Джек Лондон
Adventure
“Blind destiny of race,” she said, faintly smiling. “We whites have been land robbers and sea robbers from remotest time. It is in our blood, I guess, and we can’t get away from it.”
“I never thought about it so abstractly,” he confessed. “I’ve been too busy puzzling over why I came here.”
CHAPTER VIII – LOCAL COLOUR
At sunset a small ketch fanned in to anchorage, and a little later the skipper came ashore. He was a soft-spoken, gentle-voiced young fellow of twenty, but he won Joan’s admiration in advance when Sheldon told her that he ran the ketch all alone with a black crew from Malaita. And Romance lured and beckoned before Joan’s eyes when she learned he was Christian Young, a Norfolk Islander, but a direct descendant of John Young, one of the original Bounty mutineers. The blended Tahitian and English blood showed in his soft eyes and tawny skin; but the English hardness seemed to have disappeared. Yet the hardness was there, and it was what enabled him to run his ketch single-handed and to wring a livelihood out of the fighting Solomons.
Joan’s unexpected presence embarrassed him, until she herself put him at his ease by a frank, comradely manner that offended Sheldon’s sense of the fitness of things feminine. News from the world Young had not, but he was filled with news of the Solomons. Fifteen boys had stolen rifles and run away into the bush from Lunga plantation, which was farther east on the Guadalcanal coast. And from the bush they had sent word that they were coming back to wipe out the three white men in charge, while two of the three white men, in turn, were hunting them through the bush. There was a strong possibility, Young volunteered, that if they were not caught they might circle around and tap the coast at Berande in order to steal or capture a whale-boat.
“I forgot to tell you that your trader at Ugi has been murdered,” he said to Sheldon. “Five big canoes came down from Port Adams. They landed in the night-time, and caught Oscar asleep. What they didn’t steal they burned. The Flibberty-Gibbet got the news at Mboli Pass, and ran down to Ugi. I was at Mboli when the news came.”
“I think I’ll have to abandon Ugi,” Sheldon remarked.
“It’s the second trader you’ve lost there in a year,” Young concurred. “To make it safe there ought to be two white men at least. Those Malaita canoes are always raiding down that way, and you know what that Port Adams lot is. I’ve got a dog for you. Tommy Jones sent it up from Neal Island. He said he’d promised it to you. It’s a first-class nigger-chaser. Hadn’t been on board two minutes when he had my whole boat’s-crew in the rigging. Tommy calls him Satan.”
“I’ve wondered several times why you had no dogs here,” Joan said.
“The trouble is to keep them. They’re always eaten by the crocodiles.”
“Jack Hanley was killed at Marovo Lagoon two months ago,” Young announced in his mild voice. “The news just came down on the Apostle.”
“Where is Marovo Lagoon?” Joan asked.
“New Georgia, a couple of hundred miles to the westward,” Sheldon answered. “Bougainville lies just beyond.”
“His own house-boys did it,” Young went on; “but they were put up to it by the Marovo natives. His Santa Cruz boat’s-crew escaped in the whale-boat to Choiseul, and Mather, in the Lily, sailed over to Marovo. He burned a village, and got Hanley’s head back. He found it in one of the houses, where the niggers had it drying. And that’s all the news I’ve got, except that there’s a lot of new Lee-Enfields loose on the eastern end of Ysabel. Nobody knows how the natives got them. The government ought to investigate. And – oh yes, a war vessel’s in the group, the Cambrian. She burned three villages at Bina – on account of the Minota, you know – and shelled the bush. Then she went to Sio to straighten out things there.”
The conversation became general, and just before Young left to go on board Joan asked, —
“How can you manage all alone, Mr. Young?”
His large, almost girlish eyes rested on her for a moment before he replied, and then it was in the softest and gentlest of voices.
“Oh, I get along pretty well with them. Of course, there is a bit of trouble once in a while, but that must be expected. You must never let them think you are afraid. I’ve been afraid plenty of times, but they never knew it.”
“You would think he wouldn’t strike a mosquito that was biting him,” Sheldon said when Young had gone on board. “All the Norfolk Islanders that have descended from the Bounty crowd are that way. But look at Young. Only three years ago, when he first got the Minerva, he was lying in Suu, on Malaita. There are a lot of returned Queenslanders there – a rough crowd. They planned to get his head. The son of their chief, old One-Eyed Billy, had recruited on Lunga and died of dysentery. That meant that a white man’s head was owing to Suu – any white man, it didn’t matter who so long as they got the head. And Young was only a lad, and they made sure to get his easily. They decoyed his whale-boat ashore with a promise of recruits, and killed all hands. At the same instant, the Suu gang that was on board the Minerva jumped Young. He was just preparing a dynamite stick for fish, and he lighted it and tossed it in amongst them. One can’t get him to talk about it, but the fuse was short, the survivors leaped overboard, while he slipped his anchor and got away. They’ve got one hundred fathoms of shell money on his head now, which is worth one hundred pounds sterling. Yet he goes into Suu regularly. He was there a short time ago, returning thirty boys from Cape Marsh – that’s the Fulcrum Brothers’ plantation.”
“At any rate, his news to-night has given me a better insight into the life down here,” Joan said. “And it is colourful life, to say the least. The Solomons ought to be printed red on the charts – and yellow, too, for the diseases.”
“The Solomons are not always like this,” Sheldon answered. “Of course, Berande is the worst plantation, and everything it gets is the worst. I doubt if ever there was a worse run of sickness than we were just getting over when you arrived. Just as luck would have it, the Jessie caught the contagion as well. Berande has been very unfortunate. All the old-timers shake their heads at it. They say it has what you Americans call a hoodoo on it.”
“Berande will succeed,” Joan said stoutly. “I like to laugh at superstition. You’ll pull through and come out the big end of the horn. The ill luck can’t last for ever. I am afraid, though, the Solomons is not a white man’s climate.”
“It will be, though. Give us fifty years, and when all the bush is cleared off back to the mountains, fever will be stamped out; everything will be far healthier. There will be cities and towns here, for there’s an immense amount of good land going to waste.”
“But it will never become a white man’s climate, in spite of all that,” Joan reiterated. “The white man will always be unable to perform the manual labour.”
“That is true.”
“It will mean slavery,” she dashed on.
“Yes, like all the tropics. The black, the brown, and the yellow will have to do the work, managed by the white men. The black labour is too wasteful, however, and in time Chinese or Indian coolies will be imported. The planters are already considering the matter. I, for one, am heartily sick of black labour.”
“Then the blacks will die off?”
Sheldon shrugged his shoulders, and retorted, —
“Yes, like the North American Indian, who was a far nobler type than the Melanesian. The world is only so large, you know, and it is filling up – ”
“And the unfit must perish?”
“Precisely so. The unfit must perish.”
In the morning Joan was roused by a great row and hullabaloo. Her first act was to reach for her revolver, but when she heard Noa Noah, who was on guard, laughing outside, she knew there was no danger, and went out to see the fun. Captain Young had landed Satan at the moment when the bridge-building gang had started along the beach. Satan was big and black, short-haired and muscular, and weighed fully seventy pounds. He did not love the blacks. Tommy Jones had trained him well, tying him up daily for several hours and telling off one or two black boys at a time to tease him. So Satan had it in for the whole black race, and the second after he landed on the beach the bridge-building gang was stampeding over the compound fence and swarming up the cocoanut palms.
“Good morning,” Sheldon called from the veranda. “And what do you think of the nigger-chaser?”
“I’m thinking we have a task before us to train him in to the house-boys,” she called back.
“And to your Tahitians, too. Look out, Noah! Run for it!”
Satan, having satisfied himself that the tree-perches were unassailable, was charging straight for the big Tahitian.
But Noah stood his ground, though somewhat irresolutely, and Satan, to every one’s surprise, danced and frisked about him with laughing eyes and wagging tail.
“Now, that is what I might call a proper dog,” was Joan’s comment. “He is at least wiser than you, Mr. Sheldon. He didn’t require any teaching to recognize the difference between a Tahitian and a black boy. What do you think, Noah? Why don’t he bite you? He savvee you Tahitian eh?”
Noa Noah shook his head and grinned.
“He no savvee me Tahitian,” he explained. “He savvee me wear pants all the same white man.”
“You’ll have to give him a course in ‘Sartor Resartus,’” Sheldon laughed, as he came down and began to make friends with Satan.
It chanced just then that Adamu Adam and Matauare, two of Joan’s sailors, entered the compound from the far side-gate. They had been down to the Balesuna making an alligator trap, and, instead of trousers, were clad in lava-lavas that flapped gracefully about their stalwart limbs. Satan saw them, and advertised his find by breaking away from Sheldon’s hands and charging.
“No got pants,” Noah announced with a grin that broadened as Adamu Adam took to flight.
He climbed up the platform that supported the galvanized iron tanks which held the water collected from the roof. Foiled here, Satan turned and charged back on Matauare.
“Run, Matauare! Run!” Joan called.
But he held his ground and waited the dog.
“He is the Fearless One – that is what his name means,” Joan explained to Sheldon.
The Tahitian watched Satan coolly, and when that sanguine-mouthed creature lifted into the air in the final leap, the man’s hand shot out. It was a fair grip on the lower jaw, and Satan described a half circle and was flung to the rear, turning over in the air and falling heavily on his back. Three times he leaped, and three times that grip on his jaw flung him to defeat. Then he contented himself with trotting at Matauare’s heels, eyeing him and sniffing him suspiciously.
“It’s all right, Satan; it’s all right,” Sheldon assured him. “That good fella belong along me.”
But Satan dogged the Tahitian’s movements for a full hour before he made up his mind that the man was an appurtenance of the place. Then he turned his attention to the three house-boys, cornering Ornfiri in the kitchen and rushing him against the hot stove, stripping the lava-lava from Lalaperu when that excited youth climbed a veranda-post, and following Viaburi on top the billiard-table, where the battle raged until Joan managed a rescue.
CHAPTER IX – AS BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN
It was Satan’s inexhaustible energy and good spirits that most impressed them. His teeth seemed perpetually to ache with desire, and in lieu of black legs he husked the cocoanuts that fell from the trees in the compound, kept the enclosure clear of intruding hens, and made a hostile acquaintance with every boss-boy who came to report. He was unable to forget the torment of his puppyhood, wherein everlasting hatred of the black had been woven into the fibres of consciousness; and such a terror did he make himself that Sheldon was forced to shut him up in the living room when, for any reason, strange natives were permitted in the compound. This always hurt Satan’s feelings and fanned his wrath, so that even the house-boys had to watch out for him when he was first released.
Christian Young sailed away in the Minerva, carrying an invitation (that would be delivered nobody knew when) to Tommy Jones to drop in at Berande the next time he was passing.
“What are your plans when you get to Sydney?” Sheldon asked, that night, at dinner.
“First I’ve heard that I’m going to Sydney,” Joan retorted. “I suppose you’ve received information, by bush-telegraph, that that third assistant understrapper and ex-sailorman at Tulagi is going to deport me as an undesirable immigrant.”
“Oh, no, nothing of the sort, I assure you,” Sheldon began with awkward haste, fearful of having offended, though he knew not how. “I was just wondering, that was all. You see, with the loss of the schooner and. and all the rest.. you understand. I was thinking that if – a – if – hang it all, until you could communicate with your friends, my agents at Sydney could advance you a loan, temporary you see, why I’d be only too glad and all the rest, you know. The proper – ”
But his jaw dropped and he regarded her irritably and with apprehension.
“What is the matter?” he demanded, with a show of heat. “What have I done now?”
Joan’s eyes were bright with battle, the curve of her lips sharp with mockery.
“Certainly not the unexpected,” she said quietly. “Merely ignored me in your ordinary, every-day, man-god, superior fashion. Naturally it counted for nothing, my telling you that I had no idea of going to Sydney. Go to Sydney I must, because you, in your superior wisdom, have so decreed.”
She paused and looked at him curiously, as though he were some strange breed of animal.
“Of course I am grateful for your offer of assistance; but even that is no salve to wounded pride. For that matter, it is no more than one white man should expect from another. Shipwrecked mariners are always helped along their way. Only this particular mariner doesn’t need any help. Furthermore, this mariner is not going to Sydney, thank you.”
“But what do you intend to do?”
“Find some spot where I shall escape the indignity of being patronized and bossed by the superior sex.”
“Come now, that is putting it a bit too strongly.” Sheldon laughed, but the strain in his voice destroyed the effect of spontaneity. “You know yourself how impossible the situation is.”
“I know nothing of the sort, sir. And if it is impossible, well, haven’t I achieved it?”
“But it cannot continue. Really – ”
“Oh, yes, it can. Having achieved it, I can go on achieving it. I intend to remain in the Solomons, but not on Berande. To-morrow I am going to take the whale-boat over to Pari-Sulay. I was talking with Captain Young about it. He says there are at least four hundred acres, and every foot of it good for planting. Being an island, he says I won’t have to bother about wild pigs destroying the young trees. All I’ll have to do is to keep the weeds hoed until the trees come into bearing. First, I’ll buy the island; next, get forty or fifty recruits and start clearing and planting; and at the same time I’ll run up a bungalow; and then you’ll be relieved of my embarrassing presence – now don’t say that it isn’t.”
“It is embarrassing,” he said bluntly. “But you refuse to see my point of view, so there is no use in discussing it. Now please forget all about it, and consider me at your service concerning this.. this project of yours. I know more about cocoanut-planting than you do. You speak like a capitalist. I don’t know how much money you have, but I don’t fancy you are rolling in wealth, as you Americans say. But I do know what it costs to clear land. Suppose the government sells you Pari-Sulay at a pound an acre; clearing will cost you at least four pounds more; that is, five pounds for four hundred acres, or, say, ten thousand dollars. Have you that much?”
She was keenly interested, and he could see that the previous clash between them was already forgotten. Her disappointment was plain as she confessed:
“No; I haven’t quite eight thousand dollars.”
“Then here’s another way of looking at it. You’ll need, as you said, at least fifty boys. Not counting premiums, their wages are thirty dollars a year.”
“I pay my Tahitians fifteen a month,” she interpolated.
“They won’t do on straight plantation work. But to return. The wages of fifty boys each year will come to three hundred pounds – that is, fifteen hundred dollars. Very well. It will be seven years before your trees begin to bear. Seven times fifteen hundred is ten thousand five hundred dollars – more than you possess, and all eaten up by the boys’ wages, with nothing to pay for bungalow, building, tools, quinine, trips to Sydney, and so forth.”
Sheldon shook his head gravely. “You’ll have to abandon the idea.”
“But I won’t go to Sydney,” she cried. “I simply won’t. I’ll buy in to the extent of my money as a small partner in some other plantation. Let me buy in in Berande!”
“Heaven forbid!” he cried in such genuine dismay that she broke into hearty laughter.
“There, I won’t tease you. Really, you know, I’m not accustomed to forcing my presence where it is not desired. Yes, yes; I know you’re just aching to point out that I’ve forced myself upon you ever since I landed, only you are too polite to say so. Yet as you said yourself, it was impossible for me to go away, so I had to stay. You wouldn’t let me go to Tulagi. You compelled me to force myself upon you. But I won’t buy in as partner with any one. I’ll buy Pari-Sulay, but I’ll put only ten boys on it and clear slowly. Also, I’ll invest in some old ketch and take out a trading license. For that matter, I’ll go recruiting on Malaita.”
She looked for protest, and found it in Sheldon’s clenched hand and in every line of his clean-cut face.
“Go ahead and say it,” she challenged. “Please don’t mind me. I’m – I’m getting used to it, you know. Really I am.”
“I wish I were a woman so as to tell you how preposterously insane and impossible it is,” he blurted out.
She surveyed him with deliberation, and said:
“Better than that, you are a man. So there is nothing to prevent your telling me, for I demand to be considered as a man. I didn’t come down here to trail my woman’s skirts over the Solomons. Please forget that I am accidentally anything else than a man with a man’s living to make.”
Inwardly Sheldon fumed and fretted. Was she making game of him? Or did there lurk in her the insidious unhealthfulness of unwomanliness? Or was it merely a case of blank, staring, sentimental, idiotic innocence?
“I have told you,” he began stiffly, “that recruiting on Malaita is impossible for a woman, and that is all I care to say – or dare.”
“And I tell you, in turn, that it is nothing of the sort. I’ve sailed the Miélé here, master, if you please, all the way from Tahiti – even if I did lose her, which was the fault of your Admiralty charts. I am a navigator, and that is more than your Solomons captains are. Captain Young told me all about it. And I am a seaman – a better seaman than you, when it comes right down to it, and you know it. I can shoot. I am not a fool. I can take care of myself. And I shall most certainly buy a ketch, run her myself, and go recruiting on Malaita.”
Sheldon made a hopeless gesture.
“That’s right,” she rattled on. “Wash your hands of me. But as Von used to say, ‘You just watch my smoke!’”
“There’s no use in discussing it. Let us have some music.”
He arose and went over to the big phonograph; but before the disc started, and while he was winding the machine, he heard her saying:
“I suppose you’ve been accustomed to Jane Eyres all your life. That’s why you don’t understand me. Come on, Satan; let’s leave him to his old music.”
He watched her morosely and without intention of speaking, till he saw her take a rifle from the stand, examine the magazine, and start for the door.
“Where are you going?” he asked peremptorily.
“As between man and woman,” she answered, “it would be too terribly – er – indecent for you to tell me why I shouldn’t go alligatoring. Good-night. Sleep well.”
He shut off the phonograph with a snap, started toward the door after her, then abruptly flung himself into a chair.
“You’re hoping a ’gator catches me, aren’t you?” she called from the veranda, and as she went down the steps her rippling laughter drifted tantalizingly back through the wide doorway.
