off, Ranga begged the coxswain to
+hold on for a moment, and went clambering back up the latter. He ran
+aft, picked up something from the deck, and came back tucking his little
+Malay flute into the waistband of his dungarees. He had dropped it in
+the cockpit, he explained.
+
+About all I can recall of the run back to the landing was the
+interminable number of times the _Herald_ man insisted on telling us
+that he had been talking to Hartley Allen all the while the latter had
+been shifting into his jockey togs for the Planters' Handicap, and of
+how Butler, each time, replied: "And he slept in my pajamas all the time
+he was in quarantine." Possibly I said equally trivial things; but I
+don't recall them. I was conscious of a great pity for the plight of the
+man for whom I had come to have a genuine liking, and a dull sort of
+wonder as to how the tragedy might have happened and who was responsible
+for it. But the haunting horror of that fear-stricken face hung like a
+curtain in front of my mind, dimming or blanking everything behind it.
+
+At Butler's suggestion, he--with Ranga to help--took a carriage at the
+landing and drove direct to the hospital with Allen, while the _Herald_
+man and I went in my trap to the Police Station to report to the Chief.
+The latter had recently come to his present job from Charters Towers,
+where he had made something of a name for himself by breaking up a gang
+of outlaws who had long been doing pretty much as they pleased in that
+rough and ready bonanza town. He was a chap of great determination,
+energy and courage, but of little subtlety--rather the type of a
+Western American sheriff than a city police chief. I had met him at the
+Club two or three times, and liked him for his steady eye and open
+straightforwardness.
+
+The Chief was a little impatient at the _Herald_ man's repetitions of
+the togs-shifting episode, and possibly also of my own wooden silence;
+but he got to the salient facts readily, and was no less forward with
+his deductions therefrom.
+
+"'Squid' Saunders beyond a doubt," he pronounced decisively. "His sloop
+was sighted twice between here and Cairns, the last time only fifty
+miles to the north'ard. He could have landed night before last easy. Any
+of the lagoons running back into the Caradarra Swamp would hide his
+sloop. That would have given him all day yesterday to scout for Allen.
+Why the schooner I don't quite twig. But the 'Squid' was always adding
+devilish little embroideries to his jobs, and leaving a man to rot on a
+plague ship has all of his ear-marks. Never mind, I've had two launches
+patrolling the north coast for him since yesterday morning. He must have
+landed before they got there. But they'll nab him if he pulls out with
+the sloop again, and if he doesn't, _I'll_ nab him. I hate to do it with
+a white man, but I'm going to put Rawdon's 'nigger-chasers' on his
+trail. I've got 'Squid's' old suit of clothes--the one he threw away
+when Allen bought him a new outfit--stowed away here, and I fancy a
+sniff of it will be enough to put them on the scent with. If I don't
+miss my guess, Mr. 'Squid' Saunders will be enjoying our bed and board
+again before another twenty-four hours has gone by."
+
+The Chief dropped his professional manner for a few moments as we arose
+to go. "Allen was a good friend of yours, Mr. Whitney," he said, laying
+a kindly grip on my shoulder. "I don't wonder that you're a bit dazed by
+the thing. Rather puts a damper on the picture, I'm afraid. Going up the
+hill now, are you? Good--a bit of a rest will steady you no end. Ring up
+this evening and we'll give you the news. It won't be long before we
+have our man."
+
+The _Herald_ man, with the Chief's approval, rushed off to the telegraph
+office to dispatch his wire. I drove round to the hospital to pick up
+Ranga and inquire for news of Allen. Butler came down to see me in the
+reception-room and reported that it had taken an astonishing quantity of
+morphine to have any effect upon the patient, but that he was at last
+beginning to grow quieter. His heart action was very irregular and there
+was no saying yet what turn things might take. He asked me to let Ranga
+remain at the hospital for a day or two. They were short of orderlies as
+a consequence of the smallpox epidemic, and the big Malay was a very
+useful attendant on account of his strength, quietness and good sense.
+As they were trying to avoid the necessity of putting Allen in a
+strait-jacket, they wanted someone in the room able to handle him if he
+became violent again on coming out from his opiate. I told him to keep
+Ranga as long as he was needed.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XV
+
+                                THE FACE
+
+
+The Chief of Police's allusion to the picture had started a nebulous
+idea in my head, but it took it several hours to crystallize. Driving
+alone up the hill, my mind gravitated dully to the matter of the
+identity of the perpetrator of the unspeakable outrage. I found myself
+speculating as to whether or not the Chief of Police, had he known of
+Rona's previous attacks upon Allen, would have been as ready as he was
+to attribute the guilt to "Squid" Saunders. And would he--had he known
+of them--been able to trace any connection between Rona's repeated
+attempts to induce Allen to go off to the schooner with her and the fact
+that the crime had been committed there? And didn't it look just a
+little as though Rona's whole strange plan for having a picture painted
+was only a subterfuge to open the way for a carefully plotted revenge?
+And yet, if she had done all this, she surely must have had--or thought
+she had--a good reason for doing it. But had not Oakes established a
+clear alibi for the girl when he met her "away inland" the same
+afternoon men had been reported to have been seen on the schooner?
+Probably, but not certainly. Oakes himself had said that she was "a
+great walker" and "very restless."
+
+It was conceivable that the girl might have doubled back and waylaid
+Allen on the road. Or perhaps she had met him by appointment. He had
+admitted that he was becoming increasingly subject to her will. But how
+could she have induced him to go off to the schooner, and how had they
+gone? No boat had been sighted along the beach (we had looked for one
+through Butler's glasses on our return to the landing), and none was
+reported missing from the harbour. The Chief had inquired on that latter
+point while we were with him at the Station.
+
+And how had Rona, or anyone else for that matter, been able to get the
+better of such a man as Allen, fully armed and on the alert as I knew
+him to have been, and noted for his resourcefulness in emergency? That
+train of thought reminded me that we had found no arms on Allen when we
+released him. His right coat-pocket was empty, and so was the
+knife-sheath on his right hip. But his pocketbook, containing a
+considerable amount in notes, had not been taken.... It was all too much
+for my tired brain, which, ready enough to suggest questions, was quite
+incapable of grappling with them. When I drove into the home clearing I
+was wondering whether the broken glass I had noticed in the bottom of
+the cockpit was that from the whisky bottle Allen had told me Rona had
+thrown at him the morning Bell gave up the fight.
+
+I was horribly tired, both in mind and body, and hoped that, with a
+glass or two of absinthe to relax my nerves, I might be able to sleep at
+least through the heat of the noonday. Shifting into my pajamas,--after
+telling Suey, my China boy, that I would not want lunch and not to
+disturb me until I sent for him,--I crawled under the mosquito-net and
+tried to drop off. But it was no use. No sooner would I begin to doze
+than the expiring images of my thoughts would shuffle up and sharpen
+with a steel-clicking suddenness into the dread likeness of The Face,
+with its dilated eyes boring me to the spine.
+
+At the end of a couple of hours of fevered tossing, I gave it up, threw
+off my pajamas, stepped to the low back-window ledge and took a header
+into the cool green pool below. The Face dissolved as the thrill of the
+refreshing embrace of the water ran through my blood, but only to return
+when, after donning a fresh suit of drills, I began a restless pacing of
+the floor of the big living-room--my studio. Always it flashed a pace or
+two ahead of me, floating backward as I advanced upon it and swinging
+with me at the end of the room. I could not wheel swiftly enough to lose
+it, and it made no difference whether my eyes were opened or closed. I
+tried it both ways.
+
+It was in the course of an experimental lap I was trying with my hands
+over my eyes that I bumped into the big rectangle of canvas I had
+prepared in advance against the day I should be ready to start work on
+"The Saving of the Black-birder." Ten seconds later I was pawing over my
+colours with feverish haste. The idea swimming in my head had
+crystallized. It was, in effect: _Put The Face on canvas and it will
+cease to haunt and harrow your mind_. That sounded reasonable. Certainly
+The Face couldn't be in two places at once, and if I once got it
+anchored to the canvas I could cover it up when I wanted to get away
+from it. It would all depend upon how faithfully I did my work,
+something told me. If the face on the canvas was a replica of the other
+to a hair, to a line, to the fear in the hell-haunted eyes, then the
+phantom face would enter into it and become subject to my control. If
+not--then I would never know sleep nor peace while I continued to live.
+
+No artist can ever have approached a task under empire of the flaming
+intensity I threw into this one. I was painting to save my reason,
+perhaps my life. That is not a figure of speech. I mean it quite
+literally, for I am convinced to this day that I stumbled upon the only
+path that would have led me clear of complete mental and physical
+collapse.
+
+There was a rather remarkable coincidence in connection with the way I
+started to work. Nothing told me that those first nervous slashes of my
+brush signalized the beginning of a picture the fame of which was
+destined to reach the outposts of the civilized world before the year
+was out. All thought of "The Black-birder" was erased from my mind. I
+had no idea of a picture in my head. I was not even beginning to work
+upon a figure. I was only conscious that I was going to put all I had
+into the task of reproducing--recreating, if that were possible--with
+coloured pigments a phantom of my brain--a face--The Face.
+
+I had no thought, I say, of beginning a picture. I sketched nothing in,
+not even the outline of the haunting shadow I was going to try to
+capture. A very few minutes after I began squeezing out colours onto my
+palette I was smearing them upon a patch of the big six-feet-by-ten
+expanse of woven cotton in front of me. The coincidence I have mentioned
+became apparent some weeks later, when I discovered that, of all the
+sixty square feet of canvas before me, the something less than one
+square foot upon which I concentrated my paint and energies for the next
+thirty hours chanced to be in exactly the place it _had_ to be for the
+result of my effort to assume its proper place in a somewhat intricate
+composition. I will tell of that in due course.
+
+Save for the strain of the terrible tension under which I worked, the
+task to which I had set myself proved absolutely the simplest I ever
+attempted. It seemed that I could not go wrong. It was not like painting
+a face from memory, nor yet like painting one from a model. It was more
+like colouring a photograph, for the image, terrible as life, was right
+there on the canvas at the end of my arm. At first, as I tried to
+visualize it at shorter range than the five or six feet at which it had
+been floating, it was a bit hazy; but presently my intense concentration
+of mind had its reward. The dreadful phantom drew nearer, increased in
+detail, and finally sharpened into clear focus at the tip of my brush.
+After that I became just a meticulously faithful retoucher, working in a
+trance.
+
+It was toward the middle of the afternoon when Suey came in to ask if I
+was going to be home for dinner. He was becoming used to my queer ways,
+and, when I failed to take any notice of his reiterated query, came over
+and touched me on the shoulder. I "came out" with a start, but gathered
+my wits quickly. I told Suey that I should probably be working steadily
+for the next day or two and would want nothing to eat until I was
+finished. If he would bring me a bowl of cracked ice every hour and see
+that no one was allowed in to bother me, it would be all I should want
+of him. He replied with a laconic "Can do," and backed out toward the
+kitchen as though I had asked for curry-and-rice for dinner, or ordered
+something else equally rational and matter-of-fact.
+
+I settled back into my spell of tranced concentration with scarcely an
+effort, working swiftly and surely, with never a pause. The "drawing"
+was all done for me, and even in the matter of colours there was no
+hesitation. Exactly the proper shade or tint drew my brush like a
+magnet; and always it was applied with telling effect.
+
+The sunset shadows of the western hills were driving their black wedges
+across the satiny sheen of the light-flickering levels of the waving
+sugar-cane when I became aware that a sound I had been conscious of for
+some time had suddenly changed and intensified. If my mind had tried to
+catalogue the clear notes that had been floating in through the north
+window, it was probably to credit them to a certain bell-bird friend of
+mine who was in the habit of ringing his vesper chimes from a leafy
+chapel in the big bottle tree toward the end of the afternoon. But there
+was nothing bird-like in the quick staccato of eager yelps that had been
+responsible for bringing me, with ears and interest a-cock, out of my
+trance. "Dogs closing in for a kill," I muttered to myself, realizing
+that it had been the distant baying of hounds on a hot scent that I had
+confused with the more imminent chiming of my Austral bell-ringing
+neighbour. The sounds came from a long way off--probably from somewhere
+in the dense bush beyond the farther borders of the cane fields. It was
+a northerly hauling of the wind that brought them down to me so clearly.
+The air had been charged and electric all day, and the breaking up of
+the trade wind indicated that a hurricane was mustering its forces
+somewhere up among the Islands. I had not looked at the barometer on the
+veranda, but knew that it must be registering a considerable fall.
+
+The crack of a single shot drifted down the wind as the yelping reached
+its climax. Then all was quiet in the distance, with only an occasional
+cackling guffaw of a "laughing jackass" ripping across the silence that
+brooded nearer at hand. I didn't know what there was to hunt in that
+particular neck of Queensland, but thought it might be kangaroos or
+dingoes. It wasn't of enough interest to waste time in speculating upon
+it, just then in any event.
+
+Daylight had given way to twilight, and twilight to moonlight, before I
+stopped work again, this time to respond to an insistent ringing of the
+telephone bell. Oakes' deep voice came excitedly over the wire. "I
+thought you would be interested to know that Rawdon's dogs tracked down
+'Squid' Saunders this afternoon," it said. "He has just been brought in.
+Bullet through his shoulder, but not a serious wound. The report went
+around that he had confessed to the attack on Hartley Allen, and the
+town went wild. Only the Chief's nerve prevented a lynching, and there
+may be trouble yet. Never saw the people so excited." In response to my
+inquiry about Allen, Oakes said that he had been drugged to sleep early
+in the afternoon, and that there was no use trying to forecast what turn
+things would take until he came out.
+
+"That clears Rona, at any rate," was my thought as I drained a glass of
+iced absinthe and picked up my brush again. I found it just a shade
+harder materializing The Face than it had been at first, but managed it
+at the end of a minute or two of close concentration. Save for an
+occasional pause for a sip of absinthe, I worked steadily on through the
+night.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+To make clear what transpired the following day, it will be well to set
+down at this point a few things which I only learned in a conversation
+with the Chief of Police after the last act of the drama was played to a
+finish and the curtain rung down. Contrary to the understanding of Dr.
+Oakes, and all the rest of the people of Townsville with the exception
+of the Chief of Police and a couple of his assistants, "Squid" Saunders
+had _not_ confessed. From what he _had_ said in the presence of all his
+captors, however, it was easy to see how the story had originated. He
+admitted quite freely to Rawdon, after the latter had called off his
+dogs and was lending a hand to plug up the puncture in "Squid's"
+shoulder, that his one purpose in returning had been to settle his
+account with "Slant" Allen. He also said that he would rather be strung
+up straightaway than to be sent back to West Australia and begin, at
+sixty, serving out a twenty-odd-year sentence.
+
+That was about all Saunders said at the time of his capture, but later,
+after expressing himself to the Chief of Police to similar effect, he
+went a little further. He averred frankly that curiosity had always been
+one of his most pronounced characteristics, and, while he entertained
+only the kindliest feelings for whoever it was that had been responsible
+for tying up "Slant" Allen and leaving him alone to meditate upon his
+past, he couldn't help wondering about the identity of a man able to
+pull off such a cleverly thought-out and executed piece of business.
+Might he not suggest to the Chief that the latter try to find some
+trifle that this bright-minded and quick-handed cove had left behind on
+the schooner, and see if those sharp-nosed--yes, and sharp-teethed--dogs
+of his couldn't be put on the owner's trail. They appeared a very likely
+lot of hounds, especially that big black-and-tan brute with a chewed
+ear, who had broken away from the ruck and fastened his teeth in the
+"Squid's" calf.
+
+This all struck the straightforward, open-minded Chief as entirely
+reasonable. It was only fair to Saunders, too, and since saving him from
+the mob that afternoon the Chief had come to take a sort of proprietary
+interest in his prisoner. Going off to the schooner in the morning he
+found a small fragment of red rag in the cockpit, which, though it was
+greasy and dirty, did not show signs of exposure to the weather, and
+must, therefore, have been left comparatively recently. It was a
+six-by-eight-inch piece of flowered red calico, of the kind used by the
+natives of all parts of the South Seas for waist-cloths. Even if he
+wasn't able to locate the particular _sulu_ from which it was torn, the
+Chief reckoned that it would give the dogs something to go by.
+
+Rawdon's "nigger-chasers" were of a foxhound-bloodhound cross that the
+old ex-bushranger had bred especially for the purpose of chivvying down
+runaway blacks from the sugar plantations. The swart sextette displayed
+a very encouraging interest in the greasy rag the Chief brought them to
+sniff; so much so, indeed, that they were far from drained of enthusiasm
+at the end of a bootless day's nosing up and down the coast for tracks
+that gave back the same ingratiating aroma. It looked quite good enough
+to warrant going on with the game the following morning, Rawdon
+pronounced, as he started back on foot for his kennels on the southwest
+outskirts of town. (The old chap had some kind of a theory about its
+being destructive to a hound's keeness to tote him around on wheels:
+also, he had stumbled upon many trails where he least expected them,
+even in the town.)
+
+Rawdon was striding a couple of blocks ahead of his two helpers when,
+crossing the town end of the main westerly highway to the hills, the dog
+he was holding in leash--the big black-and-tan with the chewed ear, by
+far his keenest-nosed hound--broke away and set off up the side of the
+road in full cry. As there was no hope of trying to overtake him on
+foot, Rawdon waited for the other dogs to come up and catch the scent,
+cautioning his men to hold them well in leash and not to hurry until he
+rejoined them. Then he ran back a quarter of a mile to the Police
+Station to summon the Chief and get a horse.
+
+This was about seven o'clock in the evening of Wednesday, the day after
+we had found Hartley Allen bound to the wheel of the _Cora Andrews_.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the moment the big black-and-tan hound tore his leash out of Rawdon's
+hand and started to burn up the footpath beside the westerly hill road,
+I had been streaking a small patch of canvas with coloured pigments for
+something like thirty hours in a desperate endeavour to drive a phantom
+out of my brain. I was near to the end of my labours and--I could sense
+it already--close to victory. I had made a hard fight for it and I
+deserved to win. Using absinthe sparingly--as a fuel and a food rather
+than as a stimulant--and drawing upon my nerves for everything the drug
+would not provide, I had kept going steadily and was finishing strong.
+
+There had been but one interruption since the night before. Early in the
+forenoon Captain "Choppy" Tancred had called up to say that he had
+brought his new command to anchor in the harbour the previous evening,
+and that, as he had a good twenty-four hours' loading to do, he hoped
+that we could find time to foregather for a bit of a yarn in the course
+of the day. Would I come down and have lunch with him at the hotel, or
+would he drive up to me? He would rather prefer the former, as the
+barometer was down and he ought to remain where he could get off to his
+ship in a hurry if it came on to blow. I made the best excuse my
+wandering wits could frame, and hung up. The old boy's voluble protests
+were still clicking in the receiver as I returned it to its hook.
+
+I had a hard time materializing my "model" again after that break, and
+it was fifteen or twenty minutes before I was sure enough of it to
+resume work. For a while, in the back of my brain, there was a flutter
+of apprehension that old "Choppy" would take it into his head to come up
+anyhow, and I was desperately afraid that I might not be able to
+"connect" again after another interruption--that I would fail to focus
+The Face at the one moment of all when I most needed it. There would
+have been comfort in that thought twenty-four hours earlier, but by now
+a desire to finish the portrait for its own sake seemed to have entered
+into me.
+
+But my fears were groundless. "Choppy" was properly rebuffed, and had no
+intention of poking in where he "wasna weelcom'." (He told me so himself
+later.) There was no further interruption, save the negligible one of
+Suey and the cracked ice, sharp on every hour. As the sunset faded and
+the twilight flooded the valley with luminous purple mist, I was
+finished--or nearly finished. The Face was all but complete on the
+canvas now, and all but erased from my brain. It had taken an intense
+effort of concentration to hold it while I put the last touch on that
+writhen lip, as it curled back in a snarl from the bared teeth. But I
+did it. And now--just a stroke in that whorl of iris to accentuate the
+abnormal dilation, to fix the horror in that ghastly stare! Slowly the
+image sharpened in my brain. Again the fear-haunted eyes held my own.
+Now! I was just darting my delicately poised brush forward when the
+sound of voices from the veranda arrested the colour-daubed tip a hair
+short of the blurring eye its touch would have made a hopeless smudge.
+"Maskey--no can do!" came in Suey's brusque _pidgin_; and then,
+following a sudden scuffle and the sharp click of the latch, a familiar
+chirrup floated to my ears. "Let me in, Whit-nee! Hur-ree, ple-ese,
+Whit-nee!" was what it said.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVI
+
+                            A SUDDEN VISITOR
+
+
+As a rider reins in his stumbling horse, so did I rein in my stumbling
+nerves. It was now or never, I told myself. If those final touches were
+not given before I stirred from my tracks, they would never be given. I
+closed my eyes and my ears--not with my hands but by a sheer effort of
+will--and then, inch by inch, as though I were dragging it by the
+throat, brought the phantom prototype back and forced it to merge with
+the face on the canvas. The tip of my brush flashed twice, thrice. Then
+I relaxed the tentacles of my will, and as the phantom face, receding,
+blurred to blankness, it left behind, where a wisp of green-smeared
+camel's hair had touched the canvas, an expression of hell-haunted
+terror streaming from the unnaturally dilated eyes of the _completed_
+picture-face.
+
+I was breathing heavily, like a coolie who throws down his back-breaking
+burden at the end of a hard climb, when I tossed aside my brush and
+palette, but no wretch of a human pack-mule ever knew the depth of
+relief that was mine. A carrier could only experience the physical
+satisfaction of feeling his back was freed of a load: mine was the
+spiritual ecstasy of knocking off the shackles that had threatened to
+bind my soul. And now I was free to rush to the arms of the "Green
+Lady"! No more need of rationing my absinthe. I spilled the remaining
+contents of the bottle at my elbow in the bowl of half-melted cracked
+ice, and wolfed it greedily over the tilted brim.
+
+"Ple-ese, Whit-nee, I have the great hur-ree." Again came the
+click-clack of the imprisoned latch and the thud of a knee or shoulder
+against the door.
+
+"One moment, Rona!" Steadied and alert, I set down the emptied bowl,
+threw a hastily-snatched couch-cover over the canvas so that the space
+upon which I had worked was hidden, and stepped to the door. Already I
+felt the exaltation and relief of having banished the dread phantom. And
+the picture face on the canvas--how easy it was to blot out! The hanging
+corner of an old steamer-rug....
+
+Rona pushed in eagerly as I swung back the door, Suey relaxing his
+restraining grip and backing away noiselessly at my reassuring nod. All
+the old verve showed in the girl's high-flung head and flashing eye.
+Sullenness, depression, sadness alike were gone, replaced by an air of
+eagerness, of suppressed excitement. She was still wearing the baggy
+_holakau_ the lady missionaries had wished upon her, but with it--looped
+over her breasts and under her shoulders _sarong_-fashion--was the
+peacock shawl, outlining softly the lithe curves of shoulder and hip and
+flowing clingingly in folds of amber and scintillant opalescence below
+her knees.
+
+"Whit-nee, I come to make the good-bye," she gushed cooingly, catching
+her breath. "Tonight I take boat go Seengapo. Whit-nee, I come here to
+tell you I ver-ree sor-ree I make you troubl' 'bout the pick-yur. I
+tella you lie, Whit-nee. I cannot--make--the pick-yur. Bel-la, he say--"
+
+At that instant a strange thing happened. Two or three times since she
+entered the room, Rona's eyes, as though drawn there irresistibly, had
+wandered from mine to what could have appeared to her no more than a
+corner of plaid rug hanging over a broad blank of tightly stretched
+canvas. She had done this again as she started to speak, and it was a
+slight widening of her eyes that caused me to turn and follow her
+glance. The hastily-flung rug was slowly slipping back off the easel.
+The fringed corner hanging down in front was rising. Possibly a draught
+from the open door had started the movement, or perhaps the swishing
+blows a wind-lashed tree was dealing the side of the house. Whatever was
+the cause, the effect was that of an invisible hand slowly drawing up a
+curtain.
+
+Rona's tongue framed the sentence that was in her mind, but the
+words came brokenly as her puzzled wonderment increased. As her
+double-syllabled rendition of Bell's name fell from her lips the
+accelerating slide of the curtain quickened to a run, and, with a flirt
+of green fringe, the masking corner disappeared over the top of the
+frame. The Face--"Slant" Allen's hell-haunted face, tortured and
+terrible--glared out at her from the broad white field of the canvas.
+
+There was sheer amazement in the down-drop of the girl's lean jaw and a
+suggestion of terror in the gasp with which she filled her deflated
+lungs. But the piercing "_ey-yu_" with which that air was forced out
+again was a battle-cry. Fortunately, I was standing a couple of paces
+nearer the canvas than was she; but even with that handicap in my favour
+it was a near squeak. I caught the gleam of a flashing blade and a quick
+grab sunk my crooked fingers deep into the flesh of a thrusting arm.
+Hurling the arrested figure back toward the door, I stooped and picked
+up a knife--that beautifully balanced Portuguese throwing-knife that
+Allen and I had been flinging at the swelling bole of the big
+bottle-tree the previous Sunday. To this day I do not know whether Rona
+thought she was attacking a reincarnation or a ghost, or was only bent
+on destroying an uncannily life-like portrait that awakened savage
+memories.
+
+I swished the fallen rug from under the easel and rehung it--evenly this
+time--before turning to confront Rona, where she was readjusting--with
+raised elbows and twinkling thumbs--the hitch of the peacock shawl in
+the opposite corner of the room. She had scrambled to her feet again,
+but gave no sign of returning to the attack. Her eyes were snapping with
+anger and excitement, but I did not have the feeling that she
+entertained any especial personal resentment against me for the rough
+handling I had given her.
+
+"So it was you after all," I said slowly, fingering the tapering blade
+of the tell-tale knife.
+
+Her lips moved as though in reply, but if she said anything coherent it
+was drowned in the roar of a sudden gust of wind that buffetted the
+bungalow at that moment. I turned to the girl again after closing the
+north windows. Her eyes were fixed on vacancy now, and her head, with
+the clean-cut chin slightly elevated, was turned sideways in an attitude
+of listening. As the banging of the trees died down my own duller
+tympana registered a new vibration--and yet not quite new--something
+that I had heard very recently. Ah, now I had it! The baying of a hound,
+very near and very eager. A red-hot scent beyond doubt, I told myself.
+But why were Rawdon's "nigger-chasers" running at that hour, and into
+the teeth of a rising hurricane? There was questioning in both our
+glances as the girl's eyes met mine, but in hers certainly no hint of
+fear.
+
+Before either of us spoke a firm, quick step sounded from the back of
+the house, and a moment later, following a light tap on the door, Ranga
+entered from my bedroom. If he was surprised at Rona's presence, or at
+her somewhat dishevelled appearance, he gave no sign of it. Nor was
+there about me--now that I was holding the knife behind my
+back--anything to suggest to the Malay that he had stumbled upon a
+situation in the least out of the normal.
+
+Tuan "Slant" was sleeping heavily, he said, and so he had snatched the
+opportunity to come up for some of his own Borneo tobacco and a change
+of clothes. They had nothing in the hospital large enough for him. Tuan
+"Slant" was growing stronger in body, but--he finished by tapping his
+temple and shaking his head dubiously.
+
+A heavier broadside of the gathering storm shook the house again, this
+time sending a shudder through its stout frame and wringing a vibrant
+_ping_ from the tautened "hurricane cables" that guyed its windward
+corners. Out of the heart of that blast came the bell-mouthed baying of
+the nearing hound. He was still sounding his clear bugle notes as he
+swung in through the gate from the road, but down the driveway, with the
+incense of the burning trail conjuring visions of an imminent quarry in
+his brain, he began tearing his throat with harsh, savage yelps of
+eagerness. I was looking for his charge to come against the closed front
+door, but a sudden shower of claw-spurned gravel rat-a-tat-ing against
+the glass of the French windows told that he had wheeled in his tracks
+and was circling to the rear of the house. A yell and a clatter of
+saucepans from the kitchen, a scramble of slipping claws upon the
+hardwood floor of the back hallway, and in from the open door of my
+bedroom--drooling-fanged, bloody-eyed and bloody-minded--came dashing
+that black bolt of canine fury, closing on his cornered quarry for the
+death-grapple.
+
+Ranga, on entering, had moved a step or two aside from the door, a
+survival doubtless of his training at sea, where an idle man blocking a
+companionway or a ladder is liable to be taught manners by a rap on the
+head. Rona was still in the corner to which I had hurled her. I was at
+the opposite corner, near the big canvas and twenty feet or more from
+the girl. The flying hound tried to check himself at the doorway, but
+the polished floor gave him no grip for his claws. Down on his haunches,
+with forefeet poked rigidly ahead, he slid the full width of the room,
+tobogganing on a smooth-running Samoan mat for the last half of the
+distance.
+
+With the certainty of Rona's guilt fixed in my mind by her possession of
+Allen's knife, I had no doubt, from the moment the hound's baying
+indicated it had turned into the clearing, that it was hot on her trail.
+But even so, the brute's entry by the bedroom door had been so
+unexpected and so swift that I had not stirred from my tracks to the
+girl's defence when the snarling animal, shooting across the room,
+brought up against the wall close beside her. Even Ranga, leaping
+forward instantly as he had, was scarcely past the middle of the floor
+when the beast regained its balance and bearings almost at the girl's
+feet. Drawing back into the angle of the walls and crouching low like a
+cornered cat, Rona awaited the attack, while Ranga, barehanded, and I
+with the throwing-knife rushed in to her aid. Without an instant's
+hesitation, the savage beast spun to a full right-about and, brushing
+the girl's advanced knee as though it was no more than the piano stool,
+launched itself full at the throat of the yellow man.
+
+Ranga's counter was swift, sure and terrible. He might have been
+fighting bloodhounds barehanded from childhood, for all the surprise and
+dismay he showed at the sudden attack. Where my own instinct (if I had
+not tried to side-step the charge completely) would have been to grapple
+for the brute's throat from beneath, he simply struck--or rather
+grabbed--down from above. The impact crushed the snarling beast to the
+floor, but when Ranga raised his arm again he was gripping his
+struggling canine adversary by the scruff of the neck. Or rather, I
+thought it was the scruff. In reality his grip was a bit more inclusive.
+
+Holding the floundering black form at arm's length with no more effort
+than if it had been a terrier, Ranga suddenly tightened his hold. I saw
+the hound's red-lidded eyes grow slant and elongated like a Chinaman's
+as the skin of its scalp was drawn backward in the relentless vise
+closing from behind; then a grinding snick cut short an unearthly scream
+of pain, and the hound was dangling limp and lifeless with a crumpled
+spine at the end of a gibbet of knotted yellow muscle. Ranga tossed
+lightly aside what a moment before had been a flying bolt of wrath, and
+where the great head doubled under against a flowered chintz
+window-curtain I saw the sprawling outline of a tooth-torn ear,
+doubtless the scar of a fight with a luckier ending.
+
+In its strangely terrible tenseness, the electrically charged silence
+that succeeded has no parallel in my experience. Not a word was spoken.
+The only sound was the banging of the wind-wrenched trees against the
+house and the nearing mutter of the thunder in the north. The
+significance of the fact that it was Ranga the dog had been trailing was
+lost upon neither Rona nor me, nor yet upon the big Malay himself. The
+latter met my questioning glance steadily for a moment, but it was the
+girl's piercing stare of fierce concentration that drew and held his
+troubled black eyes. While one might have counted fifty those two stood
+and (as I have since understood) communed with eye and mind. It was a
+sudden thunder-clap that broke the connection and checked the interflow
+of thought. Ranga had not winced at the blinding flash and
+close-following crash, but Rona's higher strung nerves fluttered for an
+instant, and the wire was down. But Ranga's words indicated that the
+message was about complete.
+
+"Yes, I did it, Tuan," he said quietly, turning toward me as though
+answering my unspoken question. "It had to be, Tuan, and--yes, I did
+it."
+
+It was not until afterwards I recalled that it was to Rona I addressed
+my protest. "But 'Slant' swore to me that he did not kill Bell; that he
+was in no way responsible for his death, first or last."
+
+A spasm of passion twisted the girl's face to the seeming of an ape's as
+she caught the drift of my words, and her reply was almost a scream.
+"Not ke-el Bel-la? 'Slan' do worse than ke-el. He--"
+
+The chorus of the leashed pack that checked her words came from so close
+at hand that it made itself heard above the now unbroken roar of the
+storm. There was the clang of shod hoofs on a metalled road, too, and I
+thought I could distinguish the shouts of men. The hunt was closing in
+for the kill.
+
+"I think I go now, Tuan. I like the better to fight outside." Ranga's
+voice was as quiet and controlled as when he had told me the news from
+the hospital a few minutes before; but there was the lust of battle in
+his flashing eyes, eagerness for action in the quick heave of his chest.
+
+There was no time to debate and decide the question as to who had
+committed the outrage upon Hartley Allen, or of what justification
+there might have been for it. One thing only was clear to me, and that
+was that I was not going to throw either Rona or Ranga to the dogs--no,
+nor to the law either--if there was any way of avoiding it. My mind--as
+was always the case when I had fasted long and drunk absinthe
+sparingly--worked with lightning swiftness.
+
+"Don't fight unless you have to," I said, stepping closer to Ranga as
+the wind and thunder threatened to drown my voice. "Follow down the
+stream over the falls. Jump won't hurt you--plenty of water at the
+bottom. That'll throw off the dogs. Then follow the path by the flume
+down to the sea. The rain'll kill your trail for the dogs. It ought to
+be starting any minute now. Wait for me on the pier by the old sugar
+mill. I'll come for you in a boat as soon as I can."
+
+Baring his teeth in a quick grin of comprehension, the big fellow
+wheeled and started for the front door. I caught his arm and checked him
+just in time. "This way!" I shouted. "Through my bedroom window. Beat
+it! _Lekas!_"
+
+Again that intelligent tooth-flash of understanding. Ranga's
+foreshortened bulk was making a blurred blot against the blue-green
+lightning flash playing across the rear bedroom window as I turned to
+answer a heavy banging at the front door. Everything considered, I have
+always felt that I got away fairly well with the situation with which I
+now found myself confronted. It was Harpool, the Chief of Police, who
+staggered into the room, bracing back against the push of the still
+rising wind. The flutter of the lightning revealed two or three horses
+in the driveway, and three or four men following a bunch of howling dogs
+around the corner of the house.
+
+I was on the point of opening up at the Chief with a facetious sally
+about the way he was sending his hounds around to frighten my lady
+visitors, when I chanced to glance to the corner where Rona had been,
+and lo--I had no lady visitor! The girl was gone, but whether under the
+couch or out of one of the windows I could not guess. So I only gaped
+rather stupidly and said nothing, leaving the Chief to open the attack.
+I was glad the face on the canvas was covered, and only wished there had
+been time to throw something over the crumpled remnants of the big
+black-and-tan.
+
+"I am quite satisfied it isn't you we want, Mr. Whitney," Harpool began,
+with a shade of embarrassment, I thought. "But the fact remains that
+Rawdon's hounds have followed a live scent straight to this house, and I
+have every reason to believe they are on the trail of the man who tied
+up Hartley Allen. Perhaps you can explain--"
+
+"I think I can," I cut in, anxious to gain time for the fugitive, but
+realizing that no end would be served by trying to conceal his identity.
+"You're right that it was a hot scent. Just a few degrees too hot for
+your canine deputy there in the corner. It's the end of _his_ trail, I'm
+afraid."
+
+The Chief strode over to the limp corpse and turned it with his foot.
+"Who killed this hound?" he demanded angrily, regarding me suspiciously
+for the first time.
+
+"Not I, Chief," I replied jauntily; "but can't you guess? You can see
+for yourself that he hasn't been shot--or clubbed--or poisoned. Well,
+then--look at that neck. Do you know of more than one man in these parts
+capable of snapping a bloodhound's spine between his thumb and
+forefinger?" (I added that little thumb-and-forefinger touch with malice
+aforethought, for I wanted to impress upon Harpool--for whatever it
+might be worth--that it was no old broken-down of a "Squid" Saunders
+that he was going to try to run to earth out there in the darkness.)
+
+The Chief's honest eyes opened with amazement as the answer dawned upon
+him. "You don't mean the big Malay?" he ejaculated incredulously. "Why,
+he has been tending Allen like a sister for two days. Everyone in the
+hospital has been speaking about his devotion."
+
+"No other," I answered. "Ranga came up from the hospital less than half
+an hour ago to get a shift of togs. Five minutes later that hound came
+tearing in through the back entrance and flew at his throat--right here
+in my studio. You see the result. That fellow can drop a horse with his
+fist--a dog is no more than a flea to him."
+
+"I can hardly believe it," said the Chief, shaking his head; "but the
+fact remains that if the hound went for him, he's our man. I hope we
+won't have to shoot him.... But Rawdon will never stand by and see his
+dogs pinched out like that. This fellow was his best hound by a mile.
+Drive him crazy when he finds it's been dished. Gawd, that neck might
+have been run over by a steam tram! What in hell--"
+
+A bedlam of howls and yells and savage oaths rising from the rear of the
+house at this juncture broke in upon the Chief and caused him to bolt on
+the double through the door of the corridor leading to the kitchen. The
+unearthly racket, with the rattle of pistol shots spattering through it,
+made me certain that Ranga had run afoul of the hunt at his first jump.
+Shuddering at the thought of the terrible fight that must ensue, I
+pushed on after Harpool, reaching the further end of the corridor just
+in time to catch his reeling form as he staggered back from a bullet
+that had burned his scalp the instant he opened the kitchen door.
+Astride the sill of a kicked-in window sat old Rawdon, his bearded face
+distorted with fury and pain, coughing, sneezing, cursing, and firing
+impartially at all parts of the long, low room. Under the sink, almost
+at Rawdon's feet but quite out of pistol range, crouched Suey, blinking
+blandly and rubbing his almond eyes. He it was who was the author of an
+unpremeditated diversion which was the only thing in the world that
+prevented Ranga being nabbed at the outset.
+
+The late black-and-tan, in following Ranga's trail, had entered the
+kitchen by snapping his way through the light screen door. To prevent
+his lines being thus penetrated a second time, the foxy Celestial, when
+he heard the main pack rallying to the attack, closed and bolted the
+heavy outside door of his domain and, with a little surprise packet in
+his hand, took station beside the little swinging window above the sink.
+Waiting with true Oriental restraint till the clamouring enemy was
+compactly bunched upon the porch outside, Suey gently raised the screen
+and emptied the contents of a can of red pepper into their midst. The
+paprika appeared to have been pretty fairly divided between three of the
+most oncoming of the dogs and their equally forward master. The hounds
+quit for the night, then and there, but the old bushranger's fighting
+spirit urged him on to make the best stand he could with his automatic.
+Considering the way he was being racked with coughs and sneezes, and
+that he only blazed away at the creak of an opening door his streaming
+eyes could not locate, his shot that welcomed the Chief was by no means
+uncreditable. It cut a neat furrow through Harpool's stubby pompadour
+and even drew a drop or two of blood.
+
+The Chief's fervent swearing stayed Rawdon's murderous hand just as he
+had finished fumbling a fresh clip of cartridges into his emptied
+"thirty-eight" and was about to start fusillading anew. Roaring mad as
+he was, his first thought was for the dogs. "Get a wet rag round the
+muzzles o' Dingo an' Jackaroo 'fore you let 'em inter this 'ell 'ole,"
+he growled between sneezes. "Our bloke's somew'ere in this 'ere 'ouse,"
+he went on, laving his smarting eyes at the water-tap of the sink above
+Suey's jack-knifed form. "Don't let 'im slope by the front door, Chief,
+now we've got 'im in 'is 'ole."
+
+"Sloped already," snapped Harpool laconically, adding that most of the
+sloping had been done while Rawdon was setting his dogs on a "bally
+Chink cook." In a few terse sentences the Chief explained the way things
+stood, giving it as his opinion that their man would be trying to follow
+the stream right across the plantation and down through the belt of bush
+to the mangrove swamps. The loss of the big black-and-tan was so great a
+calamity for the old bushranger that it had the effect of sobering
+rather than further exciting him. His red rage burned white and flamed
+inwardly rather than outwardly. "I'll know 'ow to even up for 'im
+killin' Starlight w'en I gets that bloody wombat in a patch o' dry bush.
+Nice bit o' a torch that greasy 'ulk o' 'im'll make. Come along! We'll
+'ave a better chance o' makin' a quick bag if we get 'im in sight 'fore
+the rain starts."
+
+There were still left two dogs with undamaged "noses." Fearful that
+these, if they took the bridle-path down the right side of the creek,
+might pick up Ranga's trail where he would have left the stream at the
+pool, I made bold to suggest a plan calculated to carry them wide of
+that danger point. "Why don't you ford here," I said, "and push straight
+across the plantation to the end of the big loop the stream makes round
+the nigger village? Your man will be all of an hour making that point if
+he wades by the stream. You can make it through the cane in twenty
+minutes and be waiting there to bag him."
+
+The Chief was inclined to favour the plan--until Rawdon cut in
+sarcastically with: "An' wot's to pervent the bloody bloke's givin' us
+the slip a 'undred times 'tween 'ere an' there? One hound down each side
+o' the stream--that's the only way to be sure o' clappin' our 'ooks
+inter 'im."
+
+That was sound reasoning of course--from Rawdon's standpoint,--and I
+didn't dare urge my plan any further. Ten minutes later, when a sudden
+eager baying came down the wind from the direction of the waterfall, I
+felt sure my worst fears were realized. It was, therefore, with only the
+faintest hopes of success, that I pulled myself together to take the
+first step in making good my promise to pick up Ranga at the pier of the
+old sugar mill.
+
+The priceless Suey had crawled out from under the sink as the sounds of
+the hunt grew faint, and turned to tidying the kitchen as though
+cleaning up after a pack of bloodhounds was just a pleasant little
+incidental of the day's work. When I ordered him to get me out a fresh
+bottle of absinthe he did not even forget the cracked ice. I told him I
+should probably be away for most of the night, and that if Rona showed
+up in the interim to see that she was made comfortable till my return.
+"All lightee girl-ee. Otha fell-ee too much peppa can have," he said
+decisively. I told him to do what he liked to Rawdon, but to give the
+Chief a shake-down if he asked for it.
+
+Quaffing a couple of glasses of raw absinthe, I filled a flask, pulled
+on a pair of riding-boots and a raincoat, and pushed out onto the
+veranda. The wind had not increased greatly in force, but the lightning
+and thunder were flashing and crashing almost simultaneously overhead,
+and the first big drops of rain were beginning to spatter. The moon was
+hidden behind a dense pall of black cloud, so that it was by the
+incessant flicker of the lightning that I sized up the three
+saddle-horses tied at the side of the driveway and picked the rangy
+waler of the Chief as the likeliest rough-weather beast. I had no
+compunction to taking him, as the bunch would be breaking away anyhow as
+soon as the sagging bottom of the cloud overhead dropped its contents on
+them. I preferred not to have my own saddle-horse left standing in the
+town if it could be avoided. There would be enough tell-tale posts on
+the course I was going to try to negotiate without deliberately planting
+another one.
+
+The cane fields in the valley were glistening with the opening volleys
+of the rain as I spurred across the clearing, stabbing the night with
+silver gleams in the lightning flashes as the bayonets of massed troops
+throw off the rays of the sun. The wind was behind me as far as the main
+road; then side-on, but broken by the wall of the thick-growing trees. I
+put the waler at top speed, anxious to cover all the distance possible
+while the footing was good. I was halfway to town before the storm let
+go in real earnest, and from then on it was about as much of a swim as a
+ride, especially after the hillsides began to spill off on the lower
+levels. My mount was a sensible beast, evidently no stranger to tropical
+cloudbursts. He took the initiative readily when I ceased to urge him,
+and kept plugging right on through the storm at a good steady
+business-like jog. Nothing but my good fortune in getting a jump on the
+rain prevented my going out in this first lap of my race, as all of the
+four bridges I had to cross must have washed away within a very few
+minutes from the time I put them behind me. Indeed, one of the two
+horses I had left in the driveway, after both had broken away as I had
+anticipated, was drowned in trying to flounder through an open crossing.
+
+The worst of the terrific downpour was over as I rode into the town, but
+the wind--as was to be expected--was blowing with increased force.
+Everyone had been driven indoors by the rain, so that it was in an empty
+street I dismounted and left my horse, knowing that he would be pawing
+at his own stable door within a very few minutes. The rest of the way to
+the landing I covered on foot. As I had feared, the creek was empty of
+launches. I would have to see what could be done at the Burns, Phillip
+offices, which, busy with manifests and other odds and ends of business
+incident to an imminent steamer sailing, were still lighted up. It was
+an alternative I was very reluctant to resort to, as I had been hoping
+that my visit to Captain Tancred might be managed on the quiet. Just as
+I turned to go a red light, bobbing past the outer end of the jetty,
+caught the tail of my eye, and, on the off chance that it might be a
+craft I could hire, I held on at the steps. Smartly handled in the nasty
+cross-lop, a small but powerful steam launch bumped in alongside the
+landing stage.
+
+"Can I get you to take me off to the _Mambare_?" I demanded of the
+uniformed youth who came bounding up the steps.
+
+"Glad to do it, sir. This is her launch," was the cheery reply. "Just in
+for clearance papers. Be back in a jiffy. Climb aboard and make yourself
+comfy in the cabin." Then, as an apparent afterthought: "You're sailing
+with us, aren't you? Can't take off visitors at this hour. No way to get
+back. Getting under way at midnight." He had so little doubt that I was
+a belated passenger, perhaps delayed by the rain, that my nod was quite
+sufficient to reassure him. Five minutes later we were shoving off for
+the run back to the line of lights where the _Mambare_ tugged at her
+moorings.
+
+The sea was white with foam outside the jetties, but with waves and wind
+almost dead astern the sturdy little launch made very comfortable
+weather of it. It was by no means as bad as it had been coming in, said
+the young officer, who turned out to be a freight clerk. As the gangway
+was already raised and the launch had to come in anyway, we remained
+aboard her and were hoisted right up and swung in to the chocks on the
+_Mambare's_ boat-deck. My companion hurried at once to his office to go
+over his pouch of papers, while I, locating it without asking anyone for
+directions, went forward to the Captain's cabin under the bridge.
+
+The faint shadow of constraint on Captain Tancred's face as I entered
+disappeared the instant his ready mind divined I had come to him for
+help. "So they're after ye at last, lad," he said, sympathy and
+satisfaction queerly blended in his deep voice. "Weel, noo, tell me a'
+aboot it. I ken we'll be findin' a way oot for ye."
+
+I told him all that he needed to know as quickly as possible, making a
+point, however, of omitting to state that the man I wanted him to
+smuggle away to the Islands had confessed to committing the outrage upon
+Hartley Allen. "Slant" was an old friend of "Choppy's," and I felt sure
+that the latter, far from being a witting party to helping the man who
+had attacked him escape from justice, would undoubtedly lend every aid
+to placing him where he would receive his just deserts. Luckily, the
+quixotic old Scot was not a man to ask searching questions. He was
+plainly disappointed that it was not I who was fleeing the law, but
+there was ready consolation in the fact that a friend of mine, in very
+sore straits, might be saved from being torn to pieces by a pack of
+bloodhounds if he was picked up at a certain point on the north coast
+before morning.
+
+We located the cove of the old sugar mill on the chart without
+difficulty, and in his bulky volume of "Sailing Directions" found the
+comforting assurance that it afforded especially good shelter in a
+northerly blow. There was no surf, it was stated, and the shore was
+almost steep-to. This was all in our favour. He was sailing at midnight,
+the Captain said. The hurricane was central over the New Hebrides, so it
+was only the tail of it flirting across the Great Barrier--nothing he
+would dream of sticking in harbour for. Doubtless he would be able to
+find an excuse to heave-to off the cove, while I piloted the launch in
+to get our man. Then, if I didn't care to return and take a pleasure
+voyage with him to Insulinde and the Straits, I could drop off and make
+the best of my way home.
+
+The Captain had just finished telling me how he had made a point of
+bringing his old launch crew with him from the _Utupua_--"the lads I use
+for speshul wark, ye ken"--when the freight clerk who had brought me off
+entered the cabin with a number of papers and letters. On the top of the
+pile was a red envelope marked "Rush." "Choppy" tore the letter open at
+once. The up-flop of his grizzled side-burns at the sudden flexing of
+the jaw muscles at their roots gave me warning of the coming jolt.
+
+"We'll nae be gettin' under wa' the nicht, Ryerson," he said quietly to
+the freight clerk. "Will ye be sae guid as to bid the Chief an' the Mate
+to step this wa'. Mair carga the morrow," he added by way of
+explanation. To the Chief Engineer, when he came, the Captain merely
+countermanded an order for steam on the capstan at seven bells, and
+warned him to keep the pressure in the boilers high for fear the steamer
+might part a mooring cable if the wind increased. The Mate he ordered to
+be ready to handle a consignment of silver bullion and ingot copper that
+would come in a tug from the _Moresby_ as soon as she arrived from the
+south in the morning. He also told him to have the crew of the steam
+launch called away at once, so as to put "yon gentleman" ashore as
+quickly as possible. If the Mate was lively about it, "Choppy"
+suggested, he might find that the fires of the launch had not yet been
+drawn from her trip to the landing. If so, that would save time in
+getting up steam.
+
+Not until all of this was ordered did he turn to me with: "The de'il's
+ain luck, lad. Nae gettin' awa' afore eight bells, noon, the morrow.
+Shipment frae Broken Hill catchin' up wi' us in the _Moresby_."
+
+"That means that the game's up and you're sending me back because
+there's no hope of doing anything?" I asked in dismay.
+
+"Nae, nae, lad," he soothed. "No' so fast. Just a wee bit o' a shift o'
+program, that's a'. True I'm sendin' ye ashore in the launch, but when
+she comes back I'm hopin' tae find oor mon in yer place. Do ye ken noo
+wha' I'm drivin' at?"
+
+"Do you mean to send the launch all the way round from here?" I demanded
+in astonishment; "and then to keep him aboard here in the harbour for
+ten or twelve hours before you sail? Isn't that asking for trouble both
+ways? Even if the launch stands up against the gale outside, aren't you
+done for if they come off from town and make a search of the steamer?"
+
+Old "Choppy's" blue eyes twinkled merrily at the latter suggestion. The
+police never did seem to have any luck in searching his ships, he
+laughed. As for the launch--it was new, its engine was unusually
+powerful, and it would have "Pisco" at the wheel. "Pisco," he explained,
+was a Chilean who had been with him for years, and had never been known
+to fail at a pinch. He thought that combination ought to win out. I
+didn't mind a bit of slap-banging off the point, did I? That settled it.
+If he was willing to risk his own launch and his own career to save _my_
+friend, it was not for me to hang back. Fifteen minutes later we had
+been lowered over the side and were rounding under the _Mambare's_ fine
+clipper bows into the teeth of the gusty norther. It had been agreed
+that I should pilot "Pisco" to the rendezvous and deliver my man into
+his care. "Choppy" undertook to do the rest.
+
+What the hard-bit old sea-dog had characterized as a "bit o'
+slap-banging" off the point proved to be a frontal attack upon as
+ruffianly a bunch of headseas as it was ever my lot to face in anything
+smaller than a ninety-ton schooner. Stoutly built and over-engined as
+she was, the launch was quite equal to the task of driving her nose
+through the waves, but--not being built for submarine service--proved a
+dismal failure at getting rid of the solid green water that deluged her
+as a consequence. Knot by knot, cursing fluently in picturesque _roto_
+Spanish the while, "Pisco" rang down the engine, until finally the
+pugnacious little craft ceased tunnelling the bases of the seas and
+contented herself with boring neat round holes in their curling crests.
+By this method she shipped no more water than her scuppers could put
+back where it came from. The only fear now was that enough spray might
+splash down her squat funnel to quench the fires, and to minimize the
+chances of this, the resourceful "Pisco" made the lookout stand so that
+his broad chest would receive and deflect the heaviest rushes of the
+threatening flood. Fortunately, the distance to be run head-on to the
+seas was comparatively short. Once round the point the alteration of
+course brought the wind and the waves on the starboard beam, and though
+she now just about rolled her side-lights under, it was fairly quiet
+going compared to the buffeting outside.
+
+I gave "Pisco" his course for the first leg in by the lights of the big
+sugar central, and then, as we opened up the inner bay, gave him a
+bearing on the notch--barely guessable against the overcast west--where
+the old cartroad grade pierced the brow of the cliff. The clouds were
+racing overhead and the baffling cross-gusts on the surface would have
+made it bad business for a sailing craft. But for a launch the task was
+a comparatively simple one. The loom of the old mill was discernible
+against the darker opacity of the cliff at a couple of hundred yards,
+and the right-angling lines of the pier at half that distance. As the
+latter was sure to have been built of the eternally-lasting _jarra_, I
+knew that it would be as solid and serviceable as the day it was
+abandoned.
+
+I had not thought it best to risk dampening Captain Tancred's enthusiasm
+by confessing that I thought it was a good ten-to-one against my man's
+turning up at the rendezvous. Indeed, I could see no grounds whatever
+for hoping that Ranga had shaken the pursuit--already at his heels--and
+won through to the appointed place. Nothing short of a miracle could
+have compassed it, I told myself. It was on the off chance that the
+miracle had been wrought that I was keeping my promise.
+
+"'Bout half a point to sta'boa'd, Tuan. Way nuf now! Steady!" That deep
+rumbling voice from the darkness was a welcome surprise. "Pisco,"
+heeding the quiet directions, brought his launch alongside the broad
+solid flight of steps as neatly as he would have laid her up to the
+_Mambare's_ gangway in broad daylight.
+
+Ranga was coming down the steps--with a slowness which I attributed to
+the fact that they were probably very slippery--when I heard a thud on
+the deck behind me, such a sound as a heavy, soft bundle thrown down
+from above might have made in striking. A second or two later there was
+an ejaculation of astonishment somewhere aft, probably from "Pisco," I
+thought, as the words were Spanish. I did not try to puzzle out the
+purport of them at the moment, as my attention was occupied with Ranga,
+who seemed to be hesitating at the last moment about coming aboard.
+Twice or thrice he drew back his foot from the rail, as though uncertain
+of his balance. And when the great bulk of him finally did surge
+forward, it was with a lurch that took all my strength to check it and
+prevent his reeling on across the narrow bow and over the other side. He
+steadied himself slowly, with a great intake of breath. "Sorry--make
+trouble,--Tuan. Now--I go aft."
+
+"I am leaving you here, Ranga," I said quickly, for I was getting
+nervous about a movement of lights I had observed along the flume in the
+rear of the big sugar mill. "Captain Tancred will look after you on the
+steamer, and put you off wherever you want to go. He also has some money
+for you. Good luck!"
+
+The big fellow took a long shuddering breath, and when he spoke it was
+as though he had rallied himself from a spell of faintness by sheer
+force of will. "Some day, Tuan--I pay you back--for all you do. So
+long." He turned with painful deliberation and started to edge along
+aft. I was a bit surprised that he had not grasped my extended hand, but
+could not be sure that he had been aware of it in the dark. It did not
+occur to me until afterwards that he had not used his own hands on the
+rail of the stairway in descending, and that he had seemed to shoulder
+his way back to the cockpit rather than to grope. I waited until his
+swaying shoulders ceased to blot the blinking of the phosphorescent seas
+astern, and then swung off to the stairs.
+
+"All clear!" I called softly to "Pisco," as I felt the solid step
+underfoot. "Shove off when you're ready. _Buena fortuna!_"
+
+It was doubtless "Pisco's" ejaculation in Spanish a few moments before,
+lurking in the back of my mind, that prompted me to speed the spirited
+coxswain in his own tongue. On the heels of that "_Buena fortuna!_" the
+words he had spoken flashed up in my memory. "_Cristo! Porque la
+muchacha?_" It could hardly have been a sarcastic dig at Ranga's
+hesitancy in stepping aboard, I reflected as I mounted the
+slippery--astonishingly slippery--steps. He would not have expressed it
+quite that way in that case. A sudden slip in a slimy patch at the head
+of the steps put an end to conjecture for the moment, and when I
+regained my feet the answer was written across the cabin doorway of the
+turning launch. The lamp inside had--purposely--been turned very low,
+and the blurred silhouette of the figure that came groping out to where
+Ranga had collapsed on a cockpit transom might easily have been that of
+any one of old "Choppy's" true and tried launch crew. But wet amber silk
+reflects a deal of light, and there was only one peacock shawl in the
+world--or in that neck of the world at least.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVII
+
+                             DOWN THE FLUME
+
+
+The lights had disappeared from the flume as I turned to go, and, rather
+than take the chance of another fall, I decided to use my small electric
+torch in finding a solid footing. The lacquered crimson reflection of
+the fluttering disc of light instantly revealed the cause of the
+slipperiness I had encountered. The whole end of the pier was
+criss-crossed with thick trails of blood, with great spreading pools
+here and there where, whoever shed it, had stood or sat. The blood on my
+hands and raincoat, where they had come in contact with Ranga's reeling
+frame, proved beyond a doubt that he was badly hurt. That explained his
+unsteadiness on his feet, and also the fact that he had avoided shaking
+hands with me. Very likely, indeed, his hands were unfit to use. Tired
+to the verge of exhaustion though I was, my blood leaped at the thought
+of the battle royal the splendid fellow must have fought--and won. I was
+expecting to come upon traces of the fight at any moment as I picked my
+way in past the ruined mill to the foot of the old grade leading to the
+top of the cliff.
+
+As I left the planking of the pier behind two sets of footprints
+appeared in the wet, firm earth of the path at the side of the road.
+Both were made by bare feet, but the larger ones--plainly Ranga's--were
+broken and irregular, and saturated with blood. There could be no doubt
+that his feet, like his hands, were frightfully torn. The small prints
+pressed very close to the side of the large, indicating that Rona was
+either supporting the wounded giant or being supported by him. From the
+fact that the smaller impressions were deeply indented, I figured that
+the former was the case--that she was helping him. The girl, evidently,
+was not badly hurt--perhaps not at all.
+
+Where the path I was following joined the bridle-road at the brink of
+the cliff, the trail of blood turned off down the foot of the flume
+toward the big sugar mill. The battle royal must have been fought
+somewhere in the depths of the dense tropical growth that filled the
+rocky fissure in the cliff followed by the flume. What grim secret the
+black hole held would have to wait for the coming day to reveal. My way
+home led in the opposite direction, and there was some question in my
+mind as to whether or not I had the strength for the full course.
+
+Fortunately for me the flume had been built along ridges and high
+ground, so that the trail following it had not been exposed to heavy
+flooding in the torrential rains of the early evening. I found it hard
+and firm underfoot for the most part, and by no means hard to follow
+without resorting to my electric torch. It would have been very easy
+going had I not been so nearly all in, but even as it was, by using my
+absinthe sparingly as I had done while painting, I managed to keep
+plugging steadily on toward home.
+
+At one time something very near a panic seized me for a while, when the
+thought flashed through my mind that the great quantity of Ranga's blood
+soaked up by my boots and my clothes would undoubtedly leave a trail
+that Rawdon's hounds, should they chance to nose into it, would be quite
+justified in mistaking for that of the Malay himself. Even if I
+succeeded in holding the beasts off with my revolver, my presence there,
+and in such a state, would call for a lot of explaining. If the Chief
+once became suspicious, I told myself, it would undoubtedly upset my
+plans to get Ranga away, to say nothing of involving both myself and
+Captain Tancred in a serious scrape. I was in a miserable state of funk
+until the cheering thought entered my head that Ranga had probably
+killed not only the dogs, but probably Rawdon and the Chief as well.
+That reflection reassured me immensely, and, buoyed in mind and body, I
+trudged on confidently to the foot of the waterfall.
+
+I had noticed from time to time along the way that the flume, in its
+less inclined stretches, was overflowing its sides. The reason for this
+became evident when I reached the intake, at the side of the pool under
+the falls, where I discovered that the gate, usually only partly raised,
+was wide open. A flow of more than double the normal was rushing out of
+the rain-swollen stream and into the flume.
+
+I was too tired to speculate upon how this might have happened. It was
+touch-and-go with my tottering knees all the way up the steep, slippery
+path to the top of the cliff; but, with three or four breathing spells
+and the last of my absinthe, I managed it, and came out at last upon the
+greensward rimming the bathing-pool under my bedroom window. It was
+comparatively quiet here, now that the roar of the falls was deadened by
+distance, which was doubtless the reason that I heard for the first time
+a racket from the other side of the plantation that must have been going
+on right along. It was rather a lucky thing that I _did_ hear that noise
+before I turned in. Had I not done so, it is hardly likely that it would
+have occurred to me that it might be a wise precaution to remove my
+boots before entering the house, and then to strip off and burn
+carefully in the kitchen range everything that I had been wearing. It
+was all I could do to keep awake until the irksome job was over, but,
+since it was evident from the ki-yi-ing and cursing that was floating
+down the wind that Ranga had not made a clean sweep of Rawdon and his
+pack, I reckoned that it well might be the means of preventing
+unpleasant complications.
+
+My arduous climb up from the old sugar mill had served a useful purpose
+in one respect. The hard physical exercise had sweated the poison of the
+absinthe out of my system and relaxed the near-to-breaking tension my
+nerves had been under for thirty-six hours. I fell into a good normal
+hard-workingman's sleep the moment the mosquito-net closed behind me.
+And the best of it was that, when a pandemonium outside awakened me a
+little after sun-up, I tumbled out upon my feet in full possession of
+all my faculties. This was a mighty fortunate circumstance, for the
+rather delicate situation with which I was confronted called for
+something better on my shoulders than the usual "absinthe-holdover"
+head.
+
+Harpool and Rawdon, it appeared, had experienced a beastly night. Losing
+a hot scent that had been picked up at the foot of the waterfall
+immediately after leaving the bungalow, they had been forced to take
+refuge in one of the labour villages during the deluge. Dragged out by
+the bloodthirsty Rawdon before the rain had ceased to fall, they had
+spent the night "working" the fringes of the bush in the hope of
+stumbling upon the trail of the elusive fugitive. The net result of this
+was the drowning of two more hounds and the driving of the baffled
+bushranger to the verge of distraction. Returning, dead beat, in the
+early dawn, they had encountered, at the intake of the flume, a scent so
+strong that even the paprika-dosed noses of Suey's victims followed it
+readily. Swarming up the cliff in full cry, the hunt came on to whirl in
+a mad war dance round the bungalow and put a period to my morning
+slumbers.
+
+The maniacal Rawdon was the worst difficulty, and I honestly believe
+that only the Chief's restraining presence saved me from the necessity
+of winging him with a revolver bullet to prevent his setting fire to the
+bungalow. That "bloody wombat" had dodged him once from that shack and
+he wasn't going to take chances on its happening again. The Chief and I
+finally induced him to leave his "ring of death" intact round the
+bungalow and come in and search for himself. That gave me a chance for a
+quiet word with Harpool, whom I did not want to have push on to town for
+fear he would start a search that might extend to the _Mambare_. Indeed,
+he admitted he was afraid that his man might have doubled back to
+Townsville and got off to the Singapore boat, which had doubtless sailed
+at midnight. He had lost a badly-wanted counterfeiter a fortnight ago
+that way. The skippers never seemed very keen to co-operate in a search
+of their ships. Too many little smuggling games of their own probably.
+
+I suggested to Harpool that he have a bath, a change of clothes--my togs
+were about his size--and a snack of early breakfast. Afterwards--since
+his horse was gone--I would drive him down in my trap. In the meantime
+he could ring up the Police Station and give any orders he thought
+desirable by 'phone. (This latter suggestion I made in full knowledge of
+the fact that the line must be down for over a mile. I had seen myself
+where uprooted trees were responsible for wide hiatuses.) If it was in
+any way possible without arousing his suspicions, it was my intention to
+detain Harpool until I was sure the _Mambare_ had sailed.
+
+The Chief fell in with my suggestion readily, and felt so much bucked up
+after a bath and a couple of whiskies-and-soda that he did not appear
+seriously upset when the telephone turned an irresponsive ear to him.
+Like the straightforward gentleman he was, he accepted at once my
+assurance that Ranga had not entered the house again, and took no hand
+in Rawdon's wild scrimmages, which carried him from cellar to garret
+with no other result than the brushing of a bit more of the bloom off
+"Honeymoon Bungalow" with the soles of his hobnailed boots. Madder than
+ever after his vain search, he surlily refused my invitation to remain
+for a cup of the coffee that his Chink friend of the night before was
+already preparing in the kitchen, and slogged off down the road,
+followed by three draggled hounds and two cursing helpers. I was a good
+deal cheered by the thought that it was unlikely that any of them would
+be getting through to town, without swimming, for another twelve hours
+at least.
+
+Before he left Rawdon turned over to the Chief the little piece of red
+rag he had been using to put the dogs on the scent with. It was at this
+time that Harpool told me of "Squid" Saunders' suggestion, and of the
+visit to the schooner in search of a clue. I did not tell him that I
+recognized the rag as one which Ranga had used to wrap his little Malay
+flute in, and that it had undoubtedly been left there the morning the
+big fellow helped carry Hartley Allen to the quarantine launch. It was
+interesting, however, to know that Ranga was absolutely guiltless of the
+outrage to which he had confessed. I thought I could just conceive how a
+well-guarded passion for the girl might have prompted that chivalrous
+attempt to shield her from suspicion; but why had Rona herself committed
+the ghastly crime?--and how? It was many months before I was to have an
+answer to those questions, and they came from the lips of the last
+person from whom I could have expected them.
+
+Direct and straightforward as ever, Harpool was visibly impressed by my
+suggestion that Ranga had probably remained hidden near the fall until
+the pursuit had passed, and after returning to the bungalow and finding
+it dark, had retraced his steps and adopted the desperate expedient of
+trying to escape the dogs by riding down the flume. That reminded him
+that they had found the gate of the intake closed when they first
+reached it, and that it had occurred to him at the time that the
+fugitive might have done this so that he could walk down the bottom of
+the flume without risk of being carried away by the water. This would
+account for the patch of scent the hounds found at that point. The Chief
+said that he was for pushing along the path by the flume, but that
+Rawdon scouted his theory, insisting that their man had jumped back into
+the water and gone on wading downstream. The hound-master had carried
+his point, but, to be on the safe side, they had ratcheted up the gate
+to its full aperture and turned a stream down the flume heavy enough, he
+was afraid, almost to carry the sugar mill into the sea. And that
+reminded me (though, obviously, I could not speak of it) that I had not
+heard the roar of the mill's machinery when I paused at the brow of the
+cliff. There was no doubt it was hung up for some reason. Was it
+possible that Ranga had made his escape after coasting right down into
+the crushing gear? But of course not. He would never have been able to
+get away unpursued, even if he had survived.
+
+I welcomed for two reasons Harpool's suggestion that we ride down the
+flume and investigate as soon as breakfast was over. It would keep him
+away from town until the _Mambare_ had sailed for one thing, and, for
+another, it would give me a chance to fathom the mystery that lay at the
+end of that trail of blood leading down into the rift in the cliff. It
+seemed probable to me that both Rona and Ranga, after the former had
+overtaken him--probably at the foot of the fall--had started down the
+flume on foot. Whether there would be any indications of what had
+befallen when the water overtook them remained to be seen.
+
+The gate was still wide open when we rode along beside the intake, but
+halfway down to the coast we met a man from the mill who said that he
+was going up to shut the flow off so that a break near the lower end
+could be repaired. The wires were down from the storm, he said, making
+it impossible to 'phone directions to the plantation office. The break
+was a bit of a mystery, he added. Flume opened right out. There were
+indications that some large animal--perhaps a bullock--had been carried
+down--probably washed in at the upper end while the stream was at flood.
+Funny part of it was, though, that there was no trace to be found of the
+bullock below the break. Must have been washed right on into the sea.
+
+Harpool pushed on eagerly after hearing that significant piece of news,
+and we reached the head of the first steep pitch at the top of the cliff
+some minutes before the water had ceased to flow. As I did not care to
+have the Chief discover the trail of blood leading down to the sea for a
+while yet, I proposed that we tie our horses here and walk down the top
+of the flume on a narrow board that evidently had been placed there for
+the use of workmen when repairs were necessary. It proved ticklish
+going--both on account of the incline and the elevation,--but nothing to
+trouble seriously a man with a sure foot and a steady head. Harpool, who
+was up first, led the way, I following closely.
+
+If the power of the flying bolt of water in the bottom of the flume had
+been impressive on the occasion of my first visit, it was a vast deal
+more so now, both on account of the greatly increased volume of flow and
+because of my certain knowledge that a human being--perhaps two of
+them--had gone down that chute, where I had been assured that a team of
+bullocks could not hold a man--and survived.
+
+The foot-wide board on which we were walking was nailed to the left side
+of the flume. The top of the right side was a rough line of unplaned
+two-inch pine planks. Harpool had only taken a step or two when he
+brought up short with an exclamation of surprise and horror. "Look at
+that top board on the other side!" he shouted; "raw, red meat all the
+way from here right out of sight round the bend at the bottom!"
+
+I looked, shuddered, shuffled my feet uncertainly, and brought my
+staring eyes back to the precarious footing. "Push on!" I implored
+quaveringly; "my head's beginning to swim as it is."
+
+The roar of violently falling water came to my ears as we rounded the
+bend at the lower end of the steep incline, and just ahead was the
+break. The whole right or seaward side of the flume had opened out and
+the flood was pouring to the rocks below in a spreading forty-feet-high
+cataract. The ghastly smear along the top ran on unbroken, right out to
+the end of a loose plank, which was kicking spasmodically under the
+impulse of the released stream of water shooting under it. The Chief,
+pointing to a ragged fragment of bloody cuticle, wedged in a joint of
+the line of boards on which we were standing, delivered himself of what
+I believe was his only approximately correct diagnosis of any feature of
+the whole affair.
+
+"The fact that piece of skin and toe-nail were torn off on this side of
+the flume directly opposite the bulge," he said, "would seem to indicate
+that the brake our man made of his right arm flung over the top plank of
+the other side must have finally brought him to a stop here. Then he
+must have doubled up crosswise of the flume, with his feet against the
+place where that skin is torn off and his back against the end of that
+plank that is sprung loose. When he straightened out that great rack of
+bone and muscle of his something had to give way, and it seems to have
+been the flume. Probably the force of the water, where his body
+deflected it against the side, was of some help; but it must have come
+jolly near to staving in his ribs where it drove into him at right
+angles."
+
+"Perhaps it did," I said. "We can't tell till we find him." I was not
+anxious to hurry up the search by any means; but I felt that it would be
+better to move on to a place where I could grow dizzy without the risk
+of plunging forty feet onto a pile of broken rocks. The Chief, with
+ready consideration, hastened forward, and my faintness passed quickly
+when I felt the solid floor of the crushing level of the mill beneath my
+feet.
+
+It appeared that they had knocked off early the previous evening for
+want of cane. At the time, the superintendent said, he thought the flume
+had been carried away by flood water. He had only evolved the bullock
+theory when he went out at daylight and found the blood and meat smeared
+along the planks. The bullock must have got wedged in finally, he
+thought, and the water had piled up behind it and sprung out the side.
+They had not found the carcass yet, but, as there was a very sharp slope
+down to an in-reaching neck of the cove, it was not impossible that the
+rush of water had rolled it right on into the sea. Neither Harpool nor
+myself thought it worth while to ask him if he had found any bullock's
+hair among the "meat."
+
+Going down through the silent mill to reach a lower level before
+doubling back to the foot of the flume, a weird sort of sputtery peeping
+caught my ear while we were traversing the boiling-room. Something
+vaguely familiar in the sound caused me to trace it to its source behind
+one of the big vats. The _virtuoso_ proved to be a lanky Australian
+sugar-boiler, whiling away the idle hour blowing across the holes in a
+queer little bamboo flute. One of the blacks had found it in the last
+run of the _bagasse_--the crushed cane--a while ago, he explained.
+Someone must have dropped it in the flume. Funny thing that it had been
+so slightly crushed in coming through the rollers. He gave it to me
+readily when I told him that I was a collector of primitive musical
+instruments. Said he had a much better one--made in Germany and all
+bound with brass--in his home in Maryborough. I took it on the off
+chance that I might some day be able to give it back to Ranga. I knew
+how greatly he was attached to it, and, since flutes like that were only
+made in one little pile-built village on the coast of Ambon, how hard a
+time he would have to replace it.
+
+I played up the superintendent's "washed-into-the-sea" theory for the
+Chief's benefit as long as I could, but finally he circled round and hit
+the double trail of footprints that led down to the end of the old pier.
+The idea that Ranga had ridden the flume alone was so firmly rooted in
+his mind however, that he agreed at once with my suggestion that the
+smaller prints must have been made by an idle boy from the hung-up mill,
+who had perhaps trailed the blood on his own account, in the hope of
+getting the bullock meat. As I myself had made a point of keeping on the
+grass to the side of the path, my trail of the night was not discovered.
+
+"The poor devil must have thrown himself over here and been finished by
+the sharks and 'gators," Harpool shouted up to me from where, at the
+foot of the steps of the old pier, he stood beside the black-filmed pool
+that had drained from Ranga's wounds as he steadied himself for a few
+moments before lurching over to the bow of the launch. The Chief also
+said something more about coming back with a boat next day and searching
+the beach for anything that might remain. I didn't follow him very
+closely, for, just at that moment, a trim clipper bow slid out past the
+end of the southern point. Knowing a certain old brass-cylindered
+spy-glass would be training landward from the bridge that followed, I
+opened and closed my arms swiftly in a surreptitious wave of farewell.
+Good old "Choppy" must have been standing very close to the
+whistle-cord, for his reply came instantly. The wind carried the toots
+that must have sprung from the heart of two woolly steam-puffs in the
+opposite direction, but I caught the message just the same. "All's
+well!" was what old "Choppy" signalled in answer to my wave. His
+"puff-puff" talk was a deal easier to understand than his English.
+
+I was no longer in Australia when the _Mambare_ returned from her maiden
+voyage to Singapore, so her skipper's report came to me in Paris by
+letter. He had put both of my friends ashore in Macassar, he said, safe,
+sound and comfortably heeled for "siller." He had become much attached
+to both of them in the course of the voyage, and couldn't thank me
+enough for putting him in the way of giving them a bit of a lift. He
+trusted I wouldn't fail to command him whenever another opportunity of
+the kind presented itself.
+
+The night that I sent Rona and Ranga off from the pier of the old sugar
+mill in the _Mambare's_ launch marked the beginning of one of the
+strangest and most picturesque friendships the Islands ever knew;
+picturesque in the striking background the strongest and most
+terribly-scarred man in the South Pacific made for the hauntingly
+appealing beauty of the most interesting woman, and strange--more than
+passing strange--in that there was none who could say that their
+relations were ever other than those of mistress and servant.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVIII
+
+                            THE MASTERPIECE
+
+
+The third day after the _Mambare_ sailed found me southbound for
+Sydney, with Paris as my ultimate objective. The thought that a
+striking--possibly a great--picture might be painted about the face I
+had already done came to me the first time I threw back the veiling rug
+and encountered poor Allen's terror-haunted eyes staring back into my
+own. In deciding to finish the work in Paris I missed whatever chance I
+might have had of doing something really worth while. That I did finally
+complete a picture that was striking, arresting--something to set the
+tongues of the art world wagging for many a day--was due to the effort I
+had already made--The Face.
+
+With small chance of being able to do anything for Hartley Allen--at
+that time believed to be permanently insane,--there was no reason for my
+remaining longer in Townsville. As nothing that the good Chief of Police
+had learned--or ever did learn, so far as I know--was calculated to
+connect me with his failure to run Ranga to earth, he, naturally made no
+objection to my leaving. The whole affair was a complete mystery to him.
+The disappearance of Rona was rated only as a minor mystery. The amusing
+part of it was that it never occurred to the dear man to connect the
+two. The last thing that I fixed my glass upon as my southbound boat
+steamed out of the harbour was a confused mass of wreckage, blurring
+darkly against the mangroves a few miles north of the town. It was all
+that the late storm had left of the grounded labour schooner, _Cora
+Andrews_.
+
+Missing the P. & O. boat by twenty-four hours at Melbourne--too late to
+overtake it by train to Adelaide,--I found the next sailing was a
+_Messageries Maritime_ steamer. Rather than wait a week for the next
+Orient liner, I booked for the French boat. This was all against my
+better judgment, especially in the light of the fact that I had work
+ahead. The one most effective influence I had known in keeping my use of
+absinthe at a point where it was not entirely beyond my control was the
+scathing if unspoken contempt of men of my own race for another of that
+race addicted to the insidious Latin habit. The nearest thing to a clean
+break-away I had ever made up to this time came after a stony-faced
+Cockney steward on a transatlantic Cunarder, who had put my
+whisky-drunken cabin-mate to bed one night as a matter of course,
+slammed the door with a snort when he surprised me pouring absinthe into
+cracked ice the following afternoon. In France, in French colonies, on
+French steamers--wherever the tri-colour flapped, in short--that
+restraining contempt was non-existent. There one found palliation,
+indulgence, even encouragement. That was the reason I had always become
+so abject a slave of the "Green Lady" during my sojourns in Paris, in
+Algiers, in Saigon, in Noumea. With no one to remind me of my shame, I
+forgot it, sinking ever lower and lower the while. This time, it had
+been my plan so to occupy myself with work on my picture in Paris that I
+should be able to keep my absinthe appetite just about where I had
+managed to hold it during the last six months in Kai and Australia. It
+is quite possible I might have kept to this program had I caught the P.
+& O. from Melbourne, or had the sense to wait for another British boat.
+As it was, five weeks of _dolce far niente_ were too much for me. By the
+time we reached Suez, I was seeing so green that the desert banks of the
+Canal looked like verdant lawns to me, and at Marseilles they took me
+straight from the ship to the hospital, pretty well all in mentally and
+physically. As my case presented some interesting complications of
+malaria and tropical anaemia, the doctors took a good deal of interest
+in it. Under the circumstances, I was dead lucky to get out of their
+hands at the end of a month.
+
+Thoroughly disgusted with the world in general and myself in particular
+on the day I was discharged from the hospital, it was a toss-up for a
+few hours as to whether I should jump out for the Islands by the first
+boat, or push on to Paris. That I finally plumped for the latter was due
+more to the fact that there was no east-bound sailing for a couple of
+days, than to any faith that remained in my ability to get on with the
+picture. Considering all this, it seems to me that the effort I finally
+did pull myself together for was fairly creditable in its results.
+
+It was The Face itself--after I had unpacked and set up the canvas in a
+studio that a former friend kindly placed at my disposal--that was
+responsible for finally jolting me into action. Even at the end of ten
+weeks, Hartley Allen's tortured features seemed as real to me as on the
+night I had finished transferring them from my burning brain to the
+canvas. It struck me then--as it seemed to strike the public later--as
+the nearest thing to flesh and blood ever flicked off the tip of an
+artist's brush; and I felt that I had only to daub in some kind of an
+_ensemble_ around it to have a work that would at least give Parisian
+art circles something to talk about for a while.
+
+It seemed to me that the most effective thing to do would be to make
+Allen, lashed to the schooner's wheel, the central and dominating figure
+on the canvas, and to have the other figures the creatures of his
+imagination--the phantoms conjured up by his reeling brain. These would
+include Bell, Rona, Ranga and a background of plague-stricken niggers.
+It was not to be--as we had planned the "Black-birder"--an attempt to
+portray some incident of the voyage. The "phantoms" were to be done in
+greys and blues, filmy and indistinct, to differentiate them from the
+solider flesh of the maniac tied to the wheel. It was not an uneffective
+conception, had I been up to carrying it out--which I wasn't.
+
+By a remarkable coincidence, as I have already mentioned, The Face was
+in exactly the right place to fit into the _ensemble_ I had planned.
+This was a good omen and I derived no little encouragement from it.
+Fearful of the effect that terror-stricken gaze might have upon my
+models, I stuck an opaque square of paper over the distorted features,
+with the intention of leaving it there until the rest of the picture was
+finished. This was a wise precaution, as the sequel proved.
+
+The model whom I chanced to secure to pose for Allen's figure was an
+especially fortunate choice. He had recently finished spending six or
+eight hours a day lashed to a hollow canvas cross in connection with a
+mural decoration at some cathedral--Sacre Coeur, I believe it was,--so
+he stood up rather well under the strain being triced to the property
+steering-gear I had contrived to borrow from the _Folies-Bergere_, where
+the "marine" _revue_ in which it had figured was just over. Considering
+the fact that I had never done anything but seascapes and was notably
+weak in anatomy, my work on this figure was far from being as bad as
+might have been expected. It was not seriously out of drawing, and, even
+with The Face covered up, one was conscious of an unmistakable
+suggestion of agony in the tensely-strained limbs and back-drawn torso.
+From the artistic side, I would undoubtedly have done better to have
+trimmed down my canvas and limited the picture to this single figure.
+This, however, never occurred to me until a long time afterwards. At the
+moment, my mind was quite incapable of running away from the track on
+which I had started it.
+
+Although I knew that one of the things that must have been in
+Hartley Allen's mind was Bell's face, as he had described it to
+me--pain-twisted, with the lower lip bitten clean through, and a bar of
+light from the cracked binnacle slashing across it,--I could not bring
+myself to attempt to dramatize the sufferings of my friend. (Indeed,
+even at that time I had a guilty feeling that I was not doing the decent
+thing in using that of Allen in a picture to be exhibited to the
+public.) All that I did in Bell's case, therefore, was a back view of a
+huddled figure, sitting on the rail of the cockpit, with a half-empty
+whisky bottle rolling on the deck behind. It was not destined to draw
+much attention or comment one way or the other, for which I was duly
+thankful.
+
+Ranga, as a consequence of being unable to find a model that would do
+him justice, I finally omitted. Rona came near to elimination for a
+similar reason, but in her case fortune, in the end, was more kind. It
+may be remembered that there was a so-called Hindu dancer leading the
+Oriental ballets at the _Comique_ about this time. She was really an
+Eurasian half-caste--the daughter of a British "Tommy" and a Mahratta
+girl, born in Poona. With little of Rona's beauty of face and
+winsomeness of manner, she was still possessed of the same flaming
+temperament and a figure that might have been poured from the same
+mould. It was the lithe, sinewy, serpentine shape of her that caught my
+eye when I chanced to drop in at the _Comique_ for a matinee of
+_Marouf_, and (as she was still a few strokes short of the crest of the
+wave of popularity on which she rode for the next season or two), I had
+little difficulty in persuading her to give me a few sittings. She
+insisted she was doing it for art's sake, but it was really vanity that
+brought her into line. Also, as transpired shortly, she had a very sharp
+weather eye for the main chance. In any event, the picture proved both
+her immediate making and her ultimate undoing. The advertising she got
+out of the fact that her living, breathing likeness had been painted
+into the most talked-about picture at the spring _Salon_ of the _Societe
+Nationale des Beaux-Arts_ doubled and trebled her salary several times
+in the course of the next year. But it was also a reproduction of that
+same picture in a Vienna art journal that was directly responsible for
+luring to Paris the young Serbian ex-prince who chopped the girl to
+pieces with a curved Arabian scimitar--a part of her dancing toggery--as
+she was dressing to go on at a gala night of _Aida_.
+
+It had been my original intention to paint Rona issuing from the
+companionway, just as Allen had seen her rush out on the morning Bell
+died. This, however, was far from meeting with the approval of Keeora
+(that was what she called herself at the time; it was only in her
+hey-day that she was known as Kismeta), who insisted upon breaking in
+full length or not at all. I was so sodden with absinthe by this time,
+so sick of the whole job, so anxious to get quit of it for good, that I
+raised no objections. The flighty thing proposed a sort of near-aerial
+posture on the deck-house that was something like a cross between the
+wing-footed Mercury and one of Puck's getaways in Midsummer Night's
+Dream. Rather than lose the girl outright, I let her have her own way.
+Steadied by two or three convenient guy-wires and puffing contentedly at
+one of my hemp-doped cigarettes, she held her painful pose with a
+fortitude truly Oriental. I can see yet the queer little heart-shaped
+pucker that dented the muscle-knotted calf of her leg when she swung up
+to the tips of her toes.
+
+I fancy it must have been a certain appeal the audacious minx made to my
+physical senses that prodded on my flagging energies. Everything that
+was left in me I devoted to making her absurd conception effective on
+its own account. To make it so as an integral part of the picture was,
+of course, out of the question. It is still a matter of a good deal of
+wonder to me that I succeeded as well as I did. The pirouetting figure
+on the _Cora's_ deck-house might just as well have symbolized _Peter
+Pan_, or _The Spirit of Spring_, as _Rona Rampant_; but the fact
+remained that it was exceedingly pleasing to the eye. In this connection
+I thought an American tourist--from somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon
+Line by his accent--expressed himself rather well. I overheard the
+remark on my first and only visit to the _Salon_. "If that little filly
+doan leave off kickin' up so neah them buck niggahs," he drawled,
+"things ah suah fixin' fo' a lynchin' pa'ty. By cracky, if she doan look
+good enuf to eat!"
+
+It was "them big buck niggahs" that were responsible for bringing my
+labours to a sudden end. I had managed to round up a half-dozen hulking
+Senegambians from the docks at Havre to pose for my plague-stricken
+Solomon Islanders, and for the first two or three days things went very
+well. I was striving for a sort of Dore-esque effect, by painting a
+tangled bunch of blacks writhing in the half-light of the shadowed waist
+of the schooner. The lazy brutes found lolling round on the studio floor
+a deal more congenial work than humping cotton bales, and I was getting
+on very encouragingly considering my wretched condition, when one of the
+prying rascals, taking advantage of a moment when my back was turned,
+turned down a corner of the patch that hid the face of the man lashed to
+the wheel. What damage was wrought was inflicted on such flimsy
+furniture as chanced to be in a direct line of flight from the "models'
+throne" to the door. Fortunately, the canvas was well to one side. The
+Senegalese, it seems, have a raw, red terror of the "Evil Eye."
+
+That little episode brought to an end my work with models. I simply
+blocked in my plague-stricken blacks in a rough sort of way and let it
+go at that. The effect was hardly as crude as one would think. The
+remark of the Southern gentleman I have quoted proved that a man not
+unfamiliar with niggers could at least distinguish of what the tangle in
+the waist was intended to be made up.
+
+I have definite recollection of only one further occasion on which I
+tried to work. The interval in which I had anything approximating
+command of my normal faculties had dwindled to a half-hour or so in the
+afternoon, and I quickly found that I was utterly unable to concentrate
+my mind sufficiently for connected effort even then. On the occasion I
+have mentioned, I knocked off dead after discovering that I was trying
+to decorate Keeora's brow with the wreath of maiden's hair fern that had
+crowned the aviating "Green Lady" in her flight of the night before. I
+chucked in my hand complete after that, and had the whole monkey-show
+packed off to the Selection Committee. As might have been expected, the
+picture nearly caused a riot in that temperamental bunch of "pickers,"
+but, in the end, The Face won the day with them, just as it did with the
+public.
+
+Of the furore created by "_Hell's Hatches_" in the _Salon_ it will
+hardly be necessary for me to write. Most of the excitement it stirred
+up was traceable to the haunting horror of the face of the wretch tied
+to the wheel; the rest was due to its name, which only suggested itself
+to me at the last moment. Perhaps the fact that everyone was baffled
+from the outset in trying to discover the _motif_ of the bizarre thing
+also contributed to the impulse of the whirlpool of morbid curiosity
+with which it was engulfed. And who could blame them for failing to
+discover any connection between a tied-up maniac, a hunched-up drunkard,
+a kicking-up dancer and a bunch of tangled-up niggers? The avalanche of
+surmises would have been highly diverting had not my sense of humour
+already fallen a victim to the apathy that was rapidly settling upon my
+mind and body.
+
+My outstanding recollection of the whole affair is of a highly effective
+by-play staged by that keen little publicist, Keeora, who had become a
+bit piqued over the slowness of the Press to broadcast the identity of
+the lady dancing on the deck-house. Utterly indifferent, I had avoided
+the _Grand Palais_ not only on the opening day of the _Salon_, but also
+during the week that followed, when it was reported that the _Avenue
+Alexander III_ was at times blocked with the throngs striving to get
+within sight of the most intriguing picture shown in years. My telephone
+was disconnected; telegrams and letters by the stacks lay unopened; a
+pile of newspapers were unread. Growing more sullen and sodden day by
+day, I had eyes for nothing but the green bottle at my elbow and the
+constantly replenished glass of cracked ice by its side. All the rest of
+the world was one soft, verdant tunnel--nothing else. I had been
+drinking steadily for days, afraid to face the reaction that must
+inevitably follow the first break in the continuity of the flow of the
+life-saving trickle of green.
+
+In a way, I suppose, it is Keeora I have to thank for the fact that,
+when I finally left my room in the _Continental_, it was to be headed
+for the _Grand Palais_ instead of to _La Morgue_. I am quite convinced
+that nothing short of the violent eruption of hysteria that soulful lady
+brought off outside my door would have induced me to open it, and
+probably no one else in Paris could have been equal to just that kind of
+an outburst. In passionate French-Cockney, Keeora told how, after
+failing for days to reach me by 'phone and telegraph, she had at last
+come in person to bear me to the _Salon_ to share with her our common
+triumph. That didn't move me greatly, but when she swore that she was
+going to stay until she "jolly well croaked, G'bly'me," unless I let her
+in, something inside of my head snapped and I gave way. (I always was
+like that with hysterical women.) When I opened the door I discovered
+that she was dressed in some Mogul princess sort of a rigout, and
+accompanied by an Italian _Marchesa_ and two or three lesser satellites.
+Between them and my valet they got me dressed and down to a waiting
+carriage.
+
+To get away from the mob at the main entrance, they took me around to
+the _Avenue d'Antin_ side of the _Grand Palais_, where Keeora pointed
+out with glee that the _Salon_ of the _Societe des Artistes Francais_,
+which had opened a week or two previous to that of the _Beaux-Arts_
+outfit, was almost deserted. "_Et tout, mon cher Monseer W'itney, por
+raison de--de la grand success de 'Aykootillys don fur.'_"
+
+"And what might they be?" I asked dully, rather fancying some new sort
+of epidemic had broken out.
+
+"Madame means to say '_Ecoutilles d'Enfer_,'" began the _Marchesa_
+politely; "eet--eet ees--"
+
+"Eat your bloomin' 'at!" cut in the lady impatiently, indignant that
+anyone could be so stupid as to have her Parisian interpreted to him.
+"Don't you twig me, old cock? That's wot them French Jo'nnys calls
+'Ell's 'Atches."
+
+The picture was extremely well hung, both for position and light; though
+whether this had come about as a consequence of a reshuffle after it had
+turned out to be the main drawing card, I did not learn. There was a
+roped-off area in front of it, and through this a number of perspiring
+attendants were feeding the crowd, working hard with tongue and hand to
+keep the chattering line in motion. Keeora called my attention to a
+woman who had fainted and was being carried out on a stretcher. "Bowls
+'em over just like that right along," she giggled. "Six of 'em squealed
+and keeled back just w'ile I was 'angin' on 'ere yustidy. But it ain't
+_me_ wot gets 'em," she hastened to explain; "it's that crazy bloke at
+the w'eel, wiv 'is bloomin' eyes borin' right through your chest an'
+raspin' up an' down your spine. Don't see wot you wanted to put _'im_ in
+for any'ow."
+
+At a word from Keeora's sedulous satellites, the attendants opened up a
+line through the mob and cleared a space in front of the picture. Then,
+assuring herself with a critically comprehensive glance that the setting
+was all correct, she rushed in, threw her arms around my neck, kissed me
+smackingly on both cheeks, French-fashion, and began declaiming in her
+best Parisio-Whitechapel how I had earned her undying gratitude and
+affection (_mon amours eternel_) in making her the central figure in the
+greatest work of art of modern times. It was all extremely well
+done--from Keeora's standpoint, that is. She had a solid phalanx of
+reporters massed in the background, as a consequence of which, after the
+next morning, there was no chance for anyone to remain longer in
+ignorance of the fact that the nymph hot-footing around the coamings of
+"Hell's Hatches" was Keeora of the _Comique_. The following Saturday the
+management came round voluntarily to her hotel with a new contract worth
+several thousand francs a week to their rising _danseuse orientale_.
+
+For myself, groggy in head and knees as I was, the experience was rather
+trying. Breaking away from her stranglehold at the first opportunity, I
+told Keeora to keep her "eternel amours" for those who wanted them, and
+bolted. There was some pretence at pursuit, but, with the real magnet
+drawing in the other direction, I finally managed to elbow clear.
+Hailing a cab in the _Champs-Elysees_, I returned to my hotel.
+
+But the interruption, as I have said, was a fortunate one. It checked my
+downward slide dangerously near the point where a crash was due. I was
+far from being out of the woods yet, but the interval of comparative
+lucidity had given me enough courage to try to pull up. Unloading all
+the firearms I had about my suite and giving them to my man, I told him
+to go away for the night and not to return until noon of the following
+day. Then, as restrainedly as I could, I drank during the first three or
+four hours of the evening, before allowing myself to go to sleep. The
+crisis--the dread reaction I had feared to face--I knew would come on
+awakening in the morning. It arrived on schedule--two hours of teetering
+on the edge of hell and cursing myself for putting the guns beyond my
+reach. Even with the _absintheteur's notorious_ dread of cold steel, I
+fingered Hartley Allen's Portuguese throwing-knife a long time before
+mustering up the courage to drop it out of the street window. That gave
+me a new idea, and I held lengthy debate with myself about following the
+knife to the pavement. If I had been on the fourth floor instead of the
+second, I might have tried it. As it was, fifteen feet to a glass
+marquee didn't look good enough. But at last I won through--just. It was
+a sorry looking figure that shivered back at me from the mirror after I
+had got up my nerve to ring for a pot of black coffee at seven; but I
+was off the toboggan, at any rate, with my face set unflinchingly toward
+the one place in the world where I felt there was at least a fighting
+chance for me to pull up again. I had arrived at the end of the day of
+which I had dreamed so long--"My Day," I had called it. Paris had come
+fawning to my feet--and brought me Dead Sea Fruit. I was going back to
+work out my own salvation in the Islands.
+
+I had a rather trying time of it, getting packed up and away on such
+short notice; but I simply did what I could and let the rest go. Putting
+Paris behind me was the thing. It took all that was in me to do it, but
+I caught the Brindisi Express from the P.L.M. station that night.
+
+My last act before leaving the hotel was to sign a paper brought there
+by a well-known art dealer, with whom I had talked by 'phone earlier in
+the day. It authorized him to sell to the highest bidder a painting in
+oil known by the name of "Hell's Hatches," delivery to be made
+immediately after the closing of the spring _Salon_ of the _Societe
+Nationale des Beaux-Arts_. It also provided that he should receive a
+liberal commission for his services. It must have been something like a
+month later that he collected ten per cent. on three hundred thousand
+_francs_ less about five hundred paid some second-rate artist for
+executing a slight alteration in one of the figures. It was a petty
+Sultan from Morocco (high card with Keeora at the moment) to whom the
+picture was knocked down after a spirited run of bidding with an Irish
+distiller and a Chicago soap-maker. The buyer's only condition was that
+the man lashed to the wheel should be changed to a _burnoused_ Arab.
+That would tend to give the picture an atmosphere more in keeping with
+his desert palace, he said; also, he wanted the _efrangi's_ face covered
+up. The eyes made him jumpy.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIX
+
+                               AFTER ALL
+
+
+I had not planned by what route I should go to the South Seas, and it
+was only because an Orient-Pacific liner chanced to be the most
+convenient connection at Brindisi that I went by Australia instead of by
+India and Singapore. I was rather glad, on the whole, that I was going
+to have an opportunity to learn something at first-hand of Hartley
+Allen--or, Sir Hartley, as he had become since I left Australia. That
+much I had been able to gather from an item I had read in _The Times_
+shortly after my arrival in Paris. This stated that Sir James Allen,
+Bart., Agent in London for New South Wales, had just died of pneumonia.
+Being without male issue, it was understood that the title would pass to
+his younger brother, formerly a well-known racing man, and more recently
+in the public eye through his heroic action in navigating a labour
+schooner full of plague-stricken blacks through the Great Barrier Reef
+to Queensland.
+
+Nothing was said in the local item of the outrage aboard the _Cora
+Andrews_, but the day following a dispatch from Sydney stated that Sir
+Hartley Allen was recovering his health and strength at a sanitarium in
+the interior, from which, however, it was not expected that he would be
+in a condition to be discharged for several months. The shock to his
+nervous system from the mysterious attack upon him in Townsville three
+months previously had been so great that only time could obliterate the
+traces of it. He had not yet been allowed to see any of his old friends,
+but the correspondent affirmed on good authority that Sir Hartley's
+reason, so long despaired of, had been fully regained.
+
+From the fact that the attack was still spoken of as "mysterious," I
+took it that Allen, for some reason of his own, had refrained from
+revealing the identity of the person who had left him to die lashed to
+the wheel of the _Cora_. What that reason might be, was one of the
+things I hoped to learn when I should see him in Australia.
+
+Hartley Allen was still in a sanitarium in the Blue Mountains, I learned
+on my arrival in Sydney, but of late there had been little news of him.
+He was believed to be getting stronger, slowly but surely, though no
+hope was held out that he would appear in the saddle again for at least
+another season. It was unlikely that I would be permitted to see him,
+but there would be no harm in trying. I should, of course, communicate
+with his physicians, not with Allen himself.
+
+By a lucky chance, in wiring the head of the institution where Allen was
+under treatment, I stated that I was a former friend of his from the
+Islands. A reply arrived the same day, telling me to come on at my
+earliest convenience. The eminent nerve specialist in charge of the case
+drove down to meet me at the train. It was very fortunate indeed, he
+said, that I had mentioned in my telegram that I had known Sir Hartley
+during his residence in Melanesia. He had failed, very stupidly, to
+recognize my name as that of the famous artist who was about to paint
+Sir Hartley's picture when the attack upon him occurred. As a
+consequence, he was about to wire a refusal to my application, when he
+recalled that news from the Islands was the one thing in which his
+patient had shown any great interest. Accordingly, he had asked Sir
+Hartley himself if he cared to see a certain Roger Whitney, lately
+arrived in Sydney. The eager interest manifested by his patient was the
+most encouraging symptom the latter had shown since his mind had
+cleared. If I would carefully refrain from introducing any subject
+calculated to excite Sir Hartley nervously, he was confident that my
+visit would be productive of nothing but good. It was even possible,
+should it prove convenient to me, that he would want me to remain for
+several days. Sir Hartley was quite sound in brain and body. What he
+needed was increased vigour of both, and to this end he would have to
+develop a greater interest in living than he had yet shown. It was just
+possible there was something on his mind....
+
+After leaving my coat and bag in the reception-room, the doctor led me
+out across a bright solarium. We would find Sir Hartley out of doors, he
+said, probably playing polo. He seemed to hate the very thought of
+having a roof over him, even to sleep under. It was a strange sight that
+met my eyes as we came round the corner of the veranda. In the shade of
+a grove of blue-gums and stringy-barks a wooden horse had been erected,
+saddled with a light pigskin, and provided with snaffle and curb reins
+running back from the angling bit of board that served as "head."
+Astride the saddle, in the famous short-stirruped "Slant" Allen seat,
+booted, spurred, and in immaculate whites, slashing smartly at
+grass-stained and dented bamboo-root balls that were alternately tossed
+in and chivied by a pair of bare-footed youngsters, was a familiar
+figure. Save for the white hair (which I had already seen) and the
+absence of the former coat of tan, he did not, from a distance, appear
+greatly changed. It was not until his eyes met mine at close range that
+I was conscious of the weary listlessness which, like a bed of ashes,
+smothered the coals of his old fire.
+
+Allen had just poked away the first of two successively thrown balls in
+a sweet-running dribble, and sliced off the other in a sharp-angling
+"belly cross," when he raised his eyes and caught sight of the doctor
+and me coming down the steps. Swinging a bit uncertainly out of the
+saddle, he came toddling in a swaying childlike trot across the grass.
+His grip was firmer than I had expected, and the thought flashed through
+my mind that this was the very first time I had ever shaken hands with
+him.
+
+"I've been wondering when you were going to turn up, Whitney," he
+exclaimed eagerly. "There's something I've been waiting to talk to you
+about." He spoke in generalities while the doctor lingered, saying that
+he had given up his old idea of returning to the Islands, and that,
+instead, he was hoping to get away before long to a back-blocks station
+he owned and ride the boundaries for a year or two. But when the
+specialist, evidently assured that his experiment was getting under way
+properly, quietly excused himself, Allen led me over to the wooden horse
+and launched at once into a subject which had doubtless occupied his
+mind for many days. From ancient habit he leaned, as he spoke, now on
+the hollow pigskin of his "pony," now on the flexible Malacca handle of
+his polo mallet.
+
+"You're the only man in the world I can talk to about this now,
+Whitney," he said with a queer new quaver of weakness in his voice. "I
+suppose that's because you're the only person I ever talked to about
+it--before. I take it, Whitney, that you had no great difficulty in
+making up your mind as to who was responsible for--for my night of
+contemplation on the _Cora_?"
+
+"Well," I began evasively, "I had such grave doubts about Ranga's guilt
+that I went to some little trouble to get him away. Mostly old 'Choppy'
+Tancred's work, though."
+
+"Good old 'Choppy'!" said Allen with an appreciative grin; "on hand at
+the right time as usual." Then, with serious interest: "But the
+girl--how did she manage to get clear?"
+
+"Just turned up and helped herself to a place in the launch I was
+sending Ranga off in," I replied, a bit worried at my failure to lead
+the conversation away from subjects "calculated to excite Sir Hartley
+nervously."
+
+"And you were also convinced of _her_ innocence, I suppose," he said,
+eyeing me with a strange smile across the leather-bound handle of his
+mallet.
+
+"On the contrary," I answered; "I knew that she was guilty. I had taken
+your throwing-knife away from her the same night. I knew that Ranga was
+quite innocent, even though the police, through a silly ball-up, tracked
+him down with their dogs."
+
+"Then why did you let the girl go?" he pressed.
+
+"Because I thought I knew Rona well enough," I replied evenly, "to feel
+sure that she wouldn't have done--what she did, unless she was convinced
+in her own mind that she had a good reason for it." It was a stiff jolt
+for a sick man, that; yet, for the life of me, I couldn't have made an
+evasive answer.
+
+But there was a smile of untold relief on Allen's face as he leaned over
+and laid his hand on my arm. "You were right, Whitney," he said in a
+voice that trembled with the depth of its fervour. "You were right. She
+_did_ have good reason. I ought to have seen it all along."
+
+"I don't quite understand," I said, greatly puzzled. "Do you mean that
+all you told me about your--your having nothing to do with Bell's death
+was not true?"
+
+"Not at all," he replied, with unexpected vigour. "Everything that I
+told you that afternoon at the _Australia_ was true--according to my
+understanding of the moment, I mean. But later my understanding
+broadened a bit, you must know. A chap doesn't spend a night tied up
+alone with the spirits of three or four white men, and Gawd knows how
+many blacks, without coming to comprehend some things that have eluded
+him before. I didn't go all the way off my chump till well along toward
+morning, you see; and I was broadening my understanding all the time."
+
+"I was never able to make out," I remarked somewhat irrelevantly, "how
+the girl managed to get the best of you the way she did."
+
+"Oh, that," he said lightly, in a voice that indicated he rated it as a
+negligible incidental to the "broader understanding" that had come to
+him as a consequence. "Well, I suppose you have a right to know if you
+are interested in that phase of the affair. I simply got tired of
+holding out against the girl, that was all. Her relentlessness wore me
+down. It was not long after our return to Townsville that I realized
+that her picture stunt was only a blind. She counted on it to get me
+away to the schooner, where she could finish me off on the scene of--of
+my offence. I won't need to tell you that hit me jolly hard. Training
+out Yusuf and making a clean-up for Doc Oakes' mission with him helped
+while it lasted; but I gave up as soon as that was over and there was
+nothing to do but wait and brood. Since I knew she'd have her way in the
+end, I told myself that the sooner it was over the better. That was the
+reason I finally consented to go off to the schooner with her when she
+waylaid me on the north road, the day after I paid you my last visit.
+
+"She must have planned the whole thing in advance for the place at which
+she intercepted me was at the point where the road ran nearest to the
+wreck of the _Cora_. As it was low tide, we were able to walk on the
+sand to within fifty yards of the heeling hulk. Careless of consequences
+as I was, I readily enough consented to her suggestion that I wade the
+remainder of the way, carrying her in my arms. For the rest, it was more
+or less of repetition of her little coup at Kai. She pinched the knife
+from my belt while I was wading out with her, keeping it carefully out
+of sight while we were walking round the deck of the schooner. I missed
+it presently, but thought it had fallen from its sheath while I was
+clambering over the side. Leaning over to look for the knife in the
+water, I felt the point of it on my neck. Same old place--just over the
+jugular. Trick she learned from the Malays.
+
+"I told her to hurry up and get the job over. She coolly replied that
+this wasn't the place she had had in mind for it, and would I mind
+coming aft to the cockpit? Confident that she knew how to do the thing
+with decency and dispatch, and heartily glad to get life's fitful dream
+over anyhow, I went. Just like a lamb to the slaughter, Whitney. It
+sounds foolish, but I assure you that's just the way it happened. The
+idea was so fixed in my mind that a plain every-day throat-cutting was
+all she was figuring on, that I let her get three or four hitches of the
+log-line around my shoulders before it occurred to me that she might
+have a few refinements in pickle. I started to put up a fight at that,
+trying to force her to use the knife straightaway. Do you think she
+would do it? No fear. She wouldn't deviate from her set program by a
+hair. Rather than risk having the joint jolted into my jugular so that I
+would bleed to death quickly and painlessly, she dropped the knife and
+used both hands on the log-line. We had a hell of a tussle, Whitney, but
+she wore me down. Those three or four well-thrown hitches she had to
+start with were too much of a handicap.
+
+"When she finally had me bound fast, she sat down on the rail of the
+cockpit to recover her breath. I tried to argue with her, pointing out
+the certainty that I would be seen and rescued in the morning if she
+left me as I was; whereas, if she would cut my throat then and there, it
+would finish things for good and all. I also reminded her that dead men
+tell no tales; that she would be much less likely to get into trouble
+herself if there was no one to bear witness against her. (Fancy a man
+having to rack his brain for arguments like that, just to get his throat
+cut, Whitney.) The girl admitted the soundness of my contentions, but
+declared she was willing to run all the extra risk for the sake of
+cleaning up the job 'good an' propa.' (One of Bell's expressions, that,
+wasn't it?)
+
+"Then--I must have begun losing my nerve a bit, I think--I told her I
+had never yet been able to twig why she had a grudge against me at all;
+said I'd only done for Bell what I'd be jolly glad to have another man
+do for me under similar circumstances, and probably a lot more twaddle
+along the same line. She listened for a while, as though she rather
+enjoyed hearing me rattle on in that vein. Then she got up and
+disappeared down the half-open companionway. When she came back on deck
+she had an empty whisky bottle in her hand, probably one of a stack left
+in my cabin. This, with some effort on her part and much to my further
+discomfort, she wriggled under the lashings about my chest until she
+seemed satisfied it was held securely. Then, binding a filthy gag of
+oakum in my mouth, she stood off and looked me over critically. 'I
+the-enk you will twe-ig ver-ee much pu-retty soon, Mista "Slan',"' she
+finally chirruped with a knowing nod of her head. Without once looking
+back, she stepped to the side, jumped over, and waded ashore. I never
+saw her again--in the flesh, I mean. It took a deal of squirming to
+shake that bottle out. The satisfaction of hearing it break when it hit
+the deck was the only comforting thing that happened in the whole
+night."
+
+"And you say that you understand why she did it?--that you believe she
+was justified?" I exclaimed incredulously, shuddering at the horror of a
+cold-blooded cruelty that even Allen's deliberately matter-of-fact
+recital could not obscure.
+
+"Most assuredly," he replied with an enigmatic smile. "I'm just a bit
+surprised that you don't see it yourself, Whitney. It seems to me that a
+chap like you ought not to miss a point like that. But then, you haven't
+had a night alone on the _Cora Andrews_ to broaden your understanding
+like I have."
+
+"What was it?" I asked bluntly, completely mystified and not a little
+awed.
+
+"Just this," he answered, growing suddenly serious. "That bottle I
+shoved along to Bell the night he died had been partly emptied--by me,
+of course. Well, the first thought that entered the girl's head, when
+she came across it on the deck near his body, was that he had been
+drinking from it. In spite of all my assurances to the contrary, it
+seems that she was never able to rid her mind of that idea. That was--"
+
+"But couldn't she see _why_ you offered him the whisky?" I interrupted.
+"What if he did drink some of it? She must have known it was the one
+thing that would have saved his life."
+
+"Ah, that is just where you miss the point, Whitney," he cried. "And
+that was just where I always missed it until--she showed me the way to a
+broader understanding. Don't you see that Rona realized that keeping
+away from whisky, as he had sworn he would, had come to mean more to
+Bell than even a new lease on life? Well, she did. But, even so, one
+would hardly have expected her to fall in with the idea. And yet, don't
+her actions prove that she even did that? Whitney, I've never come
+across anything comparable to the straight physical passion of those two
+for each other. And, if anything, hers was the hotter flame of the two.
+There must have been something of the impetuousness of her rages in her
+loving,--for.... Well, the most maddening of all the thoughts I tried so
+long to stifle in Kai was the one that those frequent welts and
+abrasions appearing on Bell's neck and cheeks and arms were not from the
+bites of no-nos or mosquitoes. And yet, loving his body like that, she
+loved his soul enough more to be willing to give up the body that the
+soul might pass in peace. It was because she thought I had intervened to
+destroy that peace of soul, Whitney, that she--well, the effect of it
+was to pave the way to my broader understanding."
+
+
+                                THE END
+
+
+              WOODS & SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, LONDON, N. 1.
+
+
+
+
+                           Transcriber Notes:
+
+Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_.
+
+Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.
+
+Throughout the document, the [oe] ligature was replaced with "oe".
+
+Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of
+the speakers. Those words were retained as-is.
+
+Errors in punctuation and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected
+unless otherwise noted.
+
+On page 34, "dispayed" was replaced with "displayed".
+
+On page 67, "skin-kicking" was replaced with "shin-kicking".
+
+On page 74, an apostrophe was added in 'Slan'.
+
+On page 102, "Ulupua" was replaced with "Utupua".
+
+On page 159, a period was added after "he was going through".
+
+On page 176, "its" was replaced with "it's".
+
+On page 188, a quotation mark was added before "On the off chance".
+
+On page 203, "at the botton" was replaced with "at the bottom".
+
+On page 205, "twentyfive" was replaced with "twenty-five".
+
+On page 233, "back of the easel" was replaced with "back off the easel".
+
+On page 238, "in no may" was replaced with "in no way".
+
+On page 241, "ejaculted" was replaced with "ejaculated".
+
+On page 246, "Marbare" was replaced with "Mambare".
+
+On page 282, "firsthand" was replaced with "first-hand".
+
+On page 285, "listnessness" was replaced with "listlessness".
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Hell's Hatches, by Lewis Ransome Freeman
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