ADVENTURE TALES #5

by John Gregory Betancourt

  *****

  THE PEAK of Paruki swam into view on the lenses of the binoculars like a stain on a microscopic slide. It assumed form, the shape of a double-tooth turned roots up for exhibition purposes. It was right in the wind’s eye, and from it poured the cloggy smell. To get to windward of it unseen, Fleming had to slant off on a long leg and fetch up to position on an­other. The lat­ter would probably have to be broken into several tacks. But there was plenty of time, and the wind blew steady and true. So the sloop leaned from the breeze instead of on it and went scooting off, long before any one on the leeside Paruki could have caught sight of the tiniest fleck of canvas.

  It was two hours to sunset when Flem­ing slipped overboard into the trail­ing tender and gave Ngiki his last instructions. On a lee shore, with the waves beating on the lava buttresses, Flem­ing dared not anchor. He took risk enough with his dingy, for the water went licking and spouting up the cliffs and roaring among the boulders and caves in a fashion far from inviting. But he could trust Ngiki to handle the sloop, to sail off and on until he came back again. And, if anything went wrong, to wing it back to Levuka and present the letter Fleming had written and left in the cabin to the merchant to whom Fleming had sold his vanilla. But not to leave until noon the next day and to keep his eyes and ears wide open for Fleming’s com­ing.

  “I may be in a big fellow hurry when I show up,’’ said Fleming, and Ngiki grinned appreciatively.

  At the last moment a treacherous undertow combined with a following wave and slammed the dingy down so hard upon a slab of lava that it smashed its bottom strakes and broke its keel. Flem­ing leaped as it struck and fought through the yeast of sucking water, cling­ing to a buttress of the cliff until the sea reluctantly subsided and left him free for another rush, a leap across a split and a swift wading, waist-deep, to the gully he had picked out from the sloop as the best chance of ascent.

  To a man whose head never dizzied and whose rubber-soled feet never slipped the climb was a little better than possible. Fleming was all in when he got to the top and flung himself panting but safe upon a ledge just below a gap be­tween two of the fanged roots of the peak. The sun was get­ting low back of him, and the shadow of the cone spread out over Paruki like a violet veil. In the horse­shoe lagoon swam Har­per’s schoon­er, the Manuwai, at anchor. Her canvas was furled, and he could see black figures making her shipshape, shin­ing brasses, and whitening decks. Three or four more natives were spread­ing out a pile of shell, handling it with five-tined forks, standing to windward for what small protection that would give them from the reek.

  Fleming stood up, getting his wind. He saw a weird figure emerge from the lagoon, goggle-eyed, humpbacked be­neath the oxygen tank — one of Har­per’s divers. Harper himself, he fancied, though all the figures were miniature, strolled down to meet the man. Behind the lagoon was the marsh through which a stream ran sluggish­ly. Back of the marsh the bush, and in the bush a clearing with a tiny bungalow: a wooden-­walled, corrugated-iron-roofed house of two rooms with a lean-to at the back of the kitchen. Smoke came out of the roof of the lean-to. Fleming heaved a sigh of relief. The smoke meant that Harper and his companions ate ashore, probably slept there, playing cards dur­ing the evenings, smoking and drinking.

  He started down, keeping to cover as best he could until he reached the bush, where concealment was easy. He had about fifteen minutes of actual daylight left when he came out of the bush to what had once been a garden of yams, taro, cane and corn. With the sinking of the sun darkness would be almost in­stanta­neous, lasting until the stars got their power. There was no moon.

  Creeping through the rank growths, Fleming heard a laugh from the house, followed by another and another. There was the clink of glasses, the scent of to­bacco stealing out to him as he ad­vanced close to lean-to, the smell of fry­ing meat, and the rattle of pots and pans.

  He crouched in the angle between lean-to and house, listening. The outer door opened, and he heard the tread of men on the veranda and their voices greet­ing those already in the room. There was a window whose sill he could have peered over by straightening, but he was not yet ready. The newcomers were the diver and Harper.

  “Termorrer I lays off,’’ said the diver. “I put in too much time today and the ledge is gittin’ deeper. All the best-lookin’ shell’s comin’ up from eighteen fathom. I ain’t goin’ to git the bends stickin’ down too long. Termorrer I lays off, pearls or no pearls. We got all the time in the world, now you’ve fixed up the lease.’’

  “We can finish up washing shell,’’ sug­gested Harper. “The place stunk to heaven when I was coming up in the schooner. It’s lucky the island’s out of the way or some nosy fool would have been rubbering before we got the lease. It came easy though. She fell for the par­lor stuff. But it’s just as well to clean up.’’

  Fleming appreciated the backhand slap at himself with a grin but Harper’s depre­ciation of the widow sent his hand to the butt of his automatic.

  “Pretty soft for you,’’ said a fresh voice. “You play in’ the beau to a pritty woman an’ then kickin’ about the stink of the stuff comin’ up — your hide, we live in it. I vote for the clean up. And next time I go pearlin’ I pick ’em out while they’re alive. The shell can go to blazes when we got a line of pearls like we been findin’. Pickin’ through the meat to­day, I even forgot the stink the way they stacked up. One out of every sixth shell, so help me Jimmy. No seeds. They’re old stock — few baroques. Tim got one beauty. I’ll bet this lagoon is virgin. Want to see what we got?’’

  “Let’s eat first,’’ suggested Harper.

  “An’ for God’s sake pass the bottle,’’ chimed in the diver. “Stayin’ down’s dry work. Hurry up the chuck, Fredi,’’ he called out to the man in the lean-to.

  It grew darker. The cook in the shed took in the meal, and the men scuffed their chairs about the table, and all fell to with an appetite that Fleming shared but could not relish. The cook was on equal terms with the rest, and that helped. He wanted to have them altogether. Not a Malaitan likely to tackle him in the rear. The native boys were evidently down on the beach or aboard. A lamp was lit. The bottom of the window-sash was up and covered with mosquito-netting. The great leaves of a banana, A-shaped in its length, pendent from the central rib, pressed against and across the netting, admirable screens for Fleming if . . . .

  He felt his way through the growth noiselessly, carefully, one hand on the boards of the lean-to, which had a win­dow on the other side, through which he peered. Then he kicked his shin against what he was looking for and picked it up, a wooden packing-box of fairly stout construction. He set this against the wall of the house under the window and stood upon it with his head tucked into the inverted V of the nearest banana ban­ner, waving gently, like its fellows, in the land wind. Its long edges were split here and there and through these tatters, perfectly masked, Fleming looked into the room.

  There were four men there besides Har­per, and Fleming knew all but one of them. One was Harper’s regular mate; another his supercargo. The fourth was a Suva scalawag and the fifth matched him. They were a hard-bitten, reckless lot, hawk-nosed, save for the super­cargo, who had had his flattened in a forgotten fight. Harper alone showed any neatness, any attempt at ordinary clean­li­ness. Two wore beards of ancient growth; two more had not shaved for days. And their faces were in­flamed with gross appetites long in­dulged, as they ate, save for Harper, like a litter of pigs at a trough.

  They drank and they boasted and they told rotten stories, and Fleming kept doggo, waiting his time.

  At last the dishes were shoved to one side and Harper and his mate got up. Harper took down a metal box from a shelf and un­locked it. The mate took a bag of chamois leather from inside his shirt. Harper set the box on the table unopened but the mate poured from the chamois bag on to the wood a pattering rain of pearls, high­lighted in iridescent beauty by the lamp, sheeny soft in the shadow.

  Fleming puckered his lips in a
silent whistle. Surely such pearls had come from a virgin patch. He knew pearls, and there were one or two of the larger of these gems, being handled by grimy, ­callused fingers, that were worth a cool thousand apiece, traders’ prices. Pearls before swine, he thought, as the gleam­ing globules passed from hand to hand, roughly appraised.

  “A good lot," said Harper. “With what there is here in the box, boys, we’ve got fifty thousand dollars in plain sight. There ought to be twenty thousand more in what’s left of the shell on the beach, to say nothing of what we’ll bring up. Then there’s the shell. Call it a hundred thousand dollars and you’re below the mark rather than above it.’’

  “Twenty thou’ apiece,’’ said the mate. “And each of us four to give Har­per ten per cent of our even shares for swingin’ the thing, harpoonin’ the widder inter shiftin’ the lease, an’ the use of the schoon­er. Not so bad!’’

  Fleming hunched his shoulders, his body tensing for action. But the stage was not quite set to his liking.

  “Fair enough,’’ said another, the scal­a­wag from Suva, known to Fleming as “Bush’’ Dickson. “Fa-a-ir enough. How about that — Kanaka, Banjo, or Tambo, or whatever his name was? S’pose he squeals that we pulled this thing ’fore we had the right. They’re kind of techy down Suva way ’bout the protection of their leases.’’

  “You haven’t got rid of the Suva jail itch yet, Bush,’’ said Harper, and the rest laughed at the pointed jest while Dick­son grinned stupidly. “Don’t you worry about Tumba. I’ve fixed it so that Tumba draws a little money each week — only for a week or two, but he don’t know that — from Mike Lamed, who runs the Ambergris Hotel and don’t mind selling booze to Kanakas. I told Tumba it was a sort of pension from the widow. The point is that he has to go to Larned’s to get the cash — it’s seven dollars a week and Mike is to give him a dollar a day. Mike is going to see that Tumba keeps drunk into the bar­gain. That’s an easy job so long as he shows Tumba the bottle. After two weeks, if Tumba says anything, they’ll think he dreamed it. They won’t believe him on dates; a Kan­aka’s word don’t go far any­how. So don’t worry about Tumba.’’

  “Some fox, our skipper, I’ll say,’’ said Dickson. “Let’s see the rest of them pearls.’’

  Harper assented without demur. It seemed to be a party agreement that the pearls were to be kept in plain sight and inspected upon request of any member of the gang, like the books of a stock ­corpora­tion. The supercargo scooped up the loose pearls and put them into a small wooden calabash. Harper took an­other chamois bag from the box, and a small canvas sack.

  “Baroques here,’’ he said, tapping the canvas poke.

  Then he added the contents of the chamois bag to the pearls in the bowl. The glistening heap pyramided above the rim. Fleming inched his head along the inverted trough of the banana leaf, draw­ing his gun from the holster. There was just one other thing. . . .

  “That the agreement with the ­wid­der?’’ asked the diver, reaching for a paper. “I ain’t seen that afore. How’s it go?’’

  Harper took the document and un­folded it under the lamp. He parted his lips for speech but none ever left them.

  “Hands up, the bunch of you! Ten hands! Fifty fingers! Up! And high! Up!’’

  Fleming was lolling in the window, his automatic shifting steadily in an arc that covered all the five.

  “Get back into that corner!’’ he said. “Line up! That’s the idea. Good evening, Harper. And keep on trying to touch the roof or you’ll be scratching dirt. I mean business, you pack of thieving hounds.’’

  Fleming was ready to shoot if need be, and they knew it. Nothing less would have kept them passive as Fleming set a knee across the sill and eased himself into the room, his gun-barrel never ­wa­vering. Their eyes glared like those of sud­denly thwarted devils as he slid into his pocket the lease transfer and emptied the calabash of its pearls with one hand into his bandan­na handkerchief, which he then placed in his pocket. The gums and teeth of the quin­tet were drawn back in wolf-snarls as Flem­ing backed up to the window and eased out on to his box. He had ripped away the rotten netting with­out a sound before he made his ap­pearance. Once more he lolled across the sill.

  “Good night, Harper,’’ he said.

  “I’ll cut your heart out,’’ said Har­per, his words bitter with venom, “if I have to trail you from here to Madagascar.“

  “Try Levuka first, Harper,’’ said Flem­ing, smiling. “More likely to find me there — or on Tamotu.’’

  He jumped lightly from his stand, turned, and raced through the dark, ­deserted gar­den. Behind him, the room broke into an uproar. From the window came a volley of pistol shots, the bullets tearing through the leaves and stalks as Fleming, head down, broke for the bush. He could hear the five swearing among themselves.

  “He’s making for the mountain, God damn him!’’

  “Goin’ to circle round to the beach!’’

  “Where’s his Goddamned boat?’’

  The blundering crash of pursuit sounded in Fleming’s rear. Then some one — Har­per by the voice — yelled for the Malaitan boys. And then there was silence, save for the noise of Fleming’s own going.

  But he knew that Harper had done the right thing, had set the Malaitan boys, swift and sure as bloodhounds, on his trail. He came to the edge of the bush, where it broke up into clumps before it faded away on the hard lava of the moun­tain ridges. Between two of these clumps he darted and instantly a red flare stabbed the dark and a bullet went singing high and to the left.

  “That is a Malaitan,’’ Fleming de­cided. “They’re bum shots; that’s one blessing. Rifle, at that!’’

  His guess was proven as the man who had fired at him let out a loud “Ey­ah-a-ah!’’ giving tongue like a dog. And like a fox Fleming went up the cone in the dark, helped by the starlight, but keep­ing in the shadows wherever cleft or gully offered.

  The gap showed above him, a cluster of stars caught in its deep cup. Then the stars were blotted out by the swift, silent passage of a shadowy, silhouetted figure — a native, naked save for a sulu cloth, bearing a rifle. The Malaitans, guess­ing his exit or knowing it the only one, had outstripped him on the trail and cut him off, barring him until the white men caught up.

  Fleming’s breath was short, his heart pounding and his lungs panting from the burst he had maintained all the way up the steep slopes. The figure had passed, merg­ing into some rock crevice before Fleming could aim and fire.

  Back of him sounded a tinkle, the fall of a scrap of weathered obsidian dislodged by a naked foot to a ledge of lava. Flem­ing was sandwiched. He turned to the sidewall of the cleft, feeling for a niche, hooking his fingers into it and muscling himself up until his rubbered toes caught a hold. He remembered ­hav­ing seen the suggestion of a ledge on this side of the pass when he had come through, and now he was forced to take the desperate chance, also to risk a fall of rock like that which had betrayed the man back of him, who even now was stealing along hoping to catch glimpses or sound or smell of Fleming.

  Fleming found his ledge and crabbed along it till the sea-wind blew on his face, turned to the rock. He knew he had reached the mouth of the gap. With infinite care he faced about, fingered for and found a clutch and gazed down. Fifteen feet below him, in the saddle of the pass, his black body merged with the cliff, his head thrust forward, peering, listening, sniffing for the first sign of the fugitive white man, was a Malaitan, still as if hewn out of the solid rock. The glint of starlight on his rifle barrel first be­trayed him. Inch by inch Fleming stooped and then literally swooped down upon the man, lighting on him in the perilous footing of the pass, landing be­tween the man’s shoulders and smiting with the heavy automatic. The end of the muzzle jarred against the savage’s tough, thick skull behind the ear and he passed out of any control of sense or muscle.

  Below, Fleming saw the sloop com­ing up on an inshore tack. Apparently Ngiki had heard the sound of firing. The vessel was little more th
an a shadow, save for the streaks of sea-fire that made up her wake. Down the steep declivity Flem­ing slid and leaped, expecting every moment to find himself targeted. But he was close to the bottom before a gun was fired, and that at random, for he could not be well seen from above. But presently he would be a shining mark as he swam off to the sloop. To say nothing of the sharks. A bullet thudded and flattened on the rock ledge at his feet as he ran out from the cliff face, shouting to Ngiki, thankful that the tide was at flood because of the depth it would give him for the dive, and took a header into the heart of a high comber streaked with phosphor.

  Bullets spattered about him as his head came clear and he struck out hand-over­hand for the sloop. Ngiki called to him:

  “Look out for s’ark! Rope at stern.’’

  He saw the line trailing and made for it as the sloop lunged past. The flashes were coming from the cliff fast as he rolled when he caught the rope and began to haul himself in. Ngiki had to watch the wheel in those waters. But the aim from above was poor. Seemingly the white men had not come up or had gone back. He felt pretty certain that the shots that had come so close were white marks­man­ship.

  Suddenly Fleming saw Ngiki appear above the taffrail, the wheel abandoned, reaching for the line and hauling.

  “S’ark, saka, s’ark!’’ he gasped. “Hurry!’’

  Fleming hoisted himself from the water, thankful for the flat counter that gave him a temporary foothold, as Ngiki leaned far over and caught him in the hollow of one knee. Fleming managed to surmount the rail and the two men went rolling together to the wheel, where Fleming jumped to his feet and controlled the spokes just as a williwaw flurried down through the gap in the cone and almost set the sloop aback.