Henderson laughed at that idea. He had a houseboy, one Maehoe, who had told him truthfully that Sunaku had a tabu laid upon his ever passing Cape Kini on a war-party. A tabu, you know, is a sort of ceremonial prohibition, a jinx, a talismanic warning against ever having anything to do with the thing tabued. It differs for every man; it is laid upon him by the devil-devil doctor; and it may range from a totemic prohibition against eating the flesh of his name-animal—this sort of tabu is given a new-born infant on those mornings when the devil-devil doctor is feeling low and devoid of originality—to warnings of dire disaster if he ever happens to speak to one of his maternal second cousins when the moon is new. Not very reasonable things, those tabus, but absolutely binding and frequently convenient—as in this case.
Henderson had picked out his island as a site for a copra plantation after learning about Sunaku’s tabu. It made him safe, because nobody else wanted to poach on Sunaku’s territory and Sunaku wouldn’t raid himself. Henderson was as safe as, he felt, so seeing Gleason full of terror he tried to laugh him out of it.
“The wicked flee when no man pursueth,” he would quote maliciously. “Your boys sweated blood for a good ten miles after Sunaku gave up the chase. One of them is likely to run up his toes, by the way, Gleason. I give him rum and he gets better. I stop it, and he gets worse. Dammit, I wish he’d make up his mind before he drinks all the trade-rum in stock.” To which Gleason replied unpleasantly that he did not give a hoot in hell whether the boy died or not. Gleason was still weak, though growing stronger, and Henderson didn’t see that he was crazy with envy of a man who was safe and prosperous and ought to turn out rich when his newly planted coconut trees came into bearing.
“Your nerves are bad, Gleason,” Henderson would tell him tolerantly, and add, grinning, “The wicked flee when no man pursueth. But there’s no use staying in a blue funk. Cheer up!”
He would march on his way, whistling, while Gleason ground his teeth. Henderson had a kid back in school in England, and he had it figured out that he would be a rich man just about the time a lot of money would mean a great deal to a girl. He had it all planned out how he’d spend his money and have a wonderful time buying frocks for her and so on, and taking her about the Continent.
But that hasn’t anything to do with Gleason and Maehoe and Fear.
Maehoe was the head houseboy at Henderson’s—the boy who’d found out about Sunaku’s personal and private tabu. He rather attached himself to Gleason while Gleason was getting well. His costume consisted of an immaculate, rather short white jacket and a gee-string, and he had at some time past discarded a nose-plug and several ear-ornaments in token of his ambition to become a member of the Native Constabulary of the Solomon Islands Protectorate. If Gleason had been otherwise he might have been amused by Maehoe.
A round and frizzy head of hair would appear above the flooring of the veranda. It would be followed by a not particularly high forehead, the dark-brown and invincibly sad eyes of the Malaita bushboy, and then a wide, flat, very black nose with a dangling strip of cartilage where the nose-plug had been removed on Maehoe’s adoption of civilization. There would follow, then, in quick succession a wide and beaming grin, a thick and corded neck, an absolutely immaculate white drill jacket, and lean and gnarly brown legs—astoundingly long and very naked-looking—with many scars from the scratches of thorns and underbrush. Last of all, wide, splay feet, with each and every toe prehensile, would step up on the veranda, and Maehoe would beam more widely still and say in a hushed voice: