Kingdom's Contraband

By G. B. LANCASTER

KNOT of men stood on the steps of one of the chief hotels in Suva. Their white clothes glimmered in the blue murky dusk which is made up of smoke from cooking-fires in the native quarters and the afterglow from the quick-set tropical sun. Dinner was over, and the smell of cigars mixed with the heavy rich scent from guavas and lemon trees and from the slanting banana-palms along the esplanade. From the upper step Grace looked across the section of pale sea to the wharves, where a big Vancouver boat was noisily backing out and sending ripples of light far on either side.

"Aye, Kingdom," he said, "if that old tab of yours was only as seaworthy as she is rotten, she could show a clean pair of heels to the most of us."

Kingdom was chewing a guava-stick. He seldom smoked.

"I guess she could do that, anyway," he said imperturbably.

"She what?" Hill struck a match at this moment, and the light flickered over the buttons and shoulder-straps which introduced Grace where he went as third officer on His Majesty's gunboat Rook, detailed on patrol duty in the South Seas for the added safety of His Majesty's subjects.

Chesson laughed. "Going to run some more goods without benefit of Customs, Kingdom?" he asked.

Kingdom continued to chew. He was the good-looking square-faced American type, with a mouth like a steel trap and steady eyes that saw more of what went on behind and around him than many a roving pair could do.

"What percentage did Hill offer you to ask that?" he said.

Hill was head of the Customs in Suva. But more spirits had been drunk there lately than had paid legitimate duty, and Hill was sore.

"I could ask questions myself, if that would do any good," he retorted.

"Exactly," returned Kingdom. "But it wouldn't." He came down three steps and stood on the pavement. "You pull out for Sydney in the morning, don't you, Grace?" he asked. "Well, I start to-night, and I'll meet you inside the Heads next week. So long! So long, you fellows! I'll be around again soon, for sure."

Chesson watched the square of his shoulders cut sharply against the sea-line for a moment. Then he turned along the esplanade, and the ring of his feet died out on the hard coral track.

"I wonder if there's any truth in it," said Chesson.

"Truth in what? In the yarn that he's smuggling liquor? I wouldn't put it past him. That chap would smuggle his mother-in-law for a lark."

"He hasn't got one," said Hill peevishly. "But if he is running crook, I'll take it out of him when I catch him. Why did I ask him to dine, I wonder? Grace, can't you get the old man to shadow that blessed little lugger of his for a while? It would really give you something to do for once."

"Bedad," said the outraged Grace, "if we had to take over all the jobs that the men they belong to can't do, we'd have our hands overfull! Kingdom is as right as the bank. He likes to raise a man out on a bluff now and then, but he's all right."

"He takes care that we shan't find out if he isn't," said another man, and laughed unpleasantly.

Kingdom never appeared to care whether men knew his affairs or not. He whistled now, sweet and shrilly, as he turned up from the wharf and threaded through the native quarters, which lay along the left of a narrow road cut deep in the hill. A couple of stalwart Fijian policemen passed him, with their foot-high shocks of hair uncovered and their white drawers and shirts faint in the dusk. Kingdom nodded to them with a curt greeting. But when they had passed, he halted, peering into an open house-front where something lay wrapped on a string bed.

"Looti!" he said sharply. Then: "Alole, is he drunk again?"

A Hindoo girl came out from under the slatted verandah, bare-footed on the dust. Silver bangles tinkled on her slender ankles and wrists, and the timbre of her voice was as lightly soft.

"He is waiting for you, sahib. He did but sleep a little while he waited."

"Well, tell him to quit waiting now and get down to the boat. Has Charlie been here?"

"But for a while, sahib. I do not know where he went." "I wish he'd occasionally take a notion to stay where he belongs. It isn't going to happen again, this game, I can tell you. Looti, Where's Charlie?"

The little Hindoo steward stood up, swaying uncertainly as he rubbed his eyes. He denied knowledge of Charlie or anyone else, and Kingdom ordered him down to the boat, and proceeded on his way.

It was midnight before he had the crew together and the little steam-cutter snoring smoothly through the warm sea, with phosphorescence streaming in her wake. Then he called his officers into the mess-cabin and shut the door, standing up against it.

"I have just a few words to say to you, gentlemen," he said. "The next time you give my crew liquor, you will do it with my permission, and that will be a long day. If I knew which man it was, I'd sack him. As I don't, I'll sack the lot if I find a sailor of mine drunk in Suva again. I am running all the risks I care about taking, and I'm not going to have treachery on top of it."

Kingdom's words were no softer than himself, nor than the men whom he faced. There was a sharp silence, tingling with dislike and suspicion and defiance. Then the first mate spoke, with his heavy, dark face darker.

"You're allays on to as about suthin'. What'd we gain by makin' 'em drunk?"

"You know best. That doesn't concern me. I won't have it, that's all. And I guess you'd just best make a note of that, or you'll find yourselves out of a billet. I'm speaking more in your interest than mine. You won't get such a soft thing again in a hurry, but I can get another crew."

He left them abruptly and went up the companion to the deck-house. But the men stood where he left them. The engineer sprang forward and shut the door. He was a long Australian, with the hot temper of the tropics.

"He is suspecting something," he said. "I told you he would. I told you we'd make a mess of it."

"Speak for yourself, Potts." The first mate lit his pipe with deliberation, puffing out his sentences brokenly. "I tell you we're all right. They'll stand by us to a man. They'll stand by us, let us do as we like with the cap'n. I reckon as we're bound for more'n ten per cent. on the cargo next trip."

"Oh, you're always reckoning on something," said Potts sullenly, "but none of us can ever reckon on what he'll do or won't do."

Kingdom usually knew himself. He had said that he would be in Sydney before the Rook, and he was.

"But it's true I was at the wheel most of the time," he admitted. "Sail her or steam her, there's not another can get out of her half that I can. The beggars know that."

"But, taking it by an' large, I wouldn't advise you to run contraband," said Grace in half-jesting warning.

Kingdom looked at him through narrowed

"Why doesn't your old man ever chase me to find out?" he asked. "Afraid of being laughed at, eh?"

"I suppose that's about it," admitted Grace. "But there's some fine lad going to be hilt up for it one of these days, sure."

Grace might have been less sure if he had seen the neat little layers of two-gallon casks that were stowed in the Deva's hold that night, with Kingdom directing arrangement in curt undertones. For they lay close beneath the barrels of tar and cement that were going down for the new pier extension, and the Deva slipped down harbour and away through the Heads with her farewell whistle shrilling out in jaunty carelessness.

This was heavier contraband than Kingdom had dared before. But there was danger in the air, and it behoved him to make what he could while there was yet time. He held her up the coast himself until the long light on North Head had gone down the horizon and the purple tropic sea slumbered under the stars. And then he went to bed.

That night he dreamed strange dreams. He thought that he was packed with the barrels in the hold, where the heat melted the tar above him so that it dripped incessantly on his face. He wanted to wipe it off, but he could not raise his hand. He could not turn on his face to get away from it. In a fury of struggle he awoke, and still he found that he could not raise his hand—that he could not turn himself on his face. He lay in absolute dark, swathed from heel to neck in a sheet or blanket, and in the motionless, close heat the perspiration ran off him like water.

After the first few moments of mad rebellion he lay still, controlling himself and listening. The steady surge of sea alongside his ear told that the Deva was drawing fast through the night. He was aboard still, then, and the men did not mean to kill him, or they would have done it already. The evil taste in his mouth and his blinding headache suggested the use of chloroform or something of the sort. He lay there grimly, with no doubt concerning the future in his mind. They were going to maroon him—probably on one of the myriad little ragged islets of the Great Barrier Reef, which no ship cared to sail over-near. They could run the contraband through in Suva by the ways that he had opened, and it would be easy to explain his absence—sickness in Sydney, a sprained ankle, anything would do.

Despite his danger and his helpless wrath. Kingdom almost laughed. It was a bold stroke, such as he himself loved. For a moment he hoped that the Rook would be on their heels. Again he hoped that it would not. They deserved to win through when they had had the wit to get the better of him.

The door was pushed open. Mole, the first mate, struck a light and came forward, with Potts and Dessin at his shoulder. Even in his pain and sickness, Kingdom realised that they were half afraid of him yet, bound though he was. He looked at them silently, and Mole's words were half in apology.

"You brought it on yerself, cap'n. You wouldn't give us a bigger share o' the profits. Now we'll have all. Do you understand that? All!"

"Or none," said Kingdom placidly.

"W-what d'you mean by that?" said Potts sharply. "The Rook is watching out. You won't get away from her without me at the helm, if she comes."

He spoke carelessly, but his pulses were throbbing. He was playing for his life and for his credit. If he went to those coral specks on the Barrier, he would die. If the Rook caught that cargo, he would have died dishonoured. Very many times in his life he had been in a tight place, but the odds had never been so heavily against him as now. Dessin laughed. His was a like spirit to Kingdom's own, and Kingdom sorrowed now that he had chosen him because of it.

"Oh, if she comes, she comes. We'll be in Suva first, once we've fixed you. And that won't be long now. There—I told you."

A sharp whistle shrilled, and Mole turned hurriedly and went out. Presently the engines shuddered, stopped, and the Deva lay in the wash. Instead of the rattle and throb of machinery and the rush of the cut-water, Kingdom heard another sound, as familiar and more infinitely terrible. It was the low, restless thunder of waves along a reef.

He kept an indifferent silence as they dragged him on deck, slid him down by ropes into the waiting boat, and began to pull through the opal dawn towards the Barrier. Mole kicked him with a rough oath. Now that the thing was near done, his courage had come back. One of the sailors—an ear-ringed Portuguese with one eye—flung salt water over Kingdom's face, and the other men laughed. They had hated and feared him long enough, and now, though their innings was short, they made it a merry one.

The red rim of the sun was pushing above the sea when the boat slid into the path it made, leaving the captain behind. Kingdom stood on the patch of earth whither he had waded when they left him knee-deep on the coral shoal, and his eyes were strained as he watched them go. With care he had food and water for perhaps four days. But in all this desolation of jagged rock and shallow earth and glittering coral and limitless blue sea there was no shade, and Kingdom knew what a tropical sun could do with a man's unsheltered brain.

When the Deva with white sails spread and funnel smoking, slipped down that track of dazzling light, Kingdom turned and hunted for a cleft in the coral rock where he could hide his food. Then he collected driftwood with a steady desperation, wading to the reefs and coral patches around and building his pile, stick by stick, with unswerving haste. If there was a chance, it lay there. But he knew the slightness of it very fully. The real Barrier was many miles away to leftward. Ships skirting that might see the smoke if he damped and blackened it with seaweed. But they were more likely to think that it came from the stack of some other vessel. No, he dared not risk that. He must wait till night, and take his chance with a fire on the highest peak of his islet.

It was a tropical night, motionless, purple, and full of great stars. Kingdom had gathered all the driftwood within reach and stacked it carefully. He was giddy and sick with the chloroform and the merciless heat, but his firm mouth and steady eyes had not weakened, and they had not weakened when the Rook prowling up the coast on the watch for unusual symptoms on sky or sea or land, bore down on his islet and picked him up.

Kingdom had five minutes in which to make his plan, and when he went before the captain, he did not tell him that he would sooner have been salvaged by any other boat that tramped the seas. He asked a little thing only. Would this gold-laced and stately captain put him back aboard the Deva with a loaded revolver in his hand and leave him to settle matters alone with his crew?

The captain had heard of Kingdom throughout all the South Seas, but he gasped a little.

"Do you fully realise what you are saying?" he asked. "Supposing we catch her—and as she is only going to Fiji, that is doubtful—what frame of mind do you expect to find those men in?"

"They'll be poison-mad," drawled Kingdom, "but then, you see, so will I."

The captain settled his collar rather nervously. There was something in the utter quiet unmalleability of the man which impressed him, from the square sun-blackened face, with its signs of suffering, to the way in which he stood on his feet. But there was something behind the steady eyes which made him anxious.

"You are asking a great deal," he said. "I don't know if I'd be justified. It is possible that it may mean murder to someone."

"I guess not," said Kingdom composedly. "They know me."

They did know him. But he knew them—knew the reckless Dessin, and the wild-tempered Potts and the sullen, savage Mole. He had defied them and his riff-raff of a crew too often not to know them. The risk was tremendous—far greater than the captain of the gunboat guessed. But Kingdom had to take it. He had to save his contraband and his name and his hold on men. "You have unusual pluck," said the gold-laced captain. "But—I don't know. They can't expect friendly treatment from you after this, and they are not likely to give it."

"I reckon there was never mighty much of that, anyway. You must let me do it, I guess, sir. I'll be laughed at good and plenty over this as it is, but I'd lose my hold for ever if I had to have marines to protect me aboard my own ship."

"There's reason in that. But—well, wait till we catch her, at any rate. You think she's bound for Fiji?"

"Sure, sir. She's bound to deliver her cargo. And she isn't expecting to be chased."

"Well, we'll see what we can do," said the great man. But it was not his orders alone which sent the Rook forward under the last pound of pressure she dared bear. Kingdom spent the most of the day lounging round the engine-rooms and dropping occasional friendly words to the stokers.

Day by day they bowled on with a following wind, and Kingdom grew anxious. That wind would aid the Deva more than the gunboat, and once the cargo was ashore and through, he could whistle for his money. For he dared take no public course of action, and the men would know it. It was the eighth night, with Molokai due to be lifted before dawn, when the lookout reported the lights of a little tramp to starboard. Kingdom went on deck, and on the edge of the sweeping searchlight he caught a moment's sight of her rig.

"We have her," he said, and went down to smoke a pipe in the engineers' mess, for there were some last details to be thought out. Mole might possibly turn King's evidence out of sheer spite.

Here Grace came with a troubled face in search of him.

"You won't really go aboard alone, will you?" he asked.

"Sure." Kingdom poked down his pipe with a deliberate finger.

"There'll be the devil to pay if you do, bedad."

"Likely. It's not me who will pay him, though."

"Kingdom, they can't let you boss them again. They'll have to kick for their credit's sake."

"And what about mine?" Kingdom sat up slowly, with his steady eyes burning on the younger man. "Can't you see where I stand? I don't handle the kind of crew you do. Mine is drawn from all the wrack and the refuse of the South Seas, and you know something of what that means. You know the men we rake out of the back streets of Papeete and Upolu and Suva—yes, and Honolulu. How do I hold my own with those sort? Because they are afraid of me. I've taught them to be afraid of me. How long do you think I would hold it if I once consented to protection on my own ship? If I can't bluff that lot on the Deva I'm a dead man, anyhow. I've lost my kudos. Men will get back on me for—little affairs they owe me for. I'll be knifed in a Sydney slum or a Tongan drinking-hell. No, once I show my hand I'm done. I've got to bluff it out to the last inch, Grace."

He spoke no more than the truth, but he also spoke less. Those barrels in the hold of the Deva kept his tongue tied and brought the vertical lines deeper in his forehead as the Rook slipped up beside her, knot by knot, and hailed her. She replied at once, swung round, and hung in stays with sails flapping. Kingdom followed the first officer into the boat which dropped from the gunboat's davits, and there was white beneath the wind-burn on his face as the men pulled through the quiet sea to the Deva. Fear had never had any part in him, but he knew that one of the sharpest moments of his life was on the edge of being.

The first officer did not come aboard. Kingdom had requested that he should make his entrance alone, and he came up the side and into the flare of the Deva's lights unheralded. Mole was at the gangway, and he fell back with an oath of sheer terror. Kingdom laughed, lounging forward.

"Pass the word that the captain has come aboard, Mr. Mole," he said, "and make ready to get under way." Mole did not speak. All along the deck men were staring. The cabin-boy, passing with a bucket of water, dropped it and fled, howling with terror. The water doused Mole's shins, and he started forward with his hand on his knife and incoherent curses on his lips. But he looked into the mouth of Kingdom's revolver and halted.

"Did you hear my order?" suggested Kingdom. And, dazed and cowed for the moment, Mole went forward to obey.

Kingdom strolled forward and scared the cook in his galley. He strolled aft and roused the sleeping Potts to inarticulate terror and wrath. He did not sleep that night. But when it passed, and he still lived, he called his officers together as he had done on one night before.

"I could have had you all imprisoned and punished for mutiny on the high seas," he said. "You know why I didn't, I guess. It wasn't any love for you. But I'm going to run my cargo. What I'll do to you, you'll find out later on, likely."

Dessin moistened his lips and spoke. Mole seemed dazed still.

"Why, man," said Dessin, "you've played the biggest joke on yourself that you've played in all your days! You won't run your cargo, and now you can't get square with us."

"I guess I will run my cargo," said Kingdom sharply. He was exhausted with the long nerve-strain and the watching, and his eyes looked cruel. "Who says I won't?" he demanded.

"Why, anybody could, I suppose," said Dessin. "We shot it overboard when the Rook overhauled us, and every round barrel of it is at the bottom of the sea, and that's truth, Captain Kingdom Come."