South Sea Tales

by Jack London

  Bertie Arkwright was not inevitable. He was too sensitive, too finely strung, and he possessed too much imagination. The world was too much with him. He projected himself too quiveringly into his environment. Therefore, the last place in the world for him to come was the Solomons. He did not come, expecting to stay. A five weeks’ stop-over between steamers, he decided, would satisfy the call of the primitive he felt thrumming the strings of his being. At least, so he told the lady tourists on the MAKEMBO, though in different terms; and they worshipped him as a hero, for they were lady tourists and they would know only the safety of the steamer’s deck as she threaded her way through the Solomons.

  There was another man on board, of whom the ladies took no notice. He was a little shriveled wisp of a man, with a withered skin the color of mahogany. His name on the passenger list does not matter, but his other name, Captain Malu, was a name for niggers to conjure with, and to scare naughty pickaninnies to righteousness from New Hanover to the New Hebrides. He had farmed savages and savagery, and from fever and hardship, the crack of Sniders and the lash of the overseers, had wrested five millions of money in the form of bкche-de-mer, sandalwood, pearl-shell and turtle-shell, ivory nuts and copra, grasslands, trading stations, and plantations. Captain Malu’s little finger, which was broken, had more inevitableness in it than Bertie Arkwright’s whole carcass. But then, the lady tourists had nothing by which to judge save appearances, and Bertie certainly was a fine-looking man.

  Bertie talked with Captain Malu in the smoking room, confiding to him his intention of seeing life red and bleeding in the Solomons. Captain Malu agreed that the intention was ambitious and honorable. It was not until several days later that he became interested in Bertie, when that young adventurer insisted on showing him an automatic 44-caliber pistol. Bertie explained the mechanism and demonstrated by slipping a loaded magazine up the hollow butt.

  “It is so simple,” he said. He shot the outer barrel back along the inner one. “That loads it and cocks it, you see. And then all I have to do is pull the trigger, eight times, as fast as I can quiver my finger. See that safety clutch. That’s what I like about it. It is safe. It is positively fool-proof.” He slipped out the magazine. “You see how safe it is.”

  As he held it in his hand, the muzzle came in line with Captain Malu’s stomach. Captain Malu’s blue eyes looked at it unswervingly.

  “Would you mind pointing it in some other direction?” he asked.

  “It’s perfectly safe,” Bertie assured him. “I withdrew the magazine. It’s not loaded now, you know.”

  “A gun is always loaded.”

  “But this one isn’t.”

  “Turn it away just the same.”

  Captain Malu’s voice was flat and metallic and low, but his eyes never left the muzzle until the line of it was drawn past him and away from him.

  “I’ll bet a fiver it isn’t loaded,” Bertie proposed warmly.

  The other shook his head.

  “Then I’ll show you.”

  Bertie started to put the muzzle to his own temple with the evident intention of pulling the trigger.

  “Just a second,” Captain Malu said quietly, reaching out his hand. “Let me look at it.”

  He pointed it seaward and pulled the trigger. A heavy explosion followed, instantaneous with the sharp click of the mechanism that flipped a hot and smoking cartridge sidewise along the deck.

  Bertie’s jaw dropped in amazement.

  “I slipped the barrel back once, didn’t I?” he explained. “It was silly of me, I must say.”

  He giggled flabbily, and sat down in a steamer chair. The blood had ebbed from his face, exposing dark circles under his eyes. His hands were trembling and unable to guide the shaking cigarette to his lips. The world was too much with him, and he saw himself with dripping brains prone upon the deck.

  “Really,” he said, “… really.”

  “It’s a pretty weapon,” said Captain Malu, returning the automatic to him.

  The Commissioner was on board the Makembo, returning from Sydney , and by his permission a stop was made at Ugi to land a missionary. And at Ugi lay the ketch ARLA, Captain Hansen, skipper. Now the Arla was one of many vessels owned by Captain Malu, and it was at his suggestion and by his invitation that Bertie went aboard the Arla as guest for a four days’ recruiting cruise on the coast of Malaita . Thereafter the ARLA would drop him at Reminge Plantation (also owned by Captain Malu), where Bertie could remain for a week, and then be sent over to Tulagi, the seat of government, where he would become the Commissioner’s guest. Captain Malu was responsible for two other suggestions, which given, he disappears from this narrative. One was to Captain Hansen, the other to Mr. Harriwell, manager of Reminge Plantation. Both suggestions were similar in tenor, namely, to give Mr. Bertram Arkwright an insight into the rawness and redness of life in the Solomons. Also, it is whispered that Captain Malu mentioned that a case of Scotch would be coincidental with any particularly gorgeous insight Mr. Arkwright might receive………….

  “Yes, Swartz always was too pig-headed. You see, he took four of his boat’s crew to Tulagi to be flogged—officially, you know—then started back with them in the whaleboat. It was pretty squally, and the boat capsized just outside. Swartz was the only one drowned. Of course, it was an accident.”

  “Was it? Really?” Bertie asked, only half-interested, staring hard at the black man at the wheel.

  Ugi had dropped astern, and the ARLA was sliding along through a summer sea toward the wooded ranges of Malaita. The helmsman who so attracted Bertie’s eyes sported a ten penny nail, stuck skewerwise through his nose. About his neck was a string of pants buttons. Thrust through holes in his ears were a can opener, the broken handle of a toothbrush, a clay pipe, the brass wheel of an alarm clock, and several Winchester rifle cartridges.

  On his chest, suspended from around his neck hung the half of a china plate. Some forty similarly appareled blacks lay about the deck, fifteen of which were boat’s crew, the remainder being fresh labor recruits.

  “Of course it was an accident,” spoke up the ARLA’S mate, Jacobs, a slender, dark-eyed man who looked more a professor than a sailor. “Johnny Bedip nearly had the same kind of accident. He was bringing back several from a flogging, when they capsized him. But he knew how to swim as well as they, and two of them were drowned. He used a boat stretcher and a revolver. Of course it was an accident.”

  “Quite common, them accidents,” remarked the skipper. “You see that man at the wheel, Mr. Arkwright? He’s a man eater. Six months ago, he and the rest of the boat’s crew drowned the then captain of the ARLA. They did it on deck, sir, right aft there by the mizzen-traveler.”

  “The deck was in a shocking state,” said the mate.

  “Do I understand—?” Bertie began.

  “Yes, just that,” said Captain Hansen. “It was an accidental drowning.”

  “But on deck—?”

  “Just so. I don’t mind telling you, in confidence, of course, that they used an axe.”

  “This present crew of yours?”

  Captain Hansen nodded.

  “The other skipper always was too careless,” explained the mate. “He but just turned his back, when they let him have it.”

  “We haven’t any show down here,” was the skipper’s complaint. “The government protects a nigger against a white every time. You can’t shoot first. You’ve got to give the nigger first shot, or else the government calls it murder and you go to Fiji . That’s why there’s so many drowning accidents.”

  Dinner was called, and Bertie and the skipper went below, leaving the mate to watch on deck.

  “Keep an eye out for that black devil, Auiki,” was the skipper’s parting caution. “I haven’t liked his looks for several days.”

  “Right O,” said the mate.

  Dinner was part way along, and the skipper was in the middle of his story of the cutting out of the Scottish Chiefs.

  “Yes,” he was saying, “she w
as the finest vessel on the coast. But when she missed stays, and before ever she hit the reef, the canoes started for her. There were five white men, a crew of twenty Santa Cruz boys and Samoans, and only the supercargo escaped. Besides, there were sixty recruits. They were all kai-kai’d. Kai-kai?—oh, I beg your pardon. I mean they were eaten. Then there was the James Edwards, a dandy-rigged—”

  But at that moment there was a sharp oath from the mate on deck and a chorus of savage cries. A revolver went off three times, and then was heard a loud splash. Captain Hansen had sprung up the companionway on the instant, and Bertie’s eyes had been fascinated by a glimpse of him drawing his revolver as he sprang.

  Bertie went up more circumspectly, hesitating before he put his head above the companionway slide. But nothing happened. The mate was shaking with excitement, his revolver in his hand. Once he startled, and half-jumped around, as if danger threatened his back.

  “One of the natives fell overboard,” he was saying, in a queer tense voice. “He couldn’t swim.”

  “Who was it?” the skipper demanded.

  “Auiki,” was the answer.

  “But I say, you know, I heard shots,” Bertie said, in trembling eagerness, for he scented adventure, and adventure that was happily over with.

  The mate whirled upon him, snarling:

  “It’s a damned lie. There ain’t been a shot fired. The nigger fell overboard.”

  Captain Hansen regarded Bertie with unblinking, lack-luster eyes.

  “I—I thought—” Bertie was beginning.

  “Shots?” said Captain Hansen, dreamily. “Shots? Did you hear any shots, Mr. Jacobs?”

  “Not a shot,” replied Mr. Jacobs.

  The skipper looked at his guest triumphantly, and said:

  “Evidently an accident. Let us go down, Mr. Arkwright, and finish dinner.”

  Bertie slept that night in the captain’s cabin, a tiny stateroom off the main cabin. The for’ard bulkhead was decorated with a stand of rifles. Over the bunk were three more rifles. Under the bunk was a big drawer, which, when he pulled it out, he found filled with ammunition, dynamite, and several boxes of detonators. He elected to take the settee on the opposite side. Lying conspicuously on the small table, was the Arla’s log. Bertie did not know that it had been especially prepared for the occasion by Captain Malu, and he read therein how on September 21, two boat’s crew had fallen overboard and been drowned. Bertie read between the lines and knew better. He read how the Arla’s whale boat had been bushwhacked at Su’u and had lost three men; of how the skipper discovered the cook stewing human flesh on the galley fire—flesh purchased by the boat’s crew ashore in Fui; of how an accidental discharge of dynamite, while signaling, had killed another boat’s crew; of night attacks; ports fled from between the dawns; attacks by bushmen in mangrove swamps and by fleets of salt-water men in the larger passages. One item that occurred with monotonous frequency was death by dysentery. He noticed with alarm that two white men had so died—guests, like himself, on the Arla.

  “I say, you know,” Bertie said next day to Captain Hansen. “I’ve been glancing through your log.”

  The skipper displayed quick vexation that the log had been left lying about.

  “And all that dysentery, you know, that’s all rot, just like the accidental drownings,” Bertie continued. “What does dysentery really stand for?”

  The skipper openly admired his guest’s acumen, stiffened himself to make indignant denial, then gracefully surrendered.

  “You see, it’s like this, Mr. Arkwright. These islands have got a bad enough name as it is. It’s getting harder every day to sign on white men. Suppose a man is killed. The company has to pay through the nose for another man to take the job. But if the man merely dies of sickness, it’s all right. The new chums don’t mind disease. What they draw the line at is being murdered. I thought the skipper of the Arla had died of dysentery when I took his billet. Then it was too late. I’d signed the contract.”

  “Besides,” said Mr. Jacobs, “there’s altogether too many accidental drownings anyway. It don’t look right. It’s the fault of the government. A white man hasn’t a chance to defend himself from the niggers.”

  “Yes, look at the Princess and that Yankee mate,” the skipper took up the tale. “She carried five white men besides a government agent. The captain, the agent, and the supercargo were ashore in the two boats. They were killed to the last man. The mate and boson, with about fifteen of the crew—Samoans and Tongans—were on board. A crowd of niggers came off from shore. First thing the mate knew, the boson and the crew were killed in the first rush. The mate grabbed three cartridge belts and two Winchesters and skinned up to the crosstrees. He was the sole survivor, and you can’t blame him for being mad. He pumped one rifle till it got so hot he couldn’t hold it, then he pumped the other. The deck was black with niggers. He cleaned them out. He dropped them as they went over the rail, and he dropped them as fast as they picked up their paddles. Then they jumped into the water and started to swim for it, and being mad, he got half a dozen more. And what did he get for it?”

  “Seven years in Fiji ,” snapped the mate.

  “The government said he wasn’t justified in shooting after they’d taken to the water,” the skipper explained.

  “And that’s why they die of dysentery nowadays,” the mate added.

  “Just fancy,” said Bertie, as he felt a longing for the cruise to be over.

  Later on in the day he interviewed the black who had been pointed out to him as a cannibal. This fellow’s name was Sumasai. He had spent three years on a Queensland plantation. He had been to Samoa, and Fiji, and Sydney; and as a boat’s crew had been on recruiting schooners through New Britain, New Ireland, New Guinea, and the Admiralties. Also, he was a wag, and he had taken a line on his skipper’s conduct. Yes, he had eaten many men. How many? He could not remember the tally. Yes, white men, too; they were very good, unless they were sick. He had once eaten a sick one.

  “My word!” he cried, at the recollection. “Me sick plenty along him. My belly walk about too much.”

  Bertie shuddered, and asked about heads. Yes, Sumasai had several hidden ashore, in good condition, sun-dried, and smoke-cured. One was of the captain of a schooner. It had long whiskers. He would sell it for two quid. Black men’s heads he would sell for one quid. He had some pickaninny heads, in poor condition, that he would let go for ten bob.

  Five minutes afterward, Bertie found himself sitting on the companionway-slide alongside a black with a horrible skin disease. He sheered off, and on inquiry was told that it was leprosy. He hurried below and washed himself with antiseptic soap. He took many antiseptic washes in the course of the day, for every native on board was afflicted with malignant ulcers of one sort or another.

  As the Arla drew in to an anchorage in the midst of mangrove swamps, a double row of barbed wire was stretched around above her rail. That looked like business, and when Bertie saw the shore canoes alongside, armed with spears, bows and arrows, and Sniders, he wished more earnestly than ever that the cruise was over.

  That evening the natives were slow in leaving the ship at sundown. A number of them checked the mate when he ordered them ashore. “Never mind, I’ll fix them,” said Captain Hansen, diving below.

  When he came back, he showed Bertie a stick of dynamite attached to a fish hook. Now it happens that a paper-wrapped bottle of chlorodyne with a piece of harmless fuse projecting can fool anybody. It fooled Bertie, and it fooled the natives. When Captain Hansen lighted the fuse and hooked the fish hook into the tail end of a native’s loin cloth, that native was smitten with so an ardent a desire for the shore that he forgot to shed the loin cloth. He started for’ard, the fuse sizzling and spluttering at his rear, the natives in his path taking headers over the barbed wire at every jump. Bertie was horror-stricken. So was Captain Hansen. He had forgotten his twenty-five recruits, on each of which he had paid thirty shillings advance. They went over the side along with the shore-dw
elling folk and followed by him who trailed the sizzling chlorodyne bottle.

  Bertie did not see the bottle go off; but the mate opportunely discharging a stick of real dynamite aft where it would harm nobody, Bertie would have sworn in any admiralty court to a nigger blown to flinders. The flight of the twenty-five recruits had actually cost the Arla forty pounds, and, since they had taken to the bush, there was no hope of recovering them. The skipper and his mate proceeded to drown their sorrow in cold tea.

  The cold tea was in whiskey bottles, so Bertie did not know it was cold tea they were mopping up. All he knew was that the two men got very drunk and argued eloquently and at length as to whether the exploded nigger should be reported as a case of dysentery or as an accidental drowning. When they snored off to sleep, he was the only white man left, and he kept a perilous watch till dawn, in fear of an attack from shore and an uprising of the crew.

  Three more days the Arla spent on the coast, and three more nights the skipper and the mate drank overfondly of cold tea, leaving Bertie to keep the watch. They knew he could be depended upon, while he was equally certain that if he lived, he would report their drunken conduct to Captain Malu. Then the Arla dropped anchor at Reminge Plantation, on Guadalcanar, and Bertie landed on the beach with a sigh of relief and shook hands with the manager. Mr. Harriwell was ready for him.

  “Now you mustn’t be alarmed if some of our fellows seem downcast,” Mr. Harriwell said, having drawn him aside in confidence. “There’s been talk of an outbreak, and two or three suspicious signs I’m willing to admit, but personally I think it’s all poppycock.”