Hell's Hatches

by Lewis R. Freeman

Save for that one lapse, Wyndham, in spite of my reiterated appeals that he speak straight English, rattled on in his impossible Franco-bêche-de-mer from first to last. That which I have tried to render does it scant justice. Most of it was quite unintelligible. At the end of a rather trying half-hour (though it would have been amusing enough had I been less anxious for information that might throw light on the mystery I had set myself to unravel), about all that I had been able to gather was that kor-klee was the name given in the Dutch Indies to several preparations made from the latex of the wild fig of New Guinea. A crude infusion of it was employed by the Papuans in stupefying fish in their rivers. More elaborated extracts were distilled for their narcotic and other properties. One of these, vapourized and inhaled, was much prized by the Rajahs of Malaysia as a quickener of the languid pulse, a restorer of youth. Another—the most powerful extract of all—was a deadly poison—very neat and incisive in its action.

I also understood Wyndham to say that the use of the drug in any form acted as a great exciter of the cravings for alcohol and narcotics on the part of those addicted to these habits. "If that's the case," I said to myself as I turned home, "God pity poor old Bell's teetotal resolutions! It would have been hard enough without anything further in the way of a 'thust aggravata.' I'm afraid he'll be having to exchange rôles with 'Slant' after all—to let the latter be the 'soba Mate of a drunken Skippa.'" Now that I had a chance to think about it, I didn't have any great faith in Bell's ability to refrain from drink for any length of time—certainly for not more than a day or two at the outside. He'd probably see the thing through, I admitted, but not as a "soba Skippa."

Turning over all I had picked up at the end of a couple of days, I felt that I could come pretty near to reconstructing in my mind those scenes of the drama of which there had been no witnesses save the actors themselves. Allen's infatuation for the girl had undoubtedly got the better of him the instant the turn of events suggested a plan which promised to give him undisputed possession of her. To this end he had plotted to get Bell off on a voyage from which there was no more than a negligible chance of his ever returning, while he himself remained behind to enjoy the spoils.

Considering that Allen's plan was evolved upon little more than a moment's notice, there could be no question that it was laid with consummate cleverness and carried out without a hitch—save, of course, for that final fatal slip-up which undid all the rest. To make sure of Bell and disarm his suspicions, Allen had assured the American that he himself would also go on the Cora. That he had tried to poison Bell, I had my doubts. I had not learned enough of how the drug acted to make my speculations on that point of much use. At any rate, with Bell unconscious on the schooner, it had clearly been the Australian's plan to return to the beach and remain there until she sailed, at the turn of the tide. That the Cora should get under way at that time had already been arranged between the unsuspecting Ranga and himself. The pretence that he had missed the schooner while engaged in getting his own and Bell's kits together would save his face with his friends on the beach. This latter consideration, it appears, was something the rascal never lost sight of. In the improbable event that Bell ever returned—but that bridge need not be crossed until it was in sight.

Allen's cropper at the last jump was directly due to his cool assumption (natural enough, considering his success with South Sea ladies generally) that the girl, once Bell was out of the way, would fall into his lap like a ripe mango. That, and his long-curbed passion for her, led him to rush in search of Rona the moment he landed from his first visit to the schooner, and, missing her then, to return before the Cora had got her anchor up. The consequences of his finding her in on this latter occasion I had seen something of myself. How that slip of a girl got the drop on the most notorious bad man in the Islands I could only conjecture. Probably, with Allen, it was the old story—prudence going out of one door as passion entered at the other. I didn't reckon that Rona had ever read the story of Delilah; yet I felt pretty confident that the point of that little Joloano kris had found its way to the pulse of "Slant's" jugular some time after the girl's arm had gone round his neck in what he thought—for a second or two at least—was a warm embrace. Rona's uncanny faculty for getting away with everything she went after—from having her peacock shawl dry-cleaned to boarding a schooner which was all of "two jumps" beyond her reach—had greatly impressed me. And well it might have....

Even allowing that Allen had not tried to poison Bell outright, the fact remained that he had played the worst kind of a low-down trick on the American in treacherously attempting to railroad the latter out of the way and deprive the girl of his protection. That much was plain, and it was dead against the shifty Australian. In "Slant's" favour was the game manner in which he had stood the gaff at the last, when Bell left the way wide open for him to return ashore without even going over the side of the plague-infested schooner. He had not hesitated an instant in staking his life in what he had very fairly characterized as the short end of a hundred-to-one shot. There must be redeeming qualities in a man who could do that, no matter how shot through with infamy his past record had been. It occurred to me as just possible that Bell's magnanimity had struck a responsive chord in Allen's sense of sportsmanship—that the latter was going to play whatever remained of that grim game on the square. If the Cora was lost, or if Allen and Bell and the girl all died of the plague (one or both of which contingencies seemed practically inevitable), the whole slate would be wiped clean anyhow. If not—if the Cora won through with any of those three surviving—some hint of what had transpired on the voyage would certainly be obtainable at Townsville, or whatever port the schooner succeeded in making. In any event, I told myself, it was up to me to get on to Australia at the earliest possible moment.

The fact that my Exhibition would be sure to have opened in Sydney by the time I reached Australia, really had nothing to do with my decision. In spite of the bluff I had tried to put over on Bell, I had had no intention of leaving Kai for a number of months to come. Nor, even after I began getting ready to go, did I attempt to ignore the fact that there might be duties for me to carry out in Townsville, the performance of which would be more likely than not to interfere seriously with my freedom of action for a good deal longer than the art world of Sydney would be inclined to pay homage to my marines.

No, my coming show had nothing to do with my resolve to hurry south, although, naturally, I fully intended to take it in if things shaped so as to make it possible. Since my daubs had been making good with the connoisseurs of Kai—men who knew at first hand the things I was trying to paint,—I had little fear that the more sophisticated critics of civilization would not fall for them. I hadn't any worry on that score. I knew I had been doing good work. But—well, an artist who isn't interested in the way his work will react on his fellow-beings is lacking in a very important stimulus to success.

Kai manifested its usual sympathetic interest in my preparations for departure, but, with characteristic delicacy, asked no questions. Well off the steamer routes, and with only the most infrequent comings and goings of pearling and trading craft, the problem of reaching Australia with any dispatch seemed, at first, a hopeless one. For a while it looked like the best I could do would be to accept "Slim" Patton's kindly offer to run me over in his pearling sloop to Thursday Island, where I could count on getting a south-bound China-Australia liner inside of a fortnight. As Patton was known to be in bad for several little things at Thursday Island, his offer did more credit to his heart than to his head, and I was a good deal relieved when Jackson figured out a plan that promised to make it possible for me to reach my goal by another route. After thumbing a greasy sheet of Burns, Phillip sailings for the best part of an afternoon, the old outlaw suddenly announced he had found reason to believe that, with luck, a cutter getting away from Kai that night could intercept the Solomon-Australia packet at Samarai, off the easternmost tip of New Guinea. To be sure that the thing was done properly, he would take one of his own cutters and sail her himself. As my impedimenta consisted of little beyond a few changes of drills and ducks, my painting kit, and a case of absinthe, and as Jackson used neither paint nor absinthe and wore a flowered sulu in place of ducks and drills, we had little difficulty in getting away on schedule.

Jackson's carefully tabulated calculations—you can do that kind of thing in those latitudes when the southeast Trades are blowing steady and you know your boat—were only wrong by an hour. That is to say, we would have missed the Utupua by something like that had we pushed right in to Samarai. Old "Jack," however, sighting a bituminous smear trailing off above the tufted tops of the coco palms that line the inner passage, promptly shook out all his reefs, hauled up four or five points, and headed away on a course calculated to converge with that of the outgoing steamer a couple of miles to seaward. It was only after an abrupt greening of the tourmaline depths of the passage we had been threading suggested a sudden shoaling that it occurred to him to unroll and study his chart.