Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas

by Lloyd Osbourne

On these occasions also Salesa showed a lawless deportment among the whites that put her good name in jeopardy and caused many to wonder and gossip. She would sit at the cabin table and drink beer and eat sardines, saying saucily, "Me white mans, too," as she joked and laughed with the captains and supercargoes. Or, if some one put his head down the hatchway, she would call out, "Oh, the Kanaka dog! Go 'way, you peeping Kanaka dog!" Whereat the whites would slap her on the back, and it was said they even placed her on their knees and kissed her. Be that true or false, Malamalama grew to hate the sight of a ship; and sometimes, when he and Salesa went on board together, he showed her a sharp knife, and said, "Be careful, you wicked white woman, or I shall kill you."

She was as changeable as a little child, and had humors, too, of tenderness and contrition, when she would put her arms round her husband's neck and be-darling him, saying, "I love you! I love you!" and bemoan her contrariness and the fact that she was white. For though she was born and bred with us, she felt she was not of our race; and sometimes she would say to Malamalama when he reproached her, "Sell me to one of the captains for a whaleboat and let me go." But Malamalama only loved her the more, and his handsome face grew sullen and angry as he threatened again to kill her if she misbehaved.

Now when Professor No No came to live with us on the lagoon, Salesa was beside herself with curiosity, and heaped presents on Billy Hindoo in order to learn about his master. But Billy Hindoo knew nothing but his own stutter, and though he took the presents and came constantly to Salesa's house, very little in the way of information was accomplished. At last, greatly daring, Salesa arrayed herself in her finest clothes, and with servants carrying gifts of pigs and chickens, went down to the lagoon to pay a visit to the stranger. She found Professor No No sitting at his table, looking at dead fish through bits of glass, and he never turned round as the party halted at the taboo line and coughed deprecatorily in order to attract his attention. Then Salesa, who feared neither devil nor man, took the baskets in her arms and stepped across the taboo, saying in a voice of sweetness, "Professor No No! Professor No No!"

He sprang from the table and rushed at her, waving his arms, and screaming as was his wont, "No, no! No, no!" while she, overcome with terror, dropped the gifts and fled like a sea mew on the wings of the wind. That night all Uvea joked about her discomfiture, while she sat in her house and cried, and Billy Hindoo was invited everywhere to tell the story in the antics that served him in the place of a tongue. But once Salesa had set her heart on a thing she never faltered nor turned aside; and though she waited and waited, it was not as one conquered or resigned. When the quarrel came between Billy Hindoo and his master, she saw the means, in Professor No No's desolation and abandonment, of obtaining the satisfaction of her purpose. For the white man, thus left to himself, grew increasingly dirty and uncared for; and his camp, once so clean under the care of Billy Hindoo, became as a pigsty of empty cans and bottles. Nothing therein was washed, and the savor of Professor No No and his camp blew noisomely across the taboo line as one walked to leeward.

One day, after spying out that he had already sailed out for more fish to look at through bits of glass, Salesa crept into the settlement and began to make it clean again. She carried away all the tins and bottles; she swept the disordered grass; she entered the professor's tent, filling his water-bottles, making his bed and decorating it with flowers and laumaile. Then, as she had so often watched Billy Hindoo from a distance, she spread the table with a clean cloth, and on it she placed a bottle of beer and a tin of sardines under a wire netting and three ship's biscuits in a row. Then she went back and hid in the undergrowth, waiting and waiting, like a warrior in an ambush.

But Professor No No made no sign as he landed from his boat, nor did he seem to perceive that anything unusual had taken place in the time he had been gone. He drank the bottle of beer and ate the sardines and biscuit, never troubling himself whence they had come; and while Salesa waited and waited with a suffocating heart, he looked at dead fish through bits of glass. But day by day she returned to his camp with the assiduity of a mother to her nursing child; and by degrees growing bolder with custom, she no longer watched until Professor No No had departed, but moved here and there about his land, secure by reason of his blindness and preoccupation. Like a wild animal to whom one approaches with gentleness and precaution, thus it was with Professor No No in the hands of Salesa. First he saw her only at a distance as she cleaned and swept; then a little closer as she spread his table and laid out his bottle of beer and the sardines and biscuit; then it came about that she even touched him with impunity, and sat beside him in a chair as he continued to look at dead fish through bits of glass. At last she dared to speak, telling him softly the names of the dead fish, which he wrote down in a little book, and informing him also that her name was Salesa, and that she loved him.

And she, so defiant and proud, became as another person; so that she was kind not only to Professor No No, but to others whom she had previously treated with contumely. She carried the white man's packages when he went abroad, his photograph box and all manner of apparatus and tools, and the bottle of beer and the sardines for his well-being, never heeding the sun nor the fiery sand. She sat with him daily in his boat, baiting his hooks and catching fish likewise, and grew wise also in looking at them through bits of glass, so that he no longer ran at her and cried, "No, no!" when she touched his things. On the contrary, her wisdom increased in such matters, becoming in time even as his own, so that she also took photographs, and hammered off pieces of coral from the reef, and grew excited over little, common, worthless fish that stung you if you touched them.

It is not to be supposed that Malamalama watched with any equanimity this increasing friendship between Professor No No and his wife, or that the constant tale of scandal and evil-doing fell on heedless ears. He beat Salesa repeatedly with a stick, and she bit him in return all over his beautiful body; and their fine house, once the envy of all Uvea, reechoed distressfully with screams and blows. But the madness of a woman for a man is not thus to be set aside, and the more Malamalama beat her with a stick, the more ardent grew her love for Professor No No; and when he talked with her and argued, she would answer unabashed that whites were whites and Kanakas were Kanakas, and that it was ill to mix the oil and water of the races.

"But he is overgrown with hair like a dog," said Malamalama, "except on his head, which glistens like a sting ray in the sun, and he is altogether hideous and frightening. It is not reasonable that anyone should prefer him to me."

"But there is that in his head which makes him beautiful," said Salesa.