No Man's Island/Chapter 7

CROWD of naked children, who had been poking bamboo canes through the bars of a stockade, fled like so many monkeys before the approach of the white men accompanying their chief, diving into the jungle from which their eyes stared in awe and wonder. Tiburi strode ahead and, pointing to the enclosure, which was literally a great cage, roofed as well as walled with bamboos stoutly driven into the earth, cross-barred with others, exclaimed—

“There are your white men, O friends of Him Who Walks Under the Water.”

Hooper approached with Thompson close to the stockade and peered in. Shadows from the surrounding bush darkened it. A few shafts of sunshine streaked it here and there with light, a dirt compound in which were raised a few. tent-like structures of palm-leaves, dried and interwoven. For a moment he could see nothing else save a few calabashes in the foreground and some shards and husks of coconuts.

The place was damp and stank of decay and filth. Sprawled out beneath the miserable edifices he made out the prone figures of men, brown as natives, but bearded with long, lank hair, apparently naked, listless, almost lifeless, apathetic to everything.

One of them stirred, feebly got upon all fours and crawled out from a shelter. Out of the bush of matted blond whiskers and tousled hair there shone, in a ray of sun, the light-blue eyes of a white man, a Teuton. The eyes widened as their owner caught sight of Hooper and his companions.

With an effort he got to his feet, grasping a staff of bamboo, and tottered forward. He stopped five feet short of the stockade, his face working with unbelief, with growing credulity, with a wild, feverish gleam that held fear. Then the fear vanished and something like hate, wan and overwrought, took place. The bony shoulders straightened, the head went back.

No one, friend nor foe, could gaze on such a sight without pity. All the resentment that Hooper had held in the back of his brain against them, remembering the crews he had sent out in their own boats from the sunken ships, remembering even his own faithful Kanakas, the cook and ’Polu the mate, remembering his own servitude, dwindled, vanished. The pity showed in his eyes. And the man in the stockade glared back defiance. It was Steiner.

Back of him his comrades were coming out, blinking, dragging themselves, exhausted with effort before they compassed half the distance to the bars; squatting, with chests heaving painfully with the effort of progress, mere shells of manhood, with eyes that lacked the fire in their leader’s, eyes that had learned to look only for fresh torment.

Where the sunbeams striped and spotted them, scars showed, the sting-marks of insects, half-healed festering wounds. One or two had filthy rags about their loins; the rest had none, or had ceased to care for decency. Their blue eyes were pallid in the deep hollows, ribs and hips protruded, elbows and knees appeared frightfully swollen between the sticks that represented their limbs. Hooper turned to Tiburi with a sudden blaze in his own eyes before which the chief quailed though he did not understand the reason. Were these not the enemies of the friend of Him? Had he not delivered them, still alive, to be repaid for what they had themselves done when masters?

Steiner’s voice was a croak, seeming to come unwillingly from deep in his chest. Hooper thought that none of them had spoken for a long time.

“It is you, Hooper?” he said in guttural but excellent English. “So, you escaped! And you have come back. In force. Or have you come back to this No Man’s Island to escape your conquerors?”

He stopped and his knees trembled. He gripped his staff and struggled for mastery, for strength to go on talking. His teeth gritted with the effort and his eyes dilated. Hooper fancied his mind hanging in the balance.

“Deutschland, Deutschland über allies!” croaked Steiner.

Hooper’s pity was tinged with admiration. Here was a man, for all his mistaken creeds.

“Give me the chocolate, Thompson,” he said.

Thompson gave the skipper the cakes of concentrated nourishment he had brought up from the stores and Hooper proffered them between two of the bars. Steiner made no move to take them. Hooper tossed them within and instantly the men began to crawl toward them, tearing at the paper and foil with their teeth, munching at them like starving apes.

“The war is over, Steiner,” said Hooper.

“Ja. And we are over all. You, you with your chocolate, you have run away and you think to revenge yourself upon me. But you will pay. Ja! For you have lost your country, American pig. My race is master. For me”

He shrugged his shoulders and all the bones of his torso shuffled hideously beneath the thin covering of skin and tissue and worn muscles.

“Germany did not win the war, Steiner. And now there is no war. I have not come for revenge. I have come to rescue you from Tiburi.”

“You lie! Pig of an American, you lie! It is impossible!”

But conviction of the truth crept into him from Hooper’s steady, almost sympathetic glance. Steiner began to foam at the mouth; his skull-like face was convulsed. His eyes watched Hooper as the skipper untied and unfolded the papers he had brought. His lips curved back over his teeth and he shook like a leaf, clutching his bamboo support.

“Here are papers, printed papers, dating far back, Steiner. I expected you would doubt my word and I brought these to convince you. Don’t make a fool of yourself and tear them up. I do not want to taunt you. The world is trying to be at peace again. I shall send you up clothes and food so that you can feel fed and decent again. You shall be taken out of this place.”

“And then what? Give me the papers. Unless they are some trick.”

“I would hardly go to all that trouble, Steiner. You will see they are authentic.”

“What do you intend to do with us? To take us prisoners? I’ll rot here first.”

“You can take your choice, Steiner,” said Hooper coldly. “You will be under guard, because there are a good many of you and, when you get back your strength you may attempt tricks yourself. But you are not prisoners. There is no more war between us. I will take you and your men back to Honolulu in a few days and from there, I imagine, you will be sent home to Germany.”

“No.”

“Or you can stay as you are. Don’t be a proud fool, Steiner. You’ve lost. Germany has gone back across the Rhine. I’ll send up those things I mentioned and then we’ll transfer you to your old camp on the crater terrace till we sail. I didn’t come back on your account, but I am giving you choice between Tiburi and Germany.”

“If you speak the truth—” Steiner’s tone quavered, for he felt that Hooper was not talking lightly—“by what right do you take me back? This island belongs to no man. You have no authority here. I will accept nothing from you.”

“Better take the papers.” Hooper tossed them inside the palisade. “You will be more reasonable when we come back.”

Steiner spurned the newspapers with a kick. He snarled at Hooper, broke into a torrent of Teutonic invective and turned his back, walking away. His shoulders heaved. His spirit was in the throes of humiliation. But his men dragged themselves up to the bars. They took the papers and glanced at them. One of them was able to read the English characters and he began to spell out to a little group. Others begged for more chocolate. As Hooper turned away they set up a wailing cry.

“We’ll be back,” Hooper assured them. “What have they been fed on?” he demanded of Tiburi.

“Coconuts,” replied the chief. “A man can live on coconuts.”

Hooper turned away down the bush trail that led past the village to the sea. He did not want to break with Tiburi, but his heart was sick within him.

“I never fancied I’d feel particularly sorry for Steiner, Tommy,” he said. “He had to have the news, and the papers were the best way of convincing him. But I think of no greater torture than it will be for him to read them under the circumstances.”

“Either break him or make him commit murder, first chance he gets,” said Thompson. “Not that I’m not sorry for those poor devils. They’ve been starved and prodded and stung half to death. Tiburi ought to get a taste of his own medicine. He ought to be fed on half a coconut a day, an old one, with sour milk, till his pot-belly blows up with gas.”

“For a cannibal, he’s been lenient,” said Hooper. “Though it was only because white flesh makes them sick. We can’t take it out on Tiburi. But I’ll give him a few pointers about how to treat white men before we leave. Of course he had some repayments of his own to make to that crowd but he has got to learn to respect our stock, the white race. How, I’ll have to work out.

“We’ll tackle that inner reef-entrance,” he went on. “Blast it through enough for the schooner to get into the crater lagoon. Then we’ll get the pearls and sail away from this place as soon as possible. No Man’s Island? That’s a good name for it.

“You can go back with the clothes and food, Tommy. Maybe Manning will want to go. We’ll transfer Steiner and his crowd to the schooner. A day or so will work wonders with them. They need quinine.”

Tiburi halted at his village. He was keen to examine his gifts more carefully, to array himself in them.

“I’ll send back for the white men,” said Hooper curtly. “I want some fish and fruit from you, Tiburi. I’ll pay you for them. And I may need some of your men for work. We shall go to the crater this afternoon. Him Who Walks Under the Water will be with us. Both Hims.”

Tiburi blinked. Savage-like, he had temporarily forgotten the Hims.

“All that you want is yours,” he said.

“Thanks to Manning’s idea of the diving-suits,” said Hooper to Thompson as they descended to the beach and the waiting whale-boat.