The lecture was over and I started alone across an open swathe of dim moonlight that pointed toward the plantation house. I was anxious to get to headquarters where I could write up my notebook and tumble into bed. On both sides of me rubber trees made high black walls, like something built of coal. My conscious mind was concerned only with the day’s work and tomorrow’s; somewhere in the back of my dreams I may have sensed the danger of another such Koiari spear as had butchered a man yesterday.
I looked up and saw the outline of three men, emerging out of the shadows. Even to my defective eyes they made a grotesque group, all locked together in a shambling stride. There was nothing for me but trust in the white man’s prestige. I was unarmed. If I had shouted for help it would have been a sign of fear, and these fellows, I knew, worked in a hurry. When they came closer I saw that they carried no weapons.
Two of them, who had been holding to the third, began jabbering in Goaribari, making friendly sounds. Was this a trap? Fortunately Ahuia and the native constable came swinging up with hurricane lanterns—even in moonlight they carried lanterns to scare away ghosts. Ahuia pointed to the man in the middle. “That fellow broke his hand in a fight. There were not enough women to go around.”
All right, let’s have a look at it. We led the foiled lover to my quarters where I examined the wrist and found a bad Colles’s fracture. In dim lantern-light I did a careful job of bonesetting, even though the fellow had just scared the living lights out of me. If he had shown up in the dispensary at Rochester with the pick of the faculty looking on, he couldn’t have had more meticulous surgical attention. I even took time to give him Doctor Moore’s famous dressing, which is fussy, but perfect.
“All right, boy,” I said, “run along.” He stood there patiently, holding out his unwounded hand. What the devil was he waiting for? “Does he want to thank me?” I asked Ahuia.
“No, master.” Ahuia looked fiercely sad. “He is waiting for you to pay him. That fashion belong this fellow.”
“What fashion?” My short temper was getting shorter. “What should I pay him for?”
“For mending his sick hand, Taubada.”
I growled and Ahuia shoved him out into the night. When I was around Ahuia feared neither ghosts nor Goaribaris. The incident seemed to be closed, but I was aware that the cubicle next to Kendrick’s, where I slept, was quite doorless and exposed to pale moonlight.
Next morning I was aroused by softly arguing Motu voices. Ahuia and Quai, who was with Kendrick, had missed something from our bags. Quite likely. For there was a gentleman’s agreement among Motuan servants: Never steal from your master—oh, that was very tabu. But you could take a little something from your master’s host, or from some stranger taubada, sleeping near you, if he happened to leave his bags open. It was honorable to snitch a handkerchief or a pair of new shorts and drop the small loot into your bag. When two white men were bunking adjacently, their boys working with the bags would watch each other as cat watches mouse. It was all right for the good servant to get away with a few of the stranger’s cigarettes, for personal smoking.