“They were pretty sharp after gun-runners in those days, but Scudder fixed everything somehow so that none of the cases were opened. We got the cracker boxes on first and then stowed the guns and cartridges over that, and on top of the guns some trade goods, stick tobacco and rolls of print and such, six Chinks we took for a crew and a Kanaka by name of Taute who could speak the patter of most of the Islands, and off we started.
II
“Taleka is an outlier of the New Hebrides, a long run from ’Frisco, but we never bothered about time in those days. We never bothered about anything much. We hadn’t been out a week when I said one night to Slane, ‘Buck,’ said I, ‘s’pose one of those crackers took it into its head to go off, being screwed too tight?’ ‘If it did,’ said Buck, ‘the whole two thousand would go bang and the cartridges would follow soot; if one of them crackers fructified before its time next minute you’d be sitting on a cloud playing a harp, or helping stoke Gehenna, don’t make any mistake about that.’ We left it so. We never bothered about anything those days as long as the grub was up to time and not spoiled in the cooking.
“We touched at Honolulu and had a look round and then we let out, passing Howland and the Ellices, raising Taleka forty-five days out from ’Frisco.
“It’s a big brute of a high island and away to s’uth’ard of it you can see Mauriri, another big island forty-five or fifty miles away.
“There’s no reef round Taleka, but there are reefs enough to north and west and a big line of rock to s’uth’ard that doesn’t show in calm weather, only now and again when the swell gets too steep and then you’ll see an acre of foam show up all at once. Rotten coast, all but the east side, where a bay runs in between the cliffs and you get a beach of hard sand.
“We dropped anchor in twenty-five fathoms close to the beach. There were canoes on the beach, but not a sign of a native; the cliffs ran up to the sky either side, with the trees growing smaller and smaller, and out from near the top of the cliff to starboard a waterfall came dancing down like the tail of a white horse and that was all; there was no wind scarcely ever there and the water between the cliffs was like a black lake. I tell you that place was enough to give you the jim-jams, more especial when you knew that you were being watched all the time by hundreds of black devils ready to do you in.
“We fired a gun and the echoes blazed out like a big battle going on and then fizzled off among the hills where you’d think chaps were pot-shotting each other. Then the silence went on just as if it hadn’t been broken, and Slane, who’d got a pretty short temper when he was crossed, spat into the harbour and swore at Sru.
“Then he ordered up a case of guns and a box of ammunition, and he and me and Taute rowed ashore with them, beaching the boat and dumping the guns and ammunition on the sand.
“We took the guns out of the case and laid them out side by side same as if they’d been in a shop window, then we opened the ammunition box and exposed the cartridges.