We have had a little ripple of excitement on the usually smooth current of our existence. To go back to the beginning: Soon after we were settled in "Equator town," as we call our hamlet, the King proposed sending the royal cook to learn from Ah Foo. The man was an insolent, handsome fellow, with no intention of either learning or working, and either lay on the floor of the kitchen or squatted smoking, while Ah Foo, who was in mortal terror of Tembinoka, prepared the dishes which the royal cook, without doubt, passed off as his own productions. This went on for some time, and as the King's meal hours are the same as our own, interfered a good deal with Ah Foo's work and consequently our comfort. The climax was reached when the cook, too lazy to walk down to the well for a can of water for himself, came softly behind me as I was watering my plants and impudently snatched a dipperful from my pail. We then took the first opportunity to let the King know how things were going, advising him to send a man who was willing to learn. Since then his Majesty's steward, a capable, serious man, has accompanied the cook. Shortly after our complaint we heard several rifle-shots from the palace, and soon after met the cook, who passed us hurriedly, without the usual salutations, his countenance bearing the marks of furious anger and fear. It seems that he had been the King's target, running and crouching behind piles of stones, the bullets flying after him. Tembinoka came over a few days later and apologised for having possibly alarmed or annoyed us. He said he had no intention of killing the man, which he might have done easily, being a dead shot, but only wished to frighten him. He said he had killed enough people to show the rest what he could do, but thought it a good plan to remind them occasionally that he had a rifle and the power to use it as he pleased. "More better him 'praid" (afraid), were his words. As may be imagined, the cook bears us no good will, knowing that our complaints had turned that fearful rifle against him. However, he dropped his insolent airs and became almost obsequious.
Since we have been here, the schooner Tiernan came in for copra. While she was lying in the lagoon, the King spent most of his time aboard and some seven hundred dollars of his money (he spent neatly one thousand on the Equator); then he got very drunk, going on steadily a little worse or a little better, according to his headaches. Day before yesterday, he gave a feast and dance to which he did not invite us. At noon he came to say he would lunch with us. His eyes were wandering and his voice excited and almost boisterous. It was plain that royalty was not far from being vulgarly drunk. We could see that he had been worried by our visits to the palace having ceased and wished to have an understanding that there was no ill feeling on either side. He demanded beer, saying that he had been drinking gin and port wine, and dozed off in his chair, starting up in a few moments much mortified. I noticed that even in this stage of semi-intoxication, he used his knife and fork in our fashion, and not as he had learned from the "South Sea merchants." It is an unending pleasure to hear the King say: "I want to go home." There is an element of appeal in it, reminding one of a child who can bear the tedium no longer. It is always directed to Louis or, he being absent, to me as his representative. He wanted to go home very soon after that luncheon. In the evening we could hear the dancers in the big "speak house," clapping, stamping, and singing. The sounds were so savage, so like an immense pack of dogs fighting in a mass, that we did not realise what it was, but thought that some form of riot was going on. An absolute tyrant like Tembinoka walks amid dangers of which he is fully conscious. Tembinoka dead drunk was not an idea to contemplate with serenity, and the sound of a single shot did not tend to reassure us, so we laid our pistols where they would be handy. Louis's idea is that no one would attack the King unless he were absolutely certain of killing him instantly, in which case we had better wait here until the enemy came for us. I think on the contrary, that the commission of so enormous a crime would make a pause. The terrors of the deed would fill the childish minds of the natives to the exclusion of anything else and there would be a short time of confusion in which nothing would take place but shoutings and aimless running about; then would be our time to rush in and take possession of a stout wooden house inside the palace walls, and the King's arms, and really the King's throne. There would always be the chance, a very slight one, to be sure, that we might still be in time to save the King's life. I do not quite understand what Louis's tactics would be, but aside from any other consideration, there must be but one commander and he should be absolute even though the others do not agree with him.
After the shot (which was only aimed at a dog, though that we could not know) we listened and found that there was no interruption to the singing and dancing, which reassured us. In the night, Louis, being restless and not sleepy, took his flageolet and wandered off into the woods, playing as he walked, until I lost hearing of him. About midnight, or a little later, I was out a short distance from the house watching with some anxiety for his return. Pretty soon I saw him coming along the main path toward our house. I also saw a dark figure dogging his steps. I called to him, telling him what I had seen. He was convinced that it was an hallucination of mine and I was quite ready to believe him, but as we talked I caught sight of the man running toward the palace. I pointed him out to Louis, who dashed off in pursuit. When the man saw he was outdistanced, for Louis is a fine sprinter, he turned the face of the cook, smiling suavely. I heard "sea language" in Louis's biggest voice, and saw him leaping strangely in the moonlight, like a grasshopper. He came back in fits of laughter, saying he had kicked the cook, who fled in terror.
Ever since the cook found we had turned against him I have had an uneasy feeling that some one was about our sleeping house in the night, and several times I was certain a hand was cautiously feeling about inside our door flap. It seemed a foolish notion, so I had said nothing about it until this night, then Louis said he, too, had distinctly heard the same thing. We cannot complain to the King for he would kill the man instantly, and we do not go so far as to desire his death. We have not seen or heard from him since. Ah Foo thinks he has gone away in fear of his life. I have it in my heart to be sorry for the fellow, for his terror must be extreme, and we who have brought this upon him belong to the feared and hated white race.
We are getting to be rather anxious concerning the Equator. She was to be gone two weeks, but it is now over a month since she left us. The Tiernan met her at Butaritari, she leaving the day before Captain Saxe of the Tiernan. Captain Reid intended to go to Maraki to take a man known as "the poisoner" over to another island, Taravao, I think. Now Taravao is so near to Maraki that Peter Grant had been over there in a small boat. There may have been trouble in Maraki—certainly it was imminent—which has kept the captain, but still it is a long time. He promised, if the schooner were lost and he was saved, that he would make his way here somehow. In these dangerous and uncertain waters one is easily made uneasy. Fortunately for us, the Tiernan was able to let us have some stores. Our salt beef was finished, and we were absolutely sickened of wild chickens shot by Ah Foo with the King's gun.
I had a little strip of coral dug out, got rotted leaves from under a tree, put them into the hole, and into this I emptied the half-decayed filth that was left in the onion basket. I should think I have nearly two dozen onions now growing finely. I have invented a salad for Louis of which he is extremely fond. In all these islands there is one cocoanut that has a sweet husk, used for cleaning the teeth. In Butaritari the baron often caused me great embarrassment by chewing a brush for me. This sweet nut when green has a little crisp portion at the stem end which I cut up and made into salad with oil and vinegar, or rather oil and lime-juice, as we have no vinegar. We have put out a bottle of sour toddy hoping to get vinegar from that.
My diary ends here, abruptly; I had too much on my hands to find any further time for writing diaries, for Ah Foo fell ill, and I must be cook, purveyor, housemaid, and what not, as well as nurse. Ah Foo announced his illness (something alarmingly like diphtheria) in these words, "Me sick: no can work; no can cook—no good any more—more better you kill me, now," offering Louis, as he spoke, a large, keenly sharpened carving knife and his bared throat ready for the sacrifice. He was severely ill for some days, needing almost constant attention. His undisguised surprise that I would stoop to nurse a Chinaman was pathetic, and his gratitude afterward was sometimes shown in unexpected and embarrassing ways, as, for instance, when he insisted on shooting several men who waked me from an afternoon nap by singing Christmas songs beneath my window; or when he proposed to burglariously enter a trader's house to steal something for me that could not be procured otherwise.