I asked what became of the men he took away; I was afraid he’d stop talking and go to somebody’s bridge table, but he said:
“Around the Solomons we would put a few of them ashore here and there to work on the plantations. Before we could up-anchor they would plump into the sea and swim back to the ship. Finally we gave them up and took the survivors home. Interesting folk? Rather! They’re not castaways or newcomers. They’ve been there since God made them. They might be worth a scientific man’s time.”
He moved away but I almost tripped him up. “Mr. Fulton, if they are an untouched people, they must be free from imported diseases. I’ve pretty well decided that the natives are dying off from the worms and germs that white men, orientals, and friendly tribes bring in.” He nodded approvingly, and I plunged on, “It would be very valuable to me, and to the world too, if I could study these Rennellese. Hookworm, for instance ... If they have it at all it might be a variety we have never seen ...”
“Well, Doctor—some time when one of our boats swings your way....”
George Fulton was a super-businessman. I decided not to let him forget his offer, and for half a year I showered his Australian office with remindful letters. Finally my insistence bore fruit—of a mixed variety.
******
The young inspector whom I had found guilty of idleness and malaria and ejected from my staff had been scheduled to survey the Trobriands, two or three days sailing to the north. The shortage of help compelled me to take my headache and a supply of quinine and cover the job myself. But in the South Pacific you don’t just buy a ticket and start. You play Micawber until something turns up. In this case the turn-up was the fantastic little cutter Bomada, owned in partnership by a professional butterfly collector and a hairy-chested planter-adventurer named Bob Bunting. The butterfly collector had a German name and looked rather Chinese. Bob Bunting was something of a slave driver when he managed plantations; if native laborers lay down to die of witch-doctoring he revived them with a bull-whip. Bob’s sort survive in the tropics.
So we were off in the crazy craft, which promptly broke down in a mushy, drizzly rain. And that was where I had the other pleasant meeting. Out of the glazed mist loomed a whaleboat, steadily rowed. A gorgeously American voice yelled, “Hey, can I do anything for you fellows?” A young man sprang aboard; almost before he spoke again I was thinking, “I just kicked out an incompetent, and there’s the boy to take his place.”
His name, he said, was Byron Beach. Enthusiastically he scrambled into his whaleboat and brought back an outdated pile of Saturday Evening Post copies, and Theodore Roosevelt’s book on the “River of Doubt.” Americanism stuck out all over the boy. He had graduated from one of the better New England preparatory schools, then war broke out and he decided to “travel.” Possibly he was a conscientious objector; but Byron Beach was no slacker. His headlong bravery and resourcefulness in a later adventure proved that.
Bob Bunting, who knew everybody, accused him of being too keen for the Milne Bay traders; they were ganging up against him. Beach had been out after copra and had bought so much under competitive noses that local dealers were swearing vengeance. An enterprising lad. When the old engine came to life again I said, “Beach, if they make it too hot for you here, why not join my outfit?” His young face flushed with pleasure. “Golly, Doctor, that would be swell!”