“Then Buck told out loud so that Fong, if he was listening, could hear, how we had fallen on a pearl island, by chance, and how, thinking it was bad navigation that had made us out in our reckonings, he was bringing a thousand dollars to Fong as a present out of the takings according to promise. Then he pulls out his roll and gives the thousand dollars to Blake as a make up. The young Chink ran in at the sight of this, and, as we walked off arm in arm for drinks, I heard sounds from the upper room of that bird shop as if Fong was holdin’ on to something and trying not to be sick.
“Then as we were having drinks the question came up in Buck’s head as to whether he was entitled to that schooner seeing that Fong had managed to get the better of him at the go off. He put it to Blake, and Blake, who was a great chap for backing horses when ashore, says: ‘Go off be damned,’ he says. ‘It’s the finish that matters. You did him on the post,’ he says—and we concluded to leave it at that.”
CHAPTER VIII.
A CASE IN POINT
I
There is good fishing to be had round Sydney way, yellow-tail and schnapper and green backed sea bream; jew-fish and mullet and trevalli. You can fish at low tide in the pools or you can fish from a boat, beaching her for the night in one of the coves and camping out under the stars, with the scent of the gums mingling with the scent of the sea, and the song of the waves for lullaby.
Over Dead Man’s Cove and its beach of hard sand the cliff stands bluff and humped like a crouching lion, and there one night the year before last old Captain Brent and I were kicking our heels and smoking after supper and passing in review the day’s work and the tribes of the sea.
Brent was a keen fisherman, and there were few waters he did not know, and few fish he hadn’t taken one time or another. He had always travelled with his eyes open, and his natural history was first hand and his views fresh as originality itself. He said crabs could think, instancing certain hermit crabs that always chose protective-coloured shells, and that not only did sword-fish fight duels—I knew that, for I had seen it myself—but that there were tribal wars carried on in the sea, international struggles so to speak, between the nations of the fishes.
“If fish didn’t kill fish,” said the Captain, “the sea would be solid with mackerel inside two years, to say nothing of herring. Haven’t you ever thought of what keeps them down? It’s the Almighty, of course, but how does He work it? Lots of folk think He works it by making the fish eat the fish just because they are hungry. That’s one of His ways, but another is just war for war’s sake, or for the sake of the grouch one tribe keeps up against another. You see, it’s a bit unfortunate, seeing that if the herring once got above a certain number all the eating in the world wouldn’t stop them from turning the sea solid with herring, so the Almighty has fixed His killing machine with two blades, one that kills for the sake of food and the other for the sake of killing.
“It’s the same with the tribes of men, I reckon, only with them there’s only one blade left, since they don’t kill each other nowadays for the sake of food.
“There’s something in one tribe that makes for war against another tribe. You may boil them but you won’t get it out of them. I’ve seen it. You’d have seen it too if you’d traded among the Islands in the old days, selling Winchesters to the natives to prosecute their wars with, and I’ll give you a case in point.