He stopped speaking when he caught sight of me, and stepped down into the boat without another word. Frenchy, too, said nothing as we pulled back to the ship, but chewed at his mustache in a moody, impatient way. But once on board, the captain was called below, and an animated discussion ensued in the main cabin. Through the open skylight I could not forbear overhearing a little of what was said, and I gathered that Mins was joining with his employer in trying to persuade Frenchy to remain on the island in Stocker’s place. At least, I caught Frenchy’s explosive remonstrances, and half-jeering, half-angry efforts to extricate himself from their snares. Apparently he succeeded only too well, for Old Bee, somewhat half-heartedly, at last proposed Babcock’s name. At this the captain himself was up in arms. Wasn’t he doing with one white mate when he ought by rights to have two? Nothing would induce him, he said, to surrender Babcock; nor would he, in such a case, answer for the safety of the ship, nor for the insurance were she lost. Then he turned the tables completely by proposing that Old Bee himself should stop on the island! This was received by Frenchy with a roar of laughter and a blow of his fist that shook the cabin. Old Bee did not take it with the same good humour, but broke out furiously that he might as well throw up the cruise at once. Mine, of course, was the next name to come up, and Frenchy was sent to bring me before the meeting. I am ashamed to think what a fool they must have thought me, for instead of offering me the seventy-five dollars a month—not that I would have taken the job for a million—Old Bee held out the inducement of ten a week. From the manner in which he spoke to me, and the bullying tone of his voice, it was not easy to gather whether I was asked or ordered to go ashore in Stocker’s shoes; and it is my belief that if I had knuckled down in the slightest he would have dropped the first formula altogether. But I had overheard too much to be taken at a disadvantage. Besides, I shrank from the proposal with every fibre in my body, and was determined not to be put ashore except by force. My repulsion was so unconcealed; and it was so plain that I could be neither threatened nor cajoled; that more than once Frenchy burst out with his great laugh, and even Mins smiled sourly at my vehemence. Old Bee did not long persist in the attempt to override my resolution; he had always taken an unflattering view of my capabilities, and even as a planter of cocoanuts I had perhaps excited his distrust. Besides, I would not do it. There was no getting over that!
I was thankful at last to be dismissed, even at the price of a stinging word or two. What were words in comparison with a year on Lascom Island! I went and locked myself in my cabin, and blocked the door of it with my trunk, so fearful was I that I might in some way be tricked or dragged ashore. I dared not emerge until long after the anchor had been weighed and the sails set, and even then I came out of my room with the utmost caution. When I reached the deck, the settlement was already far astern and the ship heading through the western passage for the sea. Lum told me that we were running down to Treachery Island, and gave me some hot bread and tea in the galley in place of the lunch I had lost.
I had read of South Sea paradises, but at Treachery Island I was soon to see one for myself. After the desolate immensity of Lascom, it was delightful to reach this tiny isle, with its lagoon no bigger than the Serpentine and its general appearance of fertility and life. As we ran close along its wooded shores, and saw the beehive houses in the shade, and the people running out to wave a greeting to our passing ship; as we saw the drawn-up boats, the little coral churches, and the shimmering lagoon beyond, on which there was many a white sail dancing, I thought I had never in all my life imagined any place more beautiful. Nor did I think to change my mind when we hove to off a glorious beach, and dropped the ladder for a score of smiling islanders to swarm aboard. I loved the sight of their kindly faces after the sullen looks that had so long been my portion; and my heart warmed towards them as it might to some old and half-forgotten friends.
When a boat was lowered, I kept close at the heels of Old Bee, Frenchy, and the captain as they descended and took their places; and I followed their example with so much assurance that it never occurred to any one to say me nay. The captain swore at me for jumping on his foot, but that was all the attention I received. Frenchy was the hero of the hour, and his gay sash and tie and spotless ducks were the occasion of many pleasantries at his expense. Even Old Bee condescended to tease our beau on the subject of the future Mrs. Frenchy; and at the home thrusts and innuendoes (not all of which I could understand) the captain’s red face deepened into purple as he shook with laughter and slapped his friend upon the back. Frenchy pretended not to like it, and gave tit for tat in good earnest; but it was evident that he was prodigiously pleased with himself and the others. With his chest thrown out, his black brush of a mustache waxed to a point, and his military, dandified air, Frenchy seemed more low, more indefinably offensive, wicked, and dangerous than he had ever appeared to me before.
Every one was in a high good humour when we reached the beach, where special precautions had to be taken in order to spare Frenchy’s finery the least contamination; and we were soon walking up together through a crowd of islanders to the trader’s house. Tom Ryegate was there to meet us, a benignant-looking old man with a plenitude of grey hair, a watery blue eye, and a tell-tale tremor of his hands. A closer inspection revealed the fact that Tom Ryegate was soaked and pickled in gin, a circumstance which perhaps accounted for the depressing views he took of life and for his somewhat snarling mode of address. When the news had been passed, and Stocker’s demise talked over, with some very unedifying reminiscences of the deceased’s peculiarities, the conversation was brought gently round to the business in hand.
But on the subject of girls Tom Ryegate was a broken reed. We might be able to pick up a likely young woman, or we might not. “It all depended,” he said, without adding on what. The fack was that things wasn’t as they used to be on Treachery; the niggars had lost all respeck for whites; it was money they cared for now, nothing but money. It made old Tom Ryegate sick to think of it; it was all this missionary coddling and putting ideas into their heads. Why, he remembered the day when you could buy a ton of shell for a trade gun; when a white man knew no law but what seemed good to him. But it was all changed now; them days was passed for ever; the niggars had no more respeck for whites: it was all money, all money.
This dreary and unsatisfactory monologue was the preface to a recital of all his recent troubles. Mrs. Captain Saxe had been kind enough to bring him back his daughter Elsie. Captain Mins would remember his little Elsie? No? Well, it didn’t much matter; howsomever, as he was saying, she had been educated in the convent at Port Darwin—for an island girl there was no better place than a convent (here’s luck, gentlemen). She was sixteen, and that pretty and nice-behaved that he almost cried when he saw her! And white? Why, you couldn’t have told she was a quarter-carste, she was that white. At first they had got along together very nicely, for she was no slouch of a girl, and could cook and sew, and play her little piece on the zither in the evening, and sing! Sing? Why, you just orter hear that girl sing! And to see her kneel down at night and pray in her little shimmy, it made him feel what a bad old feller he was—by God, it did—and so far to leeward of everything decent and right. Well, well, it went along so far nigh six months (drink hearty, gentlemen; Mr. Bibo, sir, here’s my respecks), and he had no more thought of what was a-coming than a babe unborn.
There was a half-carste here named Ned Forrest, who did a little boat-building and traded a bit besides. Not a bad chap for a half-carste, only he fancied himself overmuch, and thought because he could read and drink square-face that he was as good as any white man. It made him sick, the airs that feller put on at times. Imagine his feelings, then, when this Forrest up and asked him one day for permission to marry Elsie, and said a lot of rot about their being in love with each other! Just animalism, that’s what he called it. His Elsie, who had been bred up a lady in Port Darwin! Hadn’t he said that the niggars were losing all respeck for whites? He booted the swine off his verandah, that’s what he did, and he gave Elsie such a talking to that she cried for three days afterwards. He thought she had had a passing fancy for the swine, but he bade her remember her self-respeck and just let out a few things about the feller to put her on her guard like. But though she promised to give him up, she took it kind of hard. He used often to find her crying and moping about the house, and, like a fool, had thought little of it. He did think enough of it, however, to go to Jimmy Upolu—that’s the Summoan native pastor here—to forbid him to marry the pair if they had in mind any hanky-panky tricks.
By God, it was well he did so, for what was his surprise to find that Forrest had been trying to get round the pastor for that very purpose—mending his boat, stepping a new mast in it, and lending a hand generally with the church repairs. The pastor was a crafty customer and had a considerable eye for the main chance, but he was a sight too far in Tom’s debt to go against him. Tom had only to raise his hand and Jimmy was as good as bounced off the island, for Jimmy’s no pay, and a complaint at headquarters would settle his hash. So he didn’t mince matters with Jimmy, but told him flat out that there must be no marrying Elsie on the sly.
That done, he gave the girl another dressing down. Pity he hadn’t thrashed her, like he had often done her ma, but it wasn’t in flesh and blood to lash your own daughter. So he let it go at that, and arranged with Peter, the king, to run up some kind of a charge against Ned Forrest, so that the next man-of-war might deport him. Luckily Ned was a British subject, and it would have been strange if the navy captain wouldn’t have taken the word of a responsible white merchant, not to speak of the king’s and the missionary’s, against a dirty swine of a half-carste. Howsomever, no man-of-war came,—they never do when they’re wanted,—and things went on from bad to worse.