Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories. Becke Louis
night, as the captain of the Palestine slept upon the skylight, old Rimé, who, with the child, lay upon the deck just beneath Packenham, rose softly to his knees and peered into the white man’s face. He was sleeping soundly. Rimé touched his grandchild with his foot. She awoke, and together they pressed their lips to the skipper’s hand. Then, without a sound, they stole along the deck, clambered over the brig’s low side, dropped into the water and swam ashore.
When daylight came the Palestine was rolling heavily to a sweeping westerly swell, with the wind piping hard through her cordage as she strained at her cable. The absence of old Rimé and the child was not discovered till coffee time; the mate thought they had gone to sleep in the hold.
“They’ve swum ashore in the night, Pack,” said the supercargo to Packenham. “I believe the old fellow will be content to die of starvation—hallo, here’s Mac coming off in his boat!”
In less than ten minutes the trader’s boat was close to the ship, and Macpherson, bringing her up to the wind close under the brig’s stern, hailed Packenham.
“Hae ye seen anything of the old man Rimé?”
“No,” answered the captain; “the old fool cleared out last night. Isn’t he on shore?”
“No. And there’s a canoe missing from the beach, and I believe the auld Papist fule has taken the wee bit lassie wi’ him, and thinks he can get to Ponape, whaur there’s ‘Katolikos’ in plenty. And Ponape is sax hundred miles awa’.”
“Well, come aboard and get some breakfast.”
“Man, I’m going after the old fule! He’s got no sail and canna be twenty mile awa’. I’ll pick him up before he gets to Milli Lagoon, which is only saxty miles from here.”
Packenham swore. “You infernal ass! Are you going to sea in a breeze like this by yourself? Where’s your crew?”
“The deevils wadna’ come wi’ me to look for a Papist. And I’m not going to let the auld fule perish.”
“Then come alongside and take a couple of our Savage Island boys. I can spare them.”
“No, no, captain. I’m not going tae delay ye when ye’re bound to the eastward and I’m going the ither way. Ye’ll find me here safe enough when ye come back in anither month. And I’ll pick up the auld deevil and the wee bit lassie before mid-day.”
And then, with his red beard spreading out across his shoulders, Macpherson let his boat pay off before the wind. In an hour he was out of sight.
Three weeks afterwards the Sadie Perkins sperm whaler of New Bedford, came across a boat, five hundred miles west of Mâdurô. In the stern sheets lay that which had once been Macpherson, the “auld fule Papist, and the wee bit lassie.”
A MAN OF IMPULSE
Blackett, the new trader at Guadalcanar in the Solomons, was entertaining a visitor, an old fellow from a station fifty miles distant, who had sailed over in his cutter to “have a pitch” with his nearest white neighbour. And the new man—new to this particular island—made much of his grizzled visitor and listened politely to the veteran’s advice on many subjects, ranging from “doctoring” of perished tobacco with molasses to the barter of a Tower musket for a “werry nice gal.”
The new trader’s house looked “snugger’n anything he’d ever seed,” so the old trader had told him; and Blackett was pleased and very liberal with the liquor. He had been but a few months on the island, and already his house was furnished, in a rude fashion, better than that of any other trader in the region. He was a good host; and the captains of the Fiji, Queensland, and Samoan “blackbirders” liked to visit him and loll about the spacious sitting-room and drink his grog and play cards—and tell him that his wife was “the smartest and prettiest woman in the group.”
Blackett was especially vain of the young Bonin Island half-caste wife who had followed his varying fortunes from her home in the far north-west Pacific to the solitary, ghostly outlier of Polynesia—lonely Easter Island, and thence to and fro amongst a hundred other islands. He was vain of her beauty—the beauty that had led him to almost abandon any intention of returning to civilisation; he was vain of the dark, passionate eyes, the soft, wavy hair, and the proud little mouth inherited from her Lusitanian father. Of this latter person, however, neither Blackett nor Cerita, his wife, were over-proud—he was a notorious old scamp and ex-pirate, even for that part of the Pacific, and Cerita knew that Blackett had simply bought her from him as he would buy a boat, or a bolt of canvas.
Blackett, finding it impossible to make old Hutton drunk or get him to turn in, resigned himself entirely to the old pirate, who, glancing to the far end of the room, to where Cerita and his own wife, a tall, lithe-limbed Aoba woman, were lying together on a mat smoking cigarettes, proceeded to pour out the story of his countless murders and minor villainies.
Blackett himself was a negatively-moral man. He could shoot a native if necessity demanded, but would not do so hastily; and the old trader’s brutal delight in recounting his pot-shots only excited a disgust which soon became visible in his face.
“That’s all right, Mr. Blackett,” said Hutton, with a hideous grin distorting his monkeyish visage; “I’m only a-tellin’ you of these here things for your own good,… an’ I ain’t afeered of no man-o’-war a-collarin’ me. This here island is a place where you’ve got to sleep with one eye open, an’ the moment you sees a nigger lookin’ crooked at you put a lead pill in him—that is, if he’s a stranger from somewheres. An’ the more you shoots the better you’ll get on with your own nigs; they likes you more and treats you better.”
With a weary gesture, Blackett rose from his seat. “Thank you, Hutton, for your advice. If I thought a nigger meant to send an arrow or a spear through me I’d try to get the drop on him first. But I couldn’t kill any one in cold blood on mere suspicion. I could no more do that than—than you could kill that Aoba wife of yours over there.”
Old Hutton rose, too, and put a detaining hand on Blackett. “Look here, now, an’ I suppose you think I’m lyin’. If I thought that that there Aoba wench was foolin’ me in any way—sech as givin’ away my tobacco to a nigger buck, I’d have to wentilate her yaller hide or get laid out myself.”
Blackett shuddered. “I’m going to turn in. Let us have another drink, Hutton. If the Dutch firm’s schooner shows up this month I’ll clear out of this accursed hole. I hate the place, and so does my woman.” He used the term “woman” instead of wife purely out of deference to Island custom; but Hutton noticed it.
“Ain’t she really your wife?” he asked inquisitively.
“No—yes—what the devil does it matter to you?” And Blackett, whose patience had quite worn out, filled the glasses, and passed one to his visitor, who uncouthly apologised. Then the two shook hands and laughed.
The night was close and sultry, and Cerita was lying on the cane-framed bed, fanning herself languidly. The man was leaning, with his face turned from her, against the open window, and looking out into the jungle blackness that encompassed the house. He was thinking of Hutton’s query, “Ain’t she really your wife?” His wife! No; but she would be yet. He would leave this infernal island, where one never knew when he might get a poisoned arrow or spear into him. He was making money here, yes; but money wasn’t worth dying for. And ‘Rita was more than money to him. She had been the best little woman in the world to him—for all her furious temper.
“Yes, he would leave these blackguardly Solomons, with their hordes of savage cannibals,… and go back to the eastward again,… and Sydney, too. He could easily stow her away in some quiet house while he went and saw his people.” And so Blackett thought and smoked away till ‘Rita’s voice startled him.
“Give me a match, Harry: I want to smoke. I can’t sleep, it’s so hot, and my arm is tired fanning, and the screen is full of mosquitoes. That devil of a girl—where is she?”
“There!” said Blackett, pointing to beneath the bed, where Europuai, his wife’s attendant, lay rolled up