“Imposture, Mr. Blount! Do you mean to say——”
“I mean to say that this man De Vere with his flashy get-up and imposing name is not an English gentleman. He may deceive you and the men we have just left, but he doesn't deceive me. I once lived in England a long time ago, Mr. Deighton,” here Blount turned his face away, and then added dreamily, “a long time, a very long time ago, and met some fairly decent people. And I no more believe that Mr. de Vere comes from a good family than I do that Nathaniel Burrowes, a low, broken-down New Orleans wharf-loafer, comes from one of the 'first families in Virginia' that American newspapers are always blathering about” “What is wrong with him, Mr. Blount?” “Nothing from your point of view—everything from mine. And, so far as I am concerned, I don't mean to have anything to do with these two English gentlemen and the yacht Starlight. Well, here we are at the mission. Good-day, Mr. Deighton; I'm going to Lak-a-lak to see how my timber-getters are doing.” And with a kindly nod at the troubled missionary, the big, dark-faced trader strode along the beach alone.
III ~ BANDERAH
Banderah, the supreme chief of Mayou, was, vide Mr. Deighton's report to his clerical superiors, “a man of much intelligence, favourably disposed to the spread of the Gospel, but, alas! of a worldly nature, and clinging for worldly reasons to the darkness.” In other words, Banderah, although by no means averse to the poorer natives of the island adopting Christianity in a very free and modified form, and contributing a certain amount of their possessions to the missionary cause, was yet a heathen, and intended to remain one. For Mr. Deighton he had conceived a personal liking, mingled with a wondering and contemptuous pity. During an intertribal war he had received a bullet in his thigh, which the missionary had succeeded, after much difficulty, in extracting. Consequently, his gratitude was unlimited, and he evinced it in a very practical manner, by commanding some hundreds of his subjects to become Christians under pain of death. And, being aware that polygamy would not be tolerated by Mr. Deighton, he went a step further, and ordered all those of these forced converts who had more than one wife to send them to his own harem. This addition to his family duties, was, however, amply compensated for by the labour of the surplus wives proving useful to him on his yam and taro plantations.
In his younger days Banderah had once made a voyage to Sydney, in the service of a trading captain, one Lannigan, whose name, in those days, was a name to conjure with from one end of Melanesia to the other, and for whose valour as a fighter and killer of men Banderah had acquired a respect he could never entertain for a missionary. This captain, however, died in Sydney, full of years and strong drink, and left the chief almost broken-hearted, to return a year later to Mayou.
In his curious, semi-savage character there were some good points, and one was that in compliance with the oft-expressed wishes and earnest entreaties of Blount and Mr. Deighton, he had agreed to put down the last remnants of cannibalism which had lingered among the coast tribes on the island down to the time of this story. And although the older men, and some of the priests of the heathen faith, had struggled against his drastic legislation, they finally gave in when Mr. Deighton, weeping tears of honest joy at such a marvellous and wholesale conversion, presented each convert with a new print shirt and a highly coloured picture of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea.
An hour after Blount had walked along the beach to Lak-a-lak, Banderah saw the captain of the schooner come ashore and walk up the path to Nathaniel Burrowes' house, where he was warmly greeted by Burrowes and the German. He remained there for nearly an hour, and then came out again, and looking about him for a few moments, made direct for Banderah's house, which stood about three hundred yards back from that of the American trader.
When close to the chiefs house the captain of the Starlight raised his head, and Banderah caught sight of his features and recognised him.
“How are you, Bandy?” said the seaman, walking smartly up to the chief, who was sitting on a mat inside his doorway, surrounded by a part of his harem and family, “you haven't forgotten me, have you?”