“I fetch’m one-fella peg, Sar?”
Gleason generally took the peg. But he did not humor Maehoe by listening to a description of the glories of the Native Constabulary Force of the Solomon Islands Protectorate, delivered with a vast gusto in an amazing beche-de-mer agglomeration of supposedly English syllables. Maehoe had been refused for the constabulary for some reason he could never fathom, but hopefully anticipated a reversal of the refusal at some future time. Henderson had promised to speak in his favor, and Henderson listened to him now and again, wherefore he worshipped Henderson and served him with an honesty that in a Malaita bushboy was superhuman.
But Gleason hated him cordially, especially after a certain morning when he felt a little stronger and tried to walk about a bit. Henderson was inland, swearing at a labor gang that was clearing more land for the planting of yet more coconut trees. Gleason walked down to the beach, looked nervously at Cape Kini—he was always a little nervous about Sunaku—and went aimlessly over toward the barrack sheds, and there he suddenly heard a voice talking in English behind a bush.
Gleason moved suspiciously to where he could look. He saw Maehoe going through apparently aimless evolutions—now here, saying something, and now there, replying. It was seconds before he realized that Maehoe was practising. He was imitating his master and Gleason with great solemnity and for his own personal pleasure.
“The wicked flee when no man pursueth,” announced Maehoe solemnly, maltreating the words in a fashion no possible print could reproduce. “Your boys sweated blood for good ten miles after Sunaku gave up chase. One them likely turn up toes, Gleason—”
He went on with a vast solemnity duplicating Henderson’s speech and even his intonation with a surprising fidelity. Gleason watched suspiciously. Maehoe finished with Henderson’s lines, his face shining with pleasure, and went over to a spot from where he solemnly swore in Gleason’s own terms that he did not give a hoot in hell whether the boy died or not. And then he returned and solemnly repeated, “Your nerves bad, Gleason. The wicked flee when no man pursueth. But no use staying in blue funk. Cherrup.”
He beamed at his own exactitude and wiped the sweat off his face, happy. He considered, and set about going soberly over the whole business again.
Gleason walked away, shaking with the fretful sort of rage that a white man sometimes feels in the Solomons. It comes of too much fever, too many pegs, and too much brooding. Gleason should have laughed, instead of thinking savagely of innumerable forms of insult Maehoe’s private diversion seemed to him to constitute. Or he could have done as Henderson did when he told him about it. Henderson chuckled for half an hour and devised a speech full of incredible words and involved phrases, which he repeated after that whenever he could be sure Maehoe was listening. And Henderson tried to eavesdrop and discover Maehoe struggling with the new and to him unpronounceable words.
He did not succeed. Henderson came down with black-water fever about three days later, and in a week he was dead.