White Fire

by John Oxenham

He set them to football, cricket, boxing, and fencing, for all of which his foresight had made provision, kite-flying on a scale so gigantic as to set the natives gaping, rowing, swimming—anything and everything that might harmlessly take the place of the excitements their savage natures craved, and which served at the same time to strengthen the bonds between white and brown, he pressed into the service.

The boxing-gloves and basket-hilted fencing-sticks became absolute means of grace to the islanders. Here was scope for fighting to any extent, with no ill results. They took to them amazingly, and what was lacking in science was more than made up in zeal. And if these fighting bouts filled specific wants of their own, they also provided no less excellent entertainment for the onlookers.

At first they put both gloves and sticks to the primitive service of belabouring their opponents to the utmost capacity of their muscles, and the sight of two stalwart brown men, clad only in boxing-gloves or basket-hilt, pounding away at one another with every ounce that was in them, and with never an attempt at defence, kept the white men in paroxysms of laughter. But punishment even of so comparatively mild a character as that soon led to more advanced ideas, and before long the browns were a match for the whites, and were never tired of the sport.

Captain Cathie, when he was not ranging the seas in the Torch, put his men through their cutlass drill on the beach as regularly as if the houses behind had been a coastguard instead of a mission-station, and to the brown men this was a sight never to be missed. The measured sweep and clash of the glancing steel fascinated them. Presently they were asking for cutlass drill also, and it was not denied them. Such things might to some seem roundabout steps on the road to salvation—to Kenneth Blair they were very direct and important ones.

Steps on the road to salvation.

With these brown men and women he was forbearing and long-suffering to a degree which, in the opinion of some of his friends, passed reasonable bounds. That, perhaps, only went to prove the breadth and depth of his nature. He could flame, however, with the best when occasion called, yet there was a righteousness in his anger which lifted it above the common anger of smaller men.

From whatever distant strain they drew, the girls of Kapaa'a were undoubtedly good looking. Physically they were models of sinuous beauty, wild, dark-eyed nymphs, with manes of flower-decked hair and natural graces of action that came of ages of unfettered life and limbs. Their pretty faces and kittenish ways might well play havoc with the hearts—or say the fancies—of hot-blooded young sailormen, and these coquettes of the ridi-fringe were no whit behind their kind in the full appreciation of their powers.

Blair saw the danger as soon as he saw the girls. He had a way of looking facts square in the face without any blinking. He talked very straight to his boys, pointing out the cons of the case with the utmost frankness, and exhorting them to caution and restraint in their dealing with the island women. That so few casualties occurred spoke volumes for his moral grip over his men.