章节正文
saved my life, and I must say--"
She abruptly removed her hands, showing a wrathful and tear-stained
face.
"You brute! You coward!" she cried. "You have made me shoot a
man, and I never shot a man in my life before."
"It's only a flesh-wound, and he isn't going to die," Sheldon
managed to interpolate.
"What of that? I shot him just the same. There was no need for
you to jump down there that way. It was brutal and cowardly."
"Oh, now I say--" he began soothingly.
"Go away. Don't you see I hate you! hate you! Oh, won't you go
away!"
Sheldon was white with anger.
"Then why in the name of common sense did you shoot?" he demanded.
"Be-be-because you were a white man," she sobbed. "And Dad would
never have left any white man in the lurch. But it was your fault.
You had no right to get yourself in such a position. Besides, it
wasn't necessary."
"I am afraid I don't understand," he said shortly, turning away.
"We will talk it over later on."
"Look how I get on with the boys," she said, while he paused in the
doorway, stifflypolite, to listen. "There's those two sick boys I
am nursing. They will do anything for me when they get well, and I
won't have to keep them in fear of their life all the time. It is
not necessary, I tell you, all this harshness and brutality. What
if they are cannibals? They are human beings, just like you and
me, and they are amenable to reason. That is what distinguishes
all of us from the lower animals."
He nodded and went out.
"I suppose I've been unforgivably foolish," was her greeting, when
he returned several hours later from a round of the plantation.
"I've been to the hospital, and the man is getting along all right.
It is not a serious hurt."
Sheldon felt unaccountably pleased and happy at the changed aspect
of her mood.
"You see, you don't understand the situation," he began. "In the
first place, the blacks have to be ruled sternly. Kindness is all
very well, but you can't rule them by kindness only. I accept all
that you say about the Hawaiians and the Tahitians. You say that
they can be handled that way, and I believe you. I have had no
experience with them. But you have had no experience with the
blacks, and I ask you to believe me. They are different from your
natives. You are used to Polynesians. These boys are Melanesians.
They're blacks. They're niggers--look at their kinky hair. And
they're a whole lot lower than the African niggers. Really, you
know, there is a vast difference."
"They possess no gratitude, no sympathy, no kindliness. If you are
kind to them, they think you are a fool. If you are gentle with
them they think you are afraid. And when they think you are
afraid, watch out, for they will get you. Just to show you, let me
state the one invariable process in a black man's brain when, on
his native heath, he encounters a stranger. His first thought is
one of fear. Will the stranger kill him? His next thought, seeing
that he is not killed, is: Can he kill the stranger? There was
Packard, a Colonial trader, some twelve miles down the coast. He
boasted that he ruled by kindness and never struck a blow. The
result was that he did not rule at all. He used to come down in
his whale-boat to visit Hughie and me. When his boat's crew
decided to go home, he had to cut his visit short to accompany
them. I remember one Sunday afternoon when Packard had accepted
our invitation to stop to dinner. The soup was just served, when
Hughie saw a nigger peering in through the door. He went out to
him, for it was a violation of Berande custom. Any nigger has to
send in word by the house-boys, and to keep outside the compound.
This man, who was one of Packard's boat's-crew, was on the veranda.
And he knew better, too. 'What name?' said Hughie. 'You tell 'm
white man close up we fella boat's-crew go along. He no come now,
we fella boy no wait. We go.' And just then Hughie fetched him a
clout that knocked him clean down the stairs and off the veranda."
"But it was needlessly cruel," Joan objected. "You wouldn't treat
a white man that way."
"And that's just the point. He wasn't a white man. He was a low
black nigger, and he was deliberately insulting, not alone his own
white master, but every white master in the Solomons. He insulted
me. He insulted Hughie. He insulted Berande."
"Of course, according to your lights, to your formula of the rule
of the strong--"
"Yes," Sheldon interrupted, "but it was according to the formula of
the rule of the weak that Packard ruled. And what was the result?
I am still alive. Packard is dead. He was unswervingly kind and
gentle to his boys, and his boys waited till one day he was down
with fever. His head is over on Malaita now. They carried away
two whale-boats as well, filled with the loot of the store. Then
there was Captain Mackenzie of the ketch Minota. He believed in
kindness. He also contended that better confidence was established
by carrying no weapons. On his second trip to Malaita, recruiting,
he ran into Bina, which is near Langa Langa. The rifles with which
the boat's-crew should have been armed, were locked up in his
cabin. When the whale-boat went ashore after recruits, he paraded
around the deck without even a revolver on him. He was tomahawked.
His head remains in Malaita. It was suicide. So was Packard's
finish suicide."
"I grant that precaution is necessary in dealing with them," Joan
agreed; "but I believe that more satisfactory results can be
obtained by treating them with discreet kindness and gentleness."
"And there I agree with YOU, but you must understand one thing.
Berande, bar none, is by far the worst plantation in the Solomons
so far as the labour is concerned. And how it came to be so proves
your point. The previous owners of Berande were not discreetly
kind. They were a pair of unadulterated brutes. One was a down-
east Yankee, as I believe they are called, and the other was a
guzzling German. They were slave-drivers. To begin with, they
bought their labour from Johnny Be-blowed, the most notorious
recruiter in the Solomons. He is working out a ten years' sentence
in Fiji now, for the wanton killing of a black boy. During his
last days here he had made himself so obnoxious that the natives on
Malaita would have nothing to do with him. The only way he could
get recruits was by hurrying to the spot whenever a murder or
series of murders occurred. The murderers were usually only too
willing to sign on and get away to escape vengeance. Down here
they call such escapes, 'pier-head jumps.' There is suddenly a
roar from the beach, and a nigger runs down to the water pursued by
clouds of spears and arrows. Of course, Johnny Be-blowed's whale-
boat is lying ready to pick him up. In his last days Johnny got
nothing but pier-head jumps.
"And the first owners of Berande bought his recruits--a hard-bitten
gang of murderers. They were all five-year boys. You see, the
recruiter has the advantage over a boy when he makes a pier-head
jump. He could sign him on for ten years did the law permit.
Well, that's the gang of murderers we've got on our hands now. Of
course some are dead, some have been killed, and there are others
serving sentences at Tulagi. Very little clearing did those first
owners do, and less planting. It was war all the time. They had
one manager killed. One of the partners had his shoulder slashed
nearly off by a cane-knife. The other was speared on two different
occasions. Both were bullies, wherefore there was a streak of
cowardice in them, and in the end they had to give up. They were
chased away--literally chased away--by their own niggers. And
along came poor Hughie and me, two new chums, to take hold of that
hard-bitten gang. We did not know the situation, and we had bought
Berande, and there was nothing to do but hang on and muddle through
somehow.
"At first we made the mistake of indiscreet kindness. We tried to
rule by persuasion and fair treatment. The niggers concluded that
we were afraid. I blush to think of what fools we were in those
first days. We were imposed on, and threatened and insulted; and
we put up with it, hoping our square-dealing would soon mend
things. Instead of which everything went from bad to worse. Then
came the day when Hughie reprimanded one of the boys and was nearly
killed by the gang. The only thing that saved him was the number
on top of him, which enabled me to reach the spot in time.
"Then began the rule of the strong hand. It was either that or
quit, and we had sunk about all our money into the venture, and we
could not quit. And besides, our pride was involved. We had
started out to do something, and we were so made that we just had
to go on with it. It has been a hard fight, for we were, and are
to this day, considered the worst plantation in the Solomons from
the standpoint of labour. Do you know, we have been unable to get
white men in. We've offered the managership to half a dozen. I
won't say they were afraid, for they were not. But they did not
consider it healthy--at least that is the way it was put by the
last one who declined our offer. So Hughie and I did the managing
ourselves."
"And when he died you were prepared to go on all alone!" Joan
cried, with shining eyes.
"I thought I'd muddle through. And now, Miss Lackland, please be
charitable when I seem harsh, and remember that the situation is
unparalleled down here. We've got a bad crowd, and we're making
them work. You've been over the plantation and you ought to know.
And I assure you that there are no better three-and-four-years-old
trees on any other plantation in the Solomons. We have worked
steadily to change matters for the better. We've been slowly
getting in new labour. That is why we bought the Jessie. We
wanted to select our own labour. In another year the time will be
up for most of the original gang. You see, they were recruited
during the first year of Berande, and their contracts expire on
different months. Naturally, they have contaminated the new boys
to a certain extent; but that can soon be remedied, and then
Berande will be a respectableplantation."
Joan nodded but remained silent. She was too occupied in glimpsing
the vision of the one lone white man as she had first seen him,
helpless from fever, a collapsed wraith in a steamer-chair, who, up
to the last heart-beat, by some strange alchemy of race, was
pledged to mastery.
"It is a pity," she said. "But the white man has to rule, I
suppose."
"I don't like it," Sheldon assured her. "To save my life I can't
imagine how I ever came here. But here I am, and I can't run
away."
"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.
She abruptly removed her hands, showing a wrathful and tear-stained
face.
"You brute! You coward!" she cried. "You have made me shoot a
man, and I never shot a man in my life before."
"It's only a flesh-wound, and he isn't going to die," Sheldon
managed to interpolate.
"What of that? I shot him just the same. There was no need for
you to jump down there that way. It was brutal and cowardly."
"Oh, now I say--" he began soothingly.
"Go away. Don't you see I hate you! hate you! Oh, won't you go
away!"
Sheldon was white with anger.
"Then why in the name of common sense did you shoot?" he demanded.
"Be-be-because you were a white man," she sobbed. "And Dad would
never have left any white man in the lurch. But it was your fault.
You had no right to get yourself in such a position. Besides, it
wasn't necessary."
"I am afraid I don't understand," he said shortly, turning away.
"We will talk it over later on."
"Look how I get on with the boys," she said, while he paused in the
doorway, stifflypolite, to listen. "There's those two sick boys I
am nursing. They will do anything for me when they get well, and I
won't have to keep them in fear of their life all the time. It is
not necessary, I tell you, all this harshness and brutality. What
if they are cannibals? They are human beings, just like you and
me, and they are amenable to reason. That is what distinguishes
all of us from the lower animals."
He nodded and went out.
"I suppose I've been unforgivably foolish," was her greeting, when
he returned several hours later from a round of the plantation.
"I've been to the hospital, and the man is getting along all right.
It is not a serious hurt."
Sheldon felt unaccountably pleased and happy at the changed aspect
of her mood.
"You see, you don't understand the situation," he began. "In the
first place, the blacks have to be ruled sternly. Kindness is all
very well, but you can't rule them by kindness only. I accept all
that you say about the Hawaiians and the Tahitians. You say that
they can be handled that way, and I believe you. I have had no
experience with them. But you have had no experience with the
blacks, and I ask you to believe me. They are different from your
natives. You are used to Polynesians. These boys are Melanesians.
They're blacks. They're niggers--look at their kinky hair. And
they're a whole lot lower than the African niggers. Really, you
know, there is a vast difference."
"They possess no gratitude, no sympathy, no kindliness. If you are
kind to them, they think you are a fool. If you are gentle with
them they think you are afraid. And when they think you are
afraid, watch out, for they will get you. Just to show you, let me
state the one invariable process in a black man's brain when, on
his native heath, he encounters a stranger. His first thought is
one of fear. Will the stranger kill him? His next thought, seeing
that he is not killed, is: Can he kill the stranger? There was
Packard, a Colonial trader, some twelve miles down the coast. He
boasted that he ruled by kindness and never struck a blow. The
result was that he did not rule at all. He used to come down in
his whale-boat to visit Hughie and me. When his boat's crew
decided to go home, he had to cut his visit short to accompany
them. I remember one Sunday afternoon when Packard had accepted
our invitation to stop to dinner. The soup was just served, when
Hughie saw a nigger peering in through the door. He went out to
him, for it was a violation of Berande custom. Any nigger has to
send in word by the house-boys, and to keep outside the compound.
This man, who was one of Packard's boat's-crew, was on the veranda.
And he knew better, too. 'What name?' said Hughie. 'You tell 'm
white man close up we fella boat's-crew go along. He no come now,
we fella boy no wait. We go.' And just then Hughie fetched him a
clout that knocked him clean down the stairs and off the veranda."
"But it was needlessly cruel," Joan objected. "You wouldn't treat
a white man that way."
"And that's just the point. He wasn't a white man. He was a low
black nigger, and he was deliberately insulting, not alone his own
white master, but every white master in the Solomons. He insulted
me. He insulted Hughie. He insulted Berande."
"Of course, according to your lights, to your formula of the rule
of the strong--"
"Yes," Sheldon interrupted, "but it was according to the formula of
the rule of the weak that Packard ruled. And what was the result?
I am still alive. Packard is dead. He was unswervingly kind and
gentle to his boys, and his boys waited till one day he was down
with fever. His head is over on Malaita now. They carried away
two whale-boats as well, filled with the loot of the store. Then
there was Captain Mackenzie of the ketch Minota. He believed in
kindness. He also contended that better confidence was established
by carrying no weapons. On his second trip to Malaita, recruiting,
he ran into Bina, which is near Langa Langa. The rifles with which
the boat's-crew should have been armed, were locked up in his
cabin. When the whale-boat went ashore after recruits, he paraded
around the deck without even a revolver on him. He was tomahawked.
His head remains in Malaita. It was suicide. So was Packard's
finish suicide."
"I grant that precaution is necessary in dealing with them," Joan
agreed; "but I believe that more satisfactory results can be
obtained by treating them with discreet kindness and gentleness."
"And there I agree with YOU, but you must understand one thing.
Berande, bar none, is by far the worst plantation in the Solomons
so far as the labour is concerned. And how it came to be so proves
your point. The previous owners of Berande were not discreetly
kind. They were a pair of unadulterated brutes. One was a down-
east Yankee, as I believe they are called, and the other was a
guzzling German. They were slave-drivers. To begin with, they
bought their labour from Johnny Be-blowed, the most notorious
recruiter in the Solomons. He is working out a ten years' sentence
in Fiji now, for the wanton killing of a black boy. During his
last days here he had made himself so obnoxious that the natives on
Malaita would have nothing to do with him. The only way he could
get recruits was by hurrying to the spot whenever a murder or
series of murders occurred. The murderers were usually only too
willing to sign on and get away to escape vengeance. Down here
they call such escapes, 'pier-head jumps.' There is suddenly a
roar from the beach, and a nigger runs down to the water pursued by
clouds of spears and arrows. Of course, Johnny Be-blowed's whale-
boat is lying ready to pick him up. In his last days Johnny got
nothing but pier-head jumps.
"And the first owners of Berande bought his recruits--a hard-bitten
gang of murderers. They were all five-year boys. You see, the
recruiter has the advantage over a boy when he makes a pier-head
jump. He could sign him on for ten years did the law permit.
Well, that's the gang of murderers we've got on our hands now. Of
course some are dead, some have been killed, and there are others
serving sentences at Tulagi. Very little clearing did those first
owners do, and less planting. It was war all the time. They had
one manager killed. One of the partners had his shoulder slashed
nearly off by a cane-knife. The other was speared on two different
occasions. Both were bullies, wherefore there was a streak of
cowardice in them, and in the end they had to give up. They were
chased away--literally chased away--by their own niggers. And
along came poor Hughie and me, two new chums, to take hold of that
hard-bitten gang. We did not know the situation, and we had bought
Berande, and there was nothing to do but hang on and muddle through
somehow.
"At first we made the mistake of indiscreet kindness. We tried to
rule by persuasion and fair treatment. The niggers concluded that
we were afraid. I blush to think of what fools we were in those
first days. We were imposed on, and threatened and insulted; and
we put up with it, hoping our square-dealing would soon mend
things. Instead of which everything went from bad to worse. Then
came the day when Hughie reprimanded one of the boys and was nearly
killed by the gang. The only thing that saved him was the number
on top of him, which enabled me to reach the spot in time.
"Then began the rule of the strong hand. It was either that or
quit, and we had sunk about all our money into the venture, and we
could not quit. And besides, our pride was involved. We had
started out to do something, and we were so made that we just had
to go on with it. It has been a hard fight, for we were, and are
to this day, considered the worst plantation in the Solomons from
the standpoint of labour. Do you know, we have been unable to get
white men in. We've offered the managership to half a dozen. I
won't say they were afraid, for they were not. But they did not
consider it healthy--at least that is the way it was put by the
last one who declined our offer. So Hughie and I did the managing
ourselves."
"And when he died you were prepared to go on all alone!" Joan
cried, with shining eyes.
"I thought I'd muddle through. And now, Miss Lackland, please be
charitable when I seem harsh, and remember that the situation is
unparalleled down here. We've got a bad crowd, and we're making
them work. You've been over the plantation and you ought to know.
And I assure you that there are no better three-and-four-years-old
trees on any other plantation in the Solomons. We have worked
steadily to change matters for the better. We've been slowly
getting in new labour. That is why we bought the Jessie. We
wanted to select our own labour. In another year the time will be
up for most of the original gang. You see, they were recruited
during the first year of Berande, and their contracts expire on
different months. Naturally, they have contaminated the new boys
to a certain extent; but that can soon be remedied, and then
Berande will be a respectableplantation."
Joan nodded but remained silent. She was too occupied in glimpsing
the vision of the one lone white man as she had first seen him,
helpless from fever, a collapsed wraith in a steamer-chair, who, up
to the last heart-beat, by some strange alchemy of race, was
pledged to mastery.
"It is a pity," she said. "But the white man has to rule, I
suppose."
"I don't like it," Sheldon assured her. "To save my life I can't
imagine how I ever came here. But here I am, and I can't run
away."
"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.
- abruptly [ə´brʌptli]
ad.突然地；粗鲁地 (初中英语单词) - shortly [´ʃɔ:tli] ad.立刻，马上；不久 (初中英语单词)
- polite [pə´lait] a.有礼貌的；温和的 (初中英语单词)
- gratitude [´grætitju:d] n.感激，感谢 (初中英语单词)
- sympathy [´simpəθi] n.同情，怜悯 (初中英语单词)
- colonial [kə´ləuniəl] a.(关于)殖民地的 (初中英语单词)
- invitation [,invi´teiʃən] n.邀请；请帖；吸引 (初中英语单词)
- ashore [ə´ʃɔ:] ad.向岸上 (初中英语单词)
- satisfactory [,sætis´fæktəri] a.令人满意的 (初中英语单词)
- previous [´pri:viəs] a.先，前，以前的 (初中英语单词)
- yankee [´jæŋki] n.美国佬；美国公民 (初中英语单词)
- working [´wə:kiŋ] a.工人的；劳动的 (初中英语单词)
- whenever [wen´evə] conj.&ad.无论何时 (初中英语单词)
- advantage [əd´vɑ:ntidʒ] n.优势；利益 (初中英语单词)
- manager [´mænidʒə] n.经理；管理人；干事 (初中英语单词)
- persuasion [pə´sweiʒən] n.说服(力)；劝说；见解 (初中英语单词)
- treatment [´tri:tmənt] n.待遇；对待；治疗 (初中英语单词)
- venture [´ventʃə] n.投机 v.冒险；敢于 (初中英语单词)
- unable [ʌn´eibəl] a.不能的；无能为力的 (初中英语单词)
- extent [ik´stent] n.长度；程度；范围 (初中英语单词)
- vision [´viʒən] n.视觉；想象力；幻影 (初中英语单词)
- sunset [´sʌnset] n.日落；晚霞 (初中英语单词)
- admiration [,ædmə´reiʃən] n.赞赏，钦佩 (初中英语单词)
- romance [rəu´mæns] n.中世纪骑士小说 (初中英语单词)
- stiffly [´stifli] ad.硬；顽固地 (高中英语单词)
- sternly [´stə:nli] ad.严厉地；坚定地 (高中英语单词)
- trader [´treidə] n.商人；商船 (高中英语单词)
- deliberately [di´libərətli] ad.故意地；慎重地 (高中英语单词)
- formula [´fɔ:mjulə] n.公式；配方；原则 (高中英语单词)
- suicide [´su:isaid, ´sju:-] n.&a.自杀(者)(的) (高中英语单词)
- precaution [pri´kɔ:ʃən] n.预防 vt.预先警告 (高中英语单词)
- dealing [´di:liŋ] n.交易；来往 (高中英语单词)
- plantation [plæn´teiʃən] n.种植园；栽植；移民 (高中英语单词)
- concerned [kən´sə:nd] a.有关的；担心的 (高中英语单词)
- vengeance [´vendʒəns] n.报复，复仇 (高中英语单词)
- streak [stri:k] n.纹理 v.用线条(条纹) (高中英语单词)
- expire [ik´spaiə] vi.终止；截止；死 (高中英语单词)
- respectable [ri´spektəbəl] a.可敬的；有身价的 (高中英语单词)
- destiny [´destini] n.命运 (高中英语单词)
- faintly [´feintli] ad.微弱地，软弱无力的 (高中英语单词)
- learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
- descendant [di´sendənt] n.子孙，后裔 (高中英语单词)
- unexpected [ʌniks´pektid] a.突然的；意外的 (高中英语单词)
- brutal [´bru:tl] a.兽性的；残暴的 (英语四级单词)
- violation [,vaiə´leiʃən] n.破坏；冒犯；侵害 (英语四级单词)
- revolver [ri´vɔlvə] n.左轮手枪；旋转者 (英语四级单词)
- wanton [´wɔntən, ´wɑ:n-] a.顽皮的 n.&vi.荡妇 (英语四级单词)
- clearing [´kliəriŋ] n.(森林中的)空旷地 (英语四级单词)
- wherefore [´weəfɔ:] ad.为什么；因此 (英语四级单词)
- standpoint [´stændpɔint] n.立场；观点 (英语四级单词)
- skipper [´skipə] n.&vi.(当)船长 (英语四级单词)
- hardness [´hɑ:dnis] n.坚硬；严厉；难度 (英语四级单词)
- livelihood [´laivlihud] n.生活，生计 (英语四级单词)
- feminine [´feminin] a.女性的 (英语四级单词)
- discreet [di´skri:t] a.谨慎的，考虑周到的 (英语六级单词)
- assured [ə´ʃuəd] a.确实的 n.被保险人 (英语六级单词)
- anchorage [´æŋkəridʒ] n.停泊地点；抛锚地点 (英语六级单词)
- fitness [fitnis] n.适合；健康 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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