Bob Ridley's house was the scene of rude and reckless revelry that night. A jar of the Inga's rum had been sent for, and seated around on the boxes that lined the side of the room the six convicts drank the raw spirit like milk, and plied the captain for news of the outer world two years old. Surrounding the house was a throng of eager, curious natives, no longer noisy, but strangely silent as their rolling, gleaming eyes gloated over the stone jar on the table. Presently a native, called "Jack" by his white fellow residents, comes to the door and makes a quick sign to Bob and a man named Brady, who rose and followed him into a shed used as a cook-house. Jack's story is soon told. He had been to the brig. She had thirty-two hands, but three men were sick. A strict watch was kept by the mate, not more than ten natives were allowed on board at once. In the port bow boats and the starboard quarter boats hanging on the davits there were two sailors armed with muskets.
Another of the white men now slunk into the cook-house where the three talked earnestly. Then Brady went back and told the captain that the brig was getting into the set of the outer currents, and would be out of sight of land by daylight unless he made sail and worked in close again. Upon which the captain shook hands all around, and was escorted to his boat, promising to be back at daylight and get his load of "punkins."
Brady and two others went with the captain for company, and on the way out one of his new friends—a tall, ghastly creature, eternally twisting his long fingers and squirting tobacco juice from his evil-seeming mouth—told the captain that he "orter let his men take a run ashore to get some cocoa-nuts and have a skylark." When they got aboard the captain told the mate to take the sentries out of the boats, to make sail, and run in close out of the currents, as it was all right. The captain and the guests went below to open another jar, while the mate and cooper roused up the hands who were lying about yarning and smoking, and told them to make sail. In the house ashore Bob Ridley with his two companions and Jack were planning how the job was to be done.
Two boats came ashore at daylight, and in addition to the crews there were ten or a dozen liberty men who had leave till noon to have a run about the island. The captain still bent on his "punkins," took a boat-steerer and two other hands to put the coveted vegetables into bags and carry them down to the boats. The pumpkins, Ridley said, grew on his own land quite close; the men could pick them off the vines, and the natives carry them down. So they set off up the hill until the pumpkin patch was reached. Here old Bob suddenly felt ill, and thought he would go back to take a swig at the rum jar and return, but if the captain wanted a good view from the top of the island Jack would show him round. So leaving the men to bag the pumpkins, the skipper and Jack climbed the path winding through the cocoa-nuts to the top of the hill. The sun was hot already, and the captain thirsty. Jack, out of his hospitable heart, suggested a drink. There were plenty of cocoa-nuts around growing on short, stumpy trees, a couple of which he twisted off, and without husking one with his teeth, as is often done, cut a hole in the green husk and presented it to the skipper to drink from. The nut was a heavy one; taking it in both hands the doomed sailor raised it to his lips and threw back his head. That was his last sight of the summer sky that has smiled down on so many a deed of blood and rapine. For Jack at that moment lifted his right arm and drove the knife to the hilt through his heart.
As Jack hurried back to be in good time for the "grand coup"—the cutting off of the brig—he saw that the boat-steerer and his two hands had finished gathering the pumpkins. Two bags were filled and tied, while beside them were the three bodies of the gatherers, each decently covered with a spreading cocoa-nut branch. The ten "liberty men" had been induced by a bevy of laughing island nymphs to accompany them along the ledge of the steep coast cliff to a place where, as Jack had told them, they would find plenty of nuts—a species of almond peculiar to Ocean and Pleasant Islands. Half-an-hour's walk took them out of sight and hearing of the Inga, and then the "liberty men" saw that the girls had somehow dropped behind, and were running with trembling feet into the maze of the undergrowth. The startled men found themselves in an amphitheatre of jagged rough coral boulders, covered over with a dense verdure of creepers, when suddenly Brady and fifty other devils swept down upon them without a cry. It was soon over. Then the blood-stained mob hurried back to the little beach.
The mate of the Inga was a raw-boned Yankee from Martha's Vineyard. Fearless, and yet watchful, he had struck the tall renegade as "a chap as was agoin' to give them trouble if they didn't stiffen him fust in the cabin." It was then noon, and as eight bells struck the crew began to get dinner. The mate, before he went below, took a look at the shore and fancied he saw the boat shoving off with the captain.
"Yes," chimed in Wilkins, one of the guests, "that's him; he's got a boat-load, and all the canoes comin' off 's a lot of our own niggers bringin' off cocoa-nuts."
"Then let's get dinner right away," answered the mate, who knew the captain would make sail as soon as ever he found his "punkins" safe aboard.