Island honor

Island Honor
by MURRAY LEINSTER
Author of “Sagebrush Slings the Bull,” “Grist,” etc.
A DREADFUL CHOICE WAS PUT UP TO THIS AGED RULER OF AN ISLAND PEOPLE; A CHOICE FEW MEN WOULD CARE TO FACE, AND UNDER THE TROPIC STARS A WHITE MAN OR SO HELPED HIM TO DECIDE—IN TRUE AMERICAN FASHION
Quite miraculously, there was an opening in the mangrove swamps and what looked like a river or harbor beyond. Such things are not to be expected when you have been very much bored by two days of unvaried contemplation of mangrove swamps on the one hand, and totally empty sea on the other. So we on the Shikar —most promising name for a devilish slow and unexciting tub—tacked in. There were three of us and two native boys and we thought we were being very daring and reckless, coasting down the China Sea in a fifty-footer.
The miracle continued. We did not ground on a bar. It was a river of sorts. A kite rose heavily from something unpleasant on a sand-bank and soared away. And then we saw a white man’s house with a flag floating from a flagpole before it, which was most miraculous of all. And that was where we found Vetter.
I don’t know what nationality he was, though this part of the world was French. He wasn’t that, I’m sure. We went ashore and met him and found that he considered himself lord of all creation, and wasn’t at all averse to converting us to his own belief. Technically, he was political agent for Kuramonga. None of us envied him the job. Neither did we feel called upon to console him with an extended visit. But the hunting looked promising and we dropped anchor for the night at least. And then when the soft tropic night had fallen we were too lazy to be polite and call on him.
“I want to kick him,” said Cary, puffing smoke at the stars. “I haven’t any reason, but I want to kick him. So for my manner’s sake, if you chaps go ashore tell him I’m dead or something and couldn’t come.”
There was a jungle off to the right somewhere and we could hear the night noises coming from it over the water. Little squeakings, and once a scream like a human being’s, which was probably a monkey, and once, very far away indeed, a snarl that would have made your blood run cold if it hadn’t been muted by the distance.