Van Horn joked him in understandable terms about the latest wives he
had added to his harem and what price he had paid for them in pigs.
"My word," he concluded, "you rich fella too much together."
"Me like 'm come on board gammon along you," Ishikola meekly
suggested.
"My word, night he stop," the captain objected, then added, as a
concession against the known rule that visitors were not permitted
aboard after
nightfall: "You come on board, boy stop 'm along
boat."
Van Horn gallantly helped the old man to
clamber to the rail,
straddle the barbed wire, and gain the deck. Ishikola was a dirty
old
savage. One of his tambos (tambo being beche-de-mer and
Melanesian for "taboo") was that water unavoidable must never touch
his skin. He who lived by the salt sea, in a land of tropic
downpour, religiously shunned
contact with water. He never went
swimming or wading, and always fled to shelter from a
shower. Not
that this was true of the rest of his tribe. It was the peculiar
tambo laid upon him by the devil-devil doctors. Other tribesmen the
devil-devil doctors tabooed against eating shark, or handling
turtle, or
contacting with crocodiles or the
fossil remains of
crocodiles, or from ever being smirched by the profanity of a
woman's touch or of a woman's shadow cast across the path.
So Ishikola, whose tambo was water, was crusted with the filth of
years. He was sealed like a leper, and, weazen-faced and age-
shrunken, he hobbled
horribly from an ancient spear-thrust to the
thigh that twisted his torso droopingly out of the
vertical. But
his one eye gleamed
brightly and wickedly, and Van Horn knew that it
observed as much as did both his own eyes.
Van Horn shook hands with him--an honour he accorded only chiefs--
and motioned him to squat down on deck on his hams close to the
fear-struck girl, who began trembling again at
recollection of
having once heard Ishikola offer five twenties of drinking
coconuts
for the meat of her for a dinner.
Jerry needs must sniff, for future identification purposes, this
graceless, limping, naked, one-eyed old man. And, when he had
sniffed and registered the particular odour, Jerry must growl
intimidatingly and win a quick eye-glance of
approval from Skipper.
"My word, good fella kai-kai dog," said Ishikola. "Me give 'm half-
fathom shell money that fella dog."
For a mere puppy this offer was
generous, because half a
fathom of
shell-money, strung on a thread of twisted
coconut fibres, was
equivalent in cash to half a
sovereign in English
currency, to two
dollars and a half in American, or, in live-pig
currency, to half of
a fair-sized fat pig.
"One
fathom shell-money that fella dog," Van Horn countered, in his
heart
knowing that he would not sell Jerry for a hundred
fathoms, or
for any
fabulous price from any black, but in his head
offering so
small a price over par as not to
arousesuspicion among the blacks
as to how highly he really valued the golden-coated son of Biddy and
Terrence.
Ishikola next averred that the girl had grown much thinner, and that
he, as a practical judge of meat, did not feel justified this time
in bidding more than three twenty-strings of drinking
coconuts.
After these amenities, the white master and the black talked of many
things, the one bluffing with the white-man's
superiority of
intellect and knowledge, the other feeling and guessing, primitive
statesman that he was, in an effort to
ascertain the balance of
human and political forces that bore upon his Su'u territory, ten
miles square, bounded by the sea and by landward lines of an inter-
tribal
warfare that was older than the oldest Su'u myth. Eternally,
heads had been taken and bodies eaten, now on one side, now on the
other, by the
temporarilyvictorious tribes. The boundaries had
remained the same. Ishikola, in crude beche-de-mer, tried to learn
the Solomon Islands general situation in relation to Su'u, and Van
Horn was not above playing the
unfairdiplomatic game as it is
unfairly played in all the chancellories of the world powers.
"My word," Van Horn concluded; "you bad fella too much along this
place. Too many heads you fella take; too much kai-kai long pig
along you." (Long pig, meaning barbecued human flesh.)
"What name, long time black fella belong Su'u take 'm heads, kai-kai
along long pig?" Ishikola countered.
"My word," Van Horn came back, "too much along this place. Bime by,
close up, big fella warship stop 'm along Su'u, knock seven balls
outa Su'u."
"What name him big fella warship stop 'm along Solomons?" Ishikola
demanded.
"Big fella Cambrian, him fella name belong ship," Van Horn lied, too
well aware that no British
cruiser had been in the Solomons for the
past two years.
The conversation was becoming rather a farcical dissertation upon
the relations that should
obtain between states, irrespective of
size, when it was broken off by a cry from Tambi, who, with another
lantern
hanging overside at the end of his arm had made a discovery.
"Skipper, gun he stop along canoe!" was his cry.
Van Horn, with a leap, was at the rail and peering down over the
barbed wire. Ishikola,
despite his twisted body, was only seconds
behind him.
"What name that fella gun stop 'm along bottom?" Van Horn
indignantly demanded.
The dandy, in the stern, with a
careless look
upward, tried with his
foot to shove over the green leaves so as to cover the out-jutting
butts of several rifles, but made the matter worse by exposing them
more fully. He bent to rake the leaves over with his hand, but sat
swiftly
upright when Van Horn roared at him:
"Stand clear! Keep 'm fella hand belong you long way big bit!"
Van Horn turned on Ishikola, and simulated wrath which he did not
feel against the ancient and ever-recurrent trick.
"What name you come
alongside, gun he stop along canoe belong you?"
he demanded.
The old salt-water chief rolled his one eye and blinked a fair
simulation of stupidity and
innocence.
"My word, me cross along you too much," Van Horn continued.
"Ishikola, you plenty bad fella boy. You get 'm to hell overside."
The old fellow limped across the deck with more agility than he had
displayed coming
aboard, straddled the barbed wire without
assistance, and without
assistance dropped into the canoe, cleverly
receiving his weight on his uninjured leg. He blinked up for
forgiveness and in reassertion of
innocence. Van Horn turned his
face aside to hide a grin, and then grinned outright when the old
rascal, showing his empty pipe, wheedled up:
"Suppose 'm five stick
tobacco you give 'm along me?"
While Borckman went below for the
tobacco, Van Horn orated to
Ishikola on the
sacredsolemnity of truth and promises. Next, he
leaned across the barbed wire and handed down the five sticks of
tobacco.
"My word," he threatened. "Somo day, Ishikola, I finish along you
altogether. You no good friend stop along salt-water. You big fool
stop along bush."
When Ishikola attempted protest, he shut him off with, "My word, you
gammon along me too much."
Still the canoe lingered. The dandy's toe strayed privily to feel
out the butts of the Sniders under the green leaves, and Ishikola
was loth to depart.
"Washee-washee!" Van Horn cried with
imperative suddenness.
The paddlers, without command from chief or dandy, involuntarily
obeyed, and with deep, strong strokes sent the canoe into the
encircling darkness. Just as quickly Van Horn changed his position
on deck to the tune of a dozen yards, so that no hazarded bullet
might reach him. He crouched low and listened to the wash of
paddles fade away in the distance.
"All right, you fella Tambi," he ordered quietly. "Make 'm music he
fella walk about."
And while "Red Wing" screeched its cheap and pretty
rhythm, he
reclined elbow on deck, smoked his cigar, and gathered Jerry into
caressing inclosure.
As he smoked he watched the
abrupt misting of the stars by a rain-
squall that made to windward or to where windward might
vaguely be
configured. While he gauged the minutes ere he must order Tambi
below with the
phonograph and records, he noted the bush-girl gazing
at him in dumb fear. He nodded consent with half-closed eyes and
up-tilting face, clinching his consent with a wave of hand toward
the companionway. She obeyed as a
beaten dog, spirit-broken, might
have obeyed, dragging herself to her feet, trembling afresh, and
with
backward glances of her
perpetualterror of the big white
master that she was convinced would some day eat her. In such
fashion, stabbing Van Horn to the heart because of his
inability to
convey his kindness to her across the abyss of the ages that
separated them, she slunk away to the companionway and crawled down
it feet-first like some
enormous, large-headed worm.
After he had sent Tambi to follow her with the precious
phonograph,
Van Horn continued to smoke on while the sharp, needle-like spray of
the rain impacted soothingly on his heated body.
Only for five minutes did the rain
descend. Then, as the stars
drifted back in the sky, the smell of steam seemed to stench forth
from deck and mangrove swamp, and the suffocating heat wrapped all
about.
Van Horn knew better, but ill health, save for fever, had never
concerned him; so he did not
bother for a blanket to shelter him.
"Yours the first watch," he told Borckman. "I'll have her under way
in the morning, before I call you."
He tucked his head on the biceps of his right arm, with the hollow
of the left snuggling Jerry in against his chest, and dozed off to
sleep.
And thus adventuring, white men and indigenous black men from day to
day lived life in the Solomons, bickering and trafficking, the
whites striving to
maintain their heads on their shoulders, the
blacks striving, no less single-heartedly, to remove the whites'
heads from their shoulders and at the same time to keep their own
anatomies intact.
And Jerry, who knew only the world of Meringe Lagoon,
learning that
these new worlds of the ship Arangi and of the island of Malaita
were
essentially the same, regarded the
perpetual game between the
white and the black with some slight sort of understanding.
CHAPTER X
Daylight saw the Arangi under way, her sails drooping heavily in the
dead air while the boat's crew toiled at the oars of the whaleboat
to tow her out through the narrow entrance. Once, when the ketch,
swerved by some
vagrant current, came close to the break of the
shore-surf, the blacks on board drew toward one another in
apprehension akin to that of startled sheep in a fold when a wild
woods marauder howls outside. Nor was there any need for Van Horn's
shout to the whaleboat: "Washee-washee! Damn your hides!" The
boat's crew lifted themselves clear of the thwarts as they threw all
their weight into each stroke. They knew what dire fate was certain
if ever the sea-washed coral rock gripped the Arangi's keel. And
they knew fear
precisely of the same sort as that of the fear-struck
girl below in the lazarette. In the past more than one Langa-Langa
and Somo boy had gone to make a Su'u feast day, just as Su'u boys,
on occasion, had
similarly served feasts at Langa-Langa and at Somo.
"My word," Tambi, at the wheel, addressed Van Horn as the period of
tension passed and the Arangi went clear. "Brother belong my
father, long time before he come boat's crew along this place. Big
fella
schooner brother belong my father he come along. All finish
this place Su'u. Brother belong my father Su'u boys kai-kai along
him altogether."
Van Horn recollected the Fair Hathaway of fifteen years before,
looted and burned by the people of Su'u after all hands had been
killed. Truly, the Solomons at this
beginning of the twentieth
century were
savage, and truly, of the Solomons, this great island
of Malaita was
savagest of all.
He cast his eyes speculatively up the slopes of the island to the