Beyond the Rim/Chapter 14

HALMERS and the girl sat snugly ensconced in a niche on the edge of the ridge, watching the whale-boat put out for shore, all four of the schooner's occupants aboard. Save for some broken branches unnoticed in the general wealth of foliage, there was no trace of the storm, except that perhaps the air held more of coolness and the atmosphere more of clarity, so that the whole island appeared to have had it's face washed, and to be basking in the sunshine.

Peaceful as the scene was, it held all the elements of tragedy. Death, under the long grasses on the hill, love in the pocket of the lava ridge, greed and murder and lust in the boat on the lagoon.

“It would be easy enough to pick them off from here,” said Chalmers half in earnest, cuddling the stock of the rifle that lay beside him.

Leila shrank away from him a trifle, doubt and consternation in her eyes.

“You wouldn't murder them?” she asked.

“No, I suppose I wouldn't,” he answered. “That's the worst of it. They'd pot us without a scruple. Fighting fair with men of their caliber is handicapping yourself pretty heavily. I wonder what they're up to now?”

Sayers and Tuan Yuck, each carrying a rifle, were walking up the beach towards the clearing; Hamaku, also armed, remaining at the boat with Tomi. Leila focused the glasses upon them as they disappeared in the house for a few moments, and came out again bearing what looked like clothes.

“It's father's diving suit,” she said.

“Then they are going to let us alone for a while and go after the pearls in the lagoon,” said Chalmers. “I wanted to bring that suit along the worst way last night, but I left it to the last on account of its bulk. If I was either Sayers or Tuan Yuck I'd hate to have to be dependent on the other's hand on the air supply.”

“It is a patent suit,” said Leila. “It has a compressed-air cylinder you fill with that rotary pump Sayers is carrying. It supplies air for thirty minutes after it's charged up to capacity. It's a bit complicated. I fancy they'll have some trouble with it.”

“It looks as if they are having it now,” he said, watching the two figures in consultation, presently joined by the natives. “They seem to be scrapping as to who's going to put it on. It'll have to be one of them. They'll never get the natives to trust themselves inside that gear. Sayers loses the toss,” he announced. “Wonder if he's going to waste time and air wading in from shallow water.”

“Dad used to go in by the rocks where the shell is. They go down like steps. When the natives landed here he was under water. I was in the house working, and I didn't see them till the big double canoe sailed into the lagoon. I didn't know what to do. There were fifty of them, at least, armed with spears and bows, big men, smeared with paint, horrible looking savages. And there was Dad, unconscious of it all, liable to come up any minute in the middle of them.

“While I was looking some of them jumped out on to the beach and suddenly they shouted. The crowd broke, and I could see Dad coming slowly out of the water all wet and shiny, the metal gleaming on the helmet, and the two great eyes goggling, like a sea monster. It was weird. To the savages it must have been terrible. Dad kept on rising, walking up the rocks, and, just as he left the water and started toward them they could stand it no longer. Some of them were on their knees, but they jumped up with the rest, scurried into the canoe, and paddled off in terror.

“Dad told me afterwards he saw they were frightened from the first. He said they probably took him for Maui, their great god, who lived in the sea and built their islands. He was afraid that I would show up somewhere and dispel the idea that he was superhuman, or they'd see the boat. After that he kept the launch hidden and arranged the mirrors. They never came near the island after that, though we used to see them sometimes far out at sea. Dear old Dad!”

She set her chin in the hollow of one hand and gazed pensively toward the ridge that held her father's grave. Chalmers, not wishing to intrude upon her grief, sat silently watching the investment of Sayers with the diving equipment, over the handling of which there still seemed to be considerable discussion.

Finally, Hamaku left the rest and ran along the rocks at the edge of the lagoon, looking searchingly into the water. He shouted, and the little group joined him, Sayers lumbering along in the center. At the rocks the Australian sat down, his feet swinging over the water, adjusted the necessary weights, and put on the lead-soled shoes. Then he knelt and lowered himself awkwardly backwards, disappearing gradually below the surface. Tuan Yuck and the two natives got into the boat and paddled slowly toward the place where Sayers had submerged, the Chinaman peering over the side.

“Directing him and keeping tab on him at the same time,” thought Chalmers. “That's some scheme for supervising pearl fishing. I wonder what their luck is going to be?”

Leila touched him on his arm.

“Look!” she said tensely, pressing the binoculars into his hands. “There—far out where the clouds end.”

WHERE a pearly mass of trade-wind cumulus showed its sharply defined curves against the blue, Chalmers saw a sail that gleamed for a moment like gold in the sunlight. In the field of the powerful glasses it showed as a double canoe, joined by a high platform, outrigged on either side and driven by a great square sail of fine matting.

The canoes were filled with paddlers, and dark forms lounged on the deck. As he watched, the war-craft grew larger and came swiftly on before the wind. Then it swung around, the canoemen churning the sea into foam as they paddled and backed water to assist the maneuver. The big sail was lowered and quickly raised again and the great canoe raced off on the opposite tack, gradually disappearing until it was only a speck on the water.

“It's lucky they didn't come in close enough to sight the schooner's masts,” he said, “or they might have been tempted to investigate. A crowd like that would be a nasty lot to tackle. I suppose they saw the reflections of the higher mirrors and it scared them off. There comes Sayers out of the water. Tuan Yuck doesn't seem to fancy the shell he's brought up.”

The boat had been beached as Sayers emerged and emptied from a net bag on the sand the oysters he had found. Tuan Yuck kicked them with an emphasis that was contemptuous even at that distance. He picked up a shell and showed it to the Australian, apparently giving him a lecture on the subject of pearl oysters.

“He's picked out the wrong kind,” said Leila. “It's always a distorted, crumpled shell that holds a pearl. The smooth, symmetrical ones never hold anything larger than seeds. He is going to try again.”

Sayers picked up the bag and the air-cylinder was recharged. This time he sat astride of the boat's bow and let himself drop to the bottom on a signal from Tuan Yuck.

“Perhaps there are no more rich patches in the lagoon,” said Leila. “It often happens that way. It would serve them right.”

“It wouldn't suit us best just now,” said Chalmers. “We've got a fine position, but”

“But what? Won't you tell me exactly what you think of the situation? Please.”

He looked at her calm face, the unwavering eyes and steady hands.

“All right,” he said. “That's only fair. Let's thrash it out together.

“We've got to look at it from both sides. As they figure it, it's a question of us having the pearls and they the schooner. The lagoon is a side issue. They've seen what you carry in that bag.” He nodded toward the black ribbon about her neck, nearly concealed by her blouse. “They think sooner or later we'll capitulate and give up the pearls for a passage. Or they may starve us out. Or they may try and rush us. They want the pearls first and last, hook or crook. And they care very little what happens to us.

“We've got the launch, unknown to them as long as they don't find it. That's to our advantage. It's good for a long voyage, barring storms. So we can eliminate the schooner. We don't want it. If we had it we could hardly handle it without help. But they are going to watch us as closely as we keep tab on them. It's a good deal of a deadlock. My best hope is to take them by surprise or that they start a quarrel between the two of them. The most serious thing is lack of ammunition. I've got to get hold of that somehow—and soon. But we'll manage somehow, don't you worry?”

Leila Denman smiled back at him. She was beginning to appraise him, and ranked him far higher than he dreamed. Through all the whirl of events since his arrival she had been inclined to look upon him as frank, impetuous, generous, courageous, but, after all, a good deal of a boy. Now as she noted the set of his lean jaw, the gray of his eyes, like hardened steel, while he calculated their chances and faced them, she felt an absolute sense of protection, and recognized him not as merely manly, but a man, in every stalwart seventy-two inches of him.

His unshaven beard furred his sunburned face, his duck clothes were rumpled, torn and grimed, but they did not hide the well muscled strength of his broad shoulders nor the litheness of the waist above the narrow hips. Altogether Leila found him very good to look upon. She made a permanent decision in favor of aquiline noses and straight hair, dark brown and closely trimmed to the well-shaped skull.

“That's the way he must always wear it,” she told herself, then, noting his steady glance, blushed, afraid he might have read her thoughts.

Suddenly the lava ridge upon which they were perched vibrated and swung beneath them. The crests of the hills seemed to waver. The still water of the lagoon flowed like a splintered mirror. A rasping, grinding sound as of thunder came from the interior of the island. A myriad birds rose and wheeled, screaming.

The boat below them made frantically for the schooner, looking, with its out spread moving oars, like some frightened water-bug. The schooner plunged at its cable like a startled horse at the halter-rope and brought up rocking in the troubled water. The whole place seemed to move as the clear sky above them pitched, and for a second the sea-line tilted as one sees it through a ship's porthole. Then came the grinding noise again with a rasping jar as if the island had been adrift and suddenly had ran aground.

Leila had naturally stretched out both arms to Chalmers in her terror, and he, as instinctively, had enfolded her in his own.

“It's all over now,” he said, holding her for a moment longer while she still trembled.

Her head was on his breast and the fragrance of her hair filled his nostrils and left them spoiled for all other perfumes.

“It's silly of me, isn't it,” she said as he released her. “But that was my very first earthquake and one seems so utterly helpless. Thank you!”

She blushed again while her eyes pleaded with him to ignore her confusion.

“Look there, Leila,” he said pointing to the lagoon.

A strange figure, gleaming with the water that ran from the harness it wore, the sun making bursts of radiance on the metal of his helmet, Sayers broke from the water, stumbling clumsily to the sand where, anchored by his weighted boots, he stood swaying, shaking his fists at the boat and raving impotently while he strove to unfasten his helmet.

It was a ludicrous sight and Chalmers guffawed outright, the girl joining in the laugh and forgetting her own fright.

“It must have given him a rare scare under the water,” said Chalmers at last.

“He'll not want to go pearling again in a hurry,” suggested the girl.

Chalmers' face lost all traces of laughter. The tremor was likely to force matters to an issue all around. The natives would believe this a fresh proof that Motutabu was bewitched, and that might lead to a decision to leave the island, which would infallibly be prefaced by a determined attempt to get the pearls.

Ammunition was a prime necessity. He must devise some means of securing it. He was not greatly alarmed about the earthquake, unless it should be repeated. The island was evidently of volcanic origin and might have been affected by a main disturbance a thousand miles or more away.

Nor was he discouraged at the odds against him. Chalmers was essentially human. He had enough of the true gambler in him to enjoy the game the more as his stake diminished. Any fool could ride a winning horse, he believed, and he possessed another attribute that stood him in good stead, an increasing desire to fight back harder and harder as the contest grew more difficult.

On the beach, Sayers was showing that he was made of sterner stuff than Chalmers had credited him with. As the boat came back for him, he succeeded in freeing himself of his helmet and at the same time his opinion of Tuan Yuck's desertion of him.

“So you are a yellow cur after all,” he shouted, “a sneaking, cowardly Mongolian mongrel. Thought I was dead and hoped it too, I suppose. You low-lived, Oriental hound!”

His language grew more livid at Tuan Yuck's imperturbability.

“The water was safer than the land, my friend,” said the Oriental suavely. “If we had tried to jump out on the beach we should likely have broken our legs. Anyway, we could not help you until we saw you. Also the boys were frightened at first, but I have convinced them that this is nothing more than happens in Hawaii every month. If you do not want to go down again I will put on the suit, though, as I warned you, I can not go very deep on account of my heart.”

The logic of the speech was good, but Sayers, convinced that Tuan Yuck had meant to desert him, could not recognize it. The incident renewed the determination he had made to stay ashore nights and let Tuan Yuck go off to the schooner. But he said nothing of that thought for the moment.

“I didn't say I was going to quit, did I?” he growled. “I didn't forget to bring up my haul, either. Look at those. Are they any better?”

Tuan Yuck toed over the oysters and shook his head.

“Not worth opening, Sayers. A baroque or two, perhaps. Even that is doubtful. Good for shell only. We'll have to try another patch.”

Later in the afternoon Chalmers saw the boat take Tuan Yuck off to the schooner, leaving Sayers, now freed from his diving-garb, on the beach. The boat returned in a little while and the two natives carried up some stores and set them down on the sand. The Kanakas started to leave, but Sayers detained them and they went up to the clearing, coming back with material from which they started a fire blazing in the dusk.

A case was broached and a bottle passed round. Tomi's voice was lifted up in song and the others joined in. The Australian took up his zither that had been brought in the boat and soon native songs of questionable delicacy were being roared out.

Here was Chalmers' opportunity. Sayers and the natives, between the attractions of the gin and the singing, were evidently ashore for a night of it. Tuan Yuck would be on the schooner alone, and sooner or later must succumb to the seduction of his opium pipe.

A voice called to him out of the darkness below him:

“Dinner is served, Sir Sentinel. Look out you don't fall coming down.”

“What is the program for tonight?” she asked presently. “Why so serious and silent? Who takes the dog-watch? And, if I do, am I supposed to bark at all intruders?”

“I'm going to swim off to the schooner tonight,” he said. “Sayers and the boys are ashore and Tuan Yuck will be in poppy-land. I'm going to build a raft after dinner and I'm going to bring back some ammunition and a lot of other things, including a razor.”

“All right,” she said. “What time do you start?”

“I'll have to go just before the end of the ebb and come back on the flood.”

“And that means?”

“About midnight.”

“I'll be ready.”

“There's no need for you to stay up.”

“Indeed there is. I'm going with you.”