It was two o’clock before James and his party, accompanied by the Commandant, Sergeant Marceau and Aleamotu’a, at last got back to the bure. There luncheon had been prepared and, having fasted for twenty-four hours, James ate heartily, but when he learned what had been taking place during his seclusion his exuberant happiness became overshadowed by the thought that if the treasure was to be saved they now had no alternative but to attack the Pigalle.
After his fire-walk there was no longer any doubt that his body-guard would wholeheartedly support the gendarmes and, that being so, Elbœuf showed no further qualms about ordering in his men. But it seemed certain that there would be casualties and James was loath to risk the lives of his people. However, when Gregory told him how, owing to Sergeant Marceau and Captain Amedo, the majority of them were now equipped with modern weapons and that motor boats had been commandeered to give them swiftness of manœuvre, he agreed that the attempt to capture the Pigalle must be made. The question that remained was—when?
Gregory at once said that if casualties were to be minimised, surprise was essential; so the best hour would be about three o’clock in the morning. But the Commandant would not hear of that. He maintained that, although the Colons were breaking the law, to launch an armed attack upon them without warning would make all who were concerned in it, above all himself, as the principal authority responsible, subject to prison sentences. Hostilities were permissible only if the Colons had been called on to surrender, refused and then offered armed resistance.
James and Aleamotu’a backed up Gregory; but Elbœuf and Sergeant Marceau insisted that unless the law was strictly observed they would all land themselves in very serious trouble. The argument had been raging for a quarter of an hour when the head houseboy, Kalabo, came in to say that there was a man outside asking urgently for Gregory.
On going outside, he found it to be Hamie Baker. The diver reported that, with the help of the natives, they had cleared the fallen debris in the wreck sooner than had been expected and had again got down to the treasure. To keep his pact with Gregory, he had slipped overboard during the break for the midday meal, and had swum ashore.
Asked how long he thought it would take to get up the rest of the treasure, he replied, ‘Can’t say, baas. Depends how much of it there is. Might be another couple of days, but maybe they’ll be through by tonight.’
This alarming news created a new situation. Having renewed his promise to pay Hamie two hundred pounds, Gregory handed him over to Kalabo, to be given food and drink, then hurried in to report the tidings he had just received.
On consideration, he thought it most unlikely that the Pigalle would sail before morning, so he was still in favour of a surprise attack in the middle of the night, but the chance that she would make off before then could not be ignored. The weight of opinion now went against him, so he had to agree that the showdown should take place that evening.
The Sergeant left to muster his gendarmes and Aleamotu’a to mobilise the body-guard. Elbœuf stayed for another brandy, then drove off in his ancient car. By then it was half past three, and they had agreed to rendezvous down at the harbour at five o’clock, so Gregory, true to form when about to face trouble, decided to take an hour’s siesta. Manon tried for a while to think of a way in which she could warn Lacost of the pending attack, but gave it up as hopeless and went out to sit by the pool. James, still transported with delight at the success of his fire-walk and the way in which Olinda had aided him, took her to his bure, where she willingly submitted to his passionate embraces.
A little before five, the two girls, now fearful that their men might be killed or wounded, sadly kissed them good-bye and watched them set off for the harbour. Everything there was in readiness. Altogether, with the gendarmes and body-guard, the contingent now numbered some sixty men, and the flotilla to carry them consisted of eight motor boats. In case the one carrying the leaders should come to grief, it was decided that James should go in his own launch, Gregory in the Boa Viagem’s speed boat and Sergeant Marceau and Aleamotu’a in others. The gendarmes were also separated, so that each could show an example to a boat carrying members of the body-guard. Old Elbœuf, excusing himself on account of his age and infirmity, contented himself with wishing them good luck and waving them away.
Adjusting their speeds to keep in convoy, the flotilla made its way round the point, through the channel which separated Roboumo’s island from the mainland, and so to the bay in which the wreck of the Maria Amalia lay. As they approached the Pigalle, they saw that great activity was taking place about her. Fuzzy-headed natives were diving from her every few minutes, then bobbing up again clutching unidentifiable objects and two men in the stern were working hard at a hand pump, which was obviously feeding air down to Lacost’s professional diver, Philip Macauta.
Then there came a sudden change in these activities. There were shouted orders, the native divers scrambled back on board. Macauta’s big, round helmet glinted in the evening sunlight as he surfaced and climbed a ladder on to the deck. In a matter of minutes everyone in the Pigalle had taken cover, with the one exception of Pierre Lacost, who remained standing on the bridge.
As the official leader of the expedition, Sergeant Marceau’s launch was some way ahead of the others. When it was within a hundred yards of the Pigalle he stood up in the stern, put a megaphone to his mouth and shouted:
‘Ahoy there, Monsieur Lacost. You are committing an illegal act. In the name of the Republic I summon you to weigh anchor and accompany us back to harbour.’
For a second Gregory held his breath, as he waited to hear what the response would be. It came almost immediately. Lacost gave a shout and darted back into the bridge cabin. Then there was a spurt of flame from the stern of the Pigalle, followed by the crack of a rifle. Sergeant Marceau’s kepi seemed to jump from his head, he staggered, then jack-knifed and crouched among the other men in his boat.
This opening episode was immediately followed by a ragged fusillade from all the boats of the flotilla, but the attackers were handicapped by being unable to see the men aboard the Pigalle. Splinters flew from woodwork here and there, the glass of the deckhouse windows was smashed and tinkled as it fell, but no cry or scream proclaimed a hit.
‘We’ll have to board,’ Gregory shouted to the motorman in his boat. ‘Get going, full speed ahead now.’ But next moment a machine gun opened on them. The gendarme beside him was shot through the chest, and one of the bodyguard screeched as a bullet seared his arm.
Everyone in the flotilla was firing now and bullets by the score were thudding into the hull of the Pigalle. Within a minute a second machine gun had opened up from her. It raked one boat, killing or wounding the majority of the crew. Then it was turned on another, hit it in a dozen places below the water-line and it swiftly began to sink. The first machine gun blazed off again at Sergeant Marceau’s boat. This time he was not so lucky. A bullet caught him in the shoulder, spun him round, and he fell overboard, while half his crew were massacred.
By then all the other boats had shut off their engines, none daring to approach nearer, but their occupants continued to pepper the Pigalle uselessly with bullets.
Gregory, seething with rage at this senseless débâcle, shouted to James, ‘We must board her! Don’t you understand? If we can once get into her, they’ll stand no chance against our numbers.’
Even as he shouted, another boat received a fusillade, mowing down half the men in her. Two of the boats had now restarted their engines, turned about and were making off.
Cupping his hands, James yelled back, ‘It’s hopeless! I’d join you myself, but I won’t see any more of my people slaughtered.’ Then, raising his voice still higher, he shouted in his native tongue, ‘Cease fire! Cease fire and return to harbour, all of you.’
The firing from the boats fell to a dribble, but the machine guns in the Pigalle continued their ugly chatter, inflicting more casualties as the remains of the flotilla turned tail and made off.
With
fury in his heart, Gregory cursed Elbœuf. If only the old fool had not prevented them from carrying out a surprise attack in the middle of the night they could easily have overcome the Colons. Now he must resign himself to defeat. The game was lost and Lacost would get away with the treasure.
19
A Fateful Evening
As darkness fell, the remaining boats of the flotilla made their way back to harbour. There they sadly counted their losses. One gendarme and four of the body-guard had been killed, and fifteen members of the force, including Sergeant Marceau and another gendarme, had been wounded. Two of the boats had been sunk and the casualties would have been still higher had not all the Tujoans been excellent swimmers, so that none of those in the sunken boats had been drowned.
James was in such distress about the dead and wounded of his body-guard that Gregory thought him in no state to discuss the situation with Elbœuf, so he persuaded him to go straight up to the bure while he himself went to the Residence. There he found the old Frenchman partaking of his pre-dinner aperitif.
Nothing would have pleased Gregory better than to flay Elbœuf verbally, but on the way back to harbour it had occurred to him that there was still a last chance of getting the better of Lacost. He and his Colons had fired upon French gendarmes who were in the course of carrying out their duty, killing one and wounding two others; so, no reinforcements being available locally, the Resident’s proper course was to call for troops to be sent in from Noumea. To get that done, and swiftly, meant that Gregory must retain the good-will of the Commandant. In consequence, he confined himself to reporting the bare facts of the disaster, and asking that aid to overcome the Colons should be asked for as a matter of urgency.
On hearing what had happened, Elbœuf expressed great indignation, although he continued to maintain that he could not possibly have permitted the attack on the Pigalle to be made at night and without warning. But he readily agreed to radio Noumea for troops to be sent in by air, then set off for the town to send the signal and see his wounded Sergeant.
Returning to the bure, Gregory found James still in very low spirits in spite of the efforts of the two girls to console him; so dinner proved a gloomy meal and, soon after it, James escorted Olinda back to the Boa Viagem. On his return they went to bed: Manon greatly relieved that Gregory had come to no harm in the affray, but secretly glad that Pierre Lacost had had the better of it; James and Gregory both now with the depressing feeling that, unless help was sent promptly from Noumea, all the danger, distress and anxiety they had suffered during the past four months would have been for nothing.
A reply was not received until eleven o’clock on the following morning. Elbœuf brought a copy of it up to the bure and, to Gregory’s fury, it was anything but satisfactory. Apparently, the old man had not fully explained the situation and its urgency, but had simply asked for troops to be sent owing to his gendarmes being insufficient in numbers to arrest a gang of desperadoes. It was, therefore, hardly surprising that Noumea requested further information before acting.
In view of the way in which Gregory had, not long before, got the better of his one-time colleague General Ribaud, he could still not be certain that a personal appeal from him would have the desired effect, so he wrote out a lengthy cable putting matters in a way that Ribaud, as the responsible authority, could not ignore, then made Elbœuf sign it, and sent it off himself.
Meanwhile, James had gone down to visit the wounded and condole with the relatives of the dead, promising the latter’s dependants that he would arrange for their support. This occupied him for the greater part of the day, so Gregory and Manon lunched with Olinda on the yacht and spent an anxious afternoon with her. Soon after five o’clock James came out to them with a copy of a reply Ribaud had sent to Elbœuf’s second signal. It read:
Now appreciate situation stop troop carriers on exercise so temporarily unavailable stop am despatching gunboat should be with you Monday.
Again their hopes were dashed. It was already Saturday evening and, from what Hamie had said, Lacost might have all the treasure on board and be ready to sail that night, or at latest the following day. The fact that the gunboat would give chase was small consolation. Even twenty-four hours’ start would be sufficient for the Pigalle to elude capture for some days. During that time Lacost could anchor off one of the innumerable uninhabited islands between Fiji and New Caledonia, get the treasure and all his stores ashore, and scuttle the Pigalle, so that she would sink without trace. He could then lie low there for a year or more, until he and his companions felt it safe to signal some passing vessel and, under false names, have themselves taken off as the survivors of the shipwreck of a copra-collecting schooner; or at least until the more impatient Colons either mutinied or decided to murder him, and that was unlikely to happen for several months.
But with him James brought another document—a lengthy epistle in Nakapoan script. It was a letter from Roboumo, and its contents were roughly as follows:
Having witnessed his Ratu’s fire-walk on the previous day, he was much concerned that the ability to perform such a feat would undermine the authority that he had enjoyed for so long; and this might lead to desertion by his followers. Therefore, he proposed a pact. The attack on the Pigalle had, he declared, been doomed to failure because it had been made in daylight. But a surprise attack by night, given overwhelming numbers, could not fail to prove successful. The Ratu’s body-guard, he assumed, would on their own prove reluctant to face the Colons again, but he could offer reinforcements of twenty-seven men, all armed with modern weapons. He was, he admitted, most reluctant to allow the treasure in the Maria Amalia to be salvaged, but this was for him a secondary consideration to losing his status as the great Magic Man of Tujoa.
If the Ratu would give a solemn undertaking to perform no more feats of draunikau, he would send his men to aid in the capture of the Pigalle. But the matter was urgent, because the White Witch had told him that the salvaging of the treasure was near completion, so, if the Pigalle was to be attacked again, it must be that night. If the Ratu was agreeable to treat, arrangements should be made that evening. Since the fire-walk, he was not prepared to risk his own followers deserting to the body-guard should the Ratu come to his island accompanied by armed men. But if he would come alone, as a guarantee of good faith in the future, they might agree an alliance which would confirm his status and enable the Ratu to secure the treasure.
From this, one thing stood out clearly. Roboumo’s proposal did offer a real chance to stymie Lacost at the eighteenth hole. James then declared that, after his triumph, he felt such complete confidence in himself that he no longer had any fear of Roboumo or his White Witch. He was quite prepared to go alone to a meeting. Smiling at him with pride, Olinda said that evidently it was now Roboumo who was afraid of him, so she was in favour of his accepting.
Having considered for a few moments, Gregory said to James, ‘To get the better of that swine Lacost I’d be prepared to take very big risks. But I don’t like the idea of your going to Roboumo’s island on your own. The old devil is obviously more concerned about keeping his hooks on the people than he is about who gets the treasure. He might take a chance on having his boys murder you, so that he would be quite certain of continuing to rule the roost here. And, anyhow, would you be willing to enter a pact that would leave him free to do so?’
‘I have no fear that he would harm me,’ James replied at once. ‘He would not dare. Although many of my people have been kept under his thumb, by far the greater part of them are devoted to me. They would rise up in their wrath, invade his island by the hundred and put an end to him and all his followers. As for the situation should we make a pact, I look at it this way. I would stand by my bargain and let him continue his blackmail as long as he could. But my possession of the gold here would enable me to break his power gradually. If I could start industries here, that would not only ensure a decent standard of living for the majority of my people, but would also open their minds to Western
ways of thought, so that they would no longer go in fear of being bewitched.’
‘You are right,’ Olinda agreed. ‘All the same, darling, I spoke before without thinking, and I now agree with Gregory. To go alone to Roboumo’s island would be an awful risk to take. Write to him or send a messenger, but I beg you not to go yourself.’
James shook his head. ‘My love, that would be no use. I know my people and, bad man as he may be, I understand the way Roboumo’s mind works. How could he trust me to keep my word in the future unless I show trust in him by placing myself unprotected in his hands?’
‘I wouldn’t trust him not to try to pull a fast one over me even if we were face to face and I was armed and he was not,’ Manon remarked, using such little weight as she had on the side of preventing, if possible, an agreement which would lead to another attack on the Pigalle.
‘Nor I,’ Gregory agreed. ‘The issue hinges entirely on how much store James sets on getting hold of the gold. As I have said on several previous occasions, I don’t want any of it myself; so, although I’d hate to see Lacost get away with it, I’d rather that than have James run into serious danger.’
‘It is not the gold,’ James said earnestly. ‘Not now. It is my people who were killed and maimed last night. Four of my body-guard killed and thirteen of them wounded; not to mention the three gendarmes. I would never again consider myself fit to be a Ratu if I neglected any possibility of being revenged upon those murdering Frenchmen.’
There fell a short silence. Obviously James had made up his mind and there seemed no more to be said; but, after a minute or so, Gregory did say, ‘Very well, then. You will go in alone. But I mean to follow you. I’ll keep well out of the way, but shall remain within listening distance of Roboumo’s kraal—or whatever they call it in these parts. And we’ll have Aleamotu’a, and some of the other boys, just across the channel, on the mainland. Then, if any treacherous attempt is made on you, just start yelling at the top of your lungs and we’ll do our damnedest to get you out.’
The White Witch of the South Seas Page 35
