“George, for a sovereign!” I cried. And I began to run, the Marquis coming after as quickly as he could—which was quicker than you would think, if you had never seen him in action.
George’s shanty, when we reached it, was invisible, except for the roof. The rest had disappeared under a sort of human wave. At least twenty men, black, white, and yellow, were shoving and fighting in front of it, all apparently moved by one desire—to get inside. From within the store came the owner’s frantic yells, mingled with language that really was astonishing, even for a Greek. And the crashing and smashing and banging went on and on, getting louder.
Helping each other as two strong men can, the Marquis and I shoved somehow through the press—which, we now observed, was composed entirely of divers. This was Sunday, and the fleet, of course, did not work, so a number of white men and a few Papuans, Malays, and Japs, all employed on the luggers as a rule, were left free to spend the Sabbath as they liked. It seemed that this was what they liked; and it looked very much like burglary, battery, and murder.
“What’s the row, Bob?” I yelled through the noise to a diver whom I recognized. He had a tomahawk in his hand and was smashing the window-frame of the store, the window-panes having long since gone. Inside, I could see the Greek literally tearing his hair—the first time I had ever seen any one do it; up till then, I thought only people in books did so—and trying to get away from Big Carl, a huge Swede, who had got both arms around George and was holding on like the serpent in the statue whose name I can’t remember.
All the divers who could get into the store were inside, and they were very busy indeed, wrecking it with tomahawks. The counter was gone, the shelves were firewood, the curios and shells were smashed, and there were some indistinguishable fragments of metal on the floor, which seemed to arouse the special hatred of the invaders. Bob, too, while I was trying to make him hear, got away from me, and into the store; and immediately he began hacking away at the metal on the floor. It looked, what was left of it, rather like a diver’s corselet.
I wanted to know what it was all about, and as no one seemed disposed to stop long enough to tell me, I “cut out” by main force another man I knew and hauled him half across the street. He swore at me, and tried to fight, but I held him.
“You’ll go when you’ve told me what the row is about,” I said.
The man, swearing at intervals, told me.
“It’s George the Greek,” he said. “Will you let me go?” (Blank.) “It was the helmet and corselet—Parratt, of the Dawn, wanted to buy one, and George had a second-hand one in his window, cheap—They’re smashing the floor now—why didn’t I think of that? Let me go.” (Impolite expressions.) “Well, if you won’t” (impoliteness continued), “Parratt was looking at it, to decide if he’d go in and buy it tomorrow—it was only nine pounds, and a new one’s fourteen, and Parratt thought he would, and he looked at it close, and he saw a rivet in the helmet, and he knew the rivet, because he put it there himself—Oh!” (very impolite remarks) “they’ve got him frog’s-marched, and they’re going to throw him—Don’t hit me, I’ll finish—And the corselet was the one they buried with Mo, the Papuan who got drowned the other day, and the beast had dug him up and cut him out of it, to make the price of what Mo owed him. So when all the divers heard that” (Will you let me go? they’re taking him to the jetty!), “they came and made a row. Damn!”
He bit a new litany off at the commencement, as I released him, and made for the jetty at a run. I saw them swing the yelling Greek out over the water, and let him go with a splash. He could swim all right, and a ducking was likely to do him good, so I didn’t trouble to interfere, especially as I saw that the men had about satiated their anger. I went back to the Marquis, who was staring blankly at the whole proceeding, and told him what I had heard.