Wild Blood/Chapter 6

WO weeks later life was still unchanged on the Sally Martin, though I had acquired wisdom with every passing hour, and the chest in Williams's cabin had a new lock.

But that was putting new bolts on the stable when the mare was gone. I had a dozen bottles stowed when the new lock appeared.

Williams said nothing. He had other things to think of, and not the least was a false log into which I peeped from time to time. Precious little good wasting all that time imagining weather and knots from Singapore when he had no clearance papers. But it was his neck the gibbet beckoned for. Not mine. I'd swear I was a pressed man.

I was nearer a mutineer than anything else. Hawkins, too. We were leagued with Davenant. Only Hawkins did not know it. Raikes had gone over to Williams, and carried warnings about us.

Davenant was going to divide the wealth of Grahame of Dakaru among us. He would more willingly have divided his sheet to make us a funeral shroud, only it would have taken more than one sheet to encircle Hawkins.

Understand me; Davenant was not so much of a fool as he may appear. I had, with the few well-chosen words already set down, broken off his relations with Raikes, much to the regret of both.

Davenant could not trust him longer, and Raikes might call me—as he did—a liar, a black liar, a thrice doubly damned liar; but that Raikes had not kept his secret was evident in my repetition of it.

It happened that Davenant was, in addition to having some hate of Williams, afraid of him. When a pirate and a gentleman sit down to a roast fowl, there is no doubt as to who will do the carving. Davenant felt himself the gentleman.

Hurricane Williams was about the last man he would have picked for the voyage, because at Dakaru he thought there was a fine estate and much wealth; and some people feel that it is better to fail than to share. The discovery that it was Williams, and not some obscure sailing-master by the name of Moore, caused Davenant to be melancholy and wish for a way to get clear from what by common report was an exceedingly dangerous man.

Common report is as much to be trusted as an heir's tears, though in his case there was some convincing evidence. The man who once blew over a cliff and landlocked the gunboat of a very proud European power is likely to have a reputation. Williams had done that, and some other things that made the Germans want his head. In those days the Germans wanted almost everything in the South Seas; since then the want has grown, also diminished.

Anyway, Williams was known as a pirate; and Davenant must have felt pretty much like one who fishes for rock-cod and finds himself in possession of a shark.

The belief that Raikes was something of a navigator had encouraged a mutual understanding. The fact that Raikes knew what Davenant was up to at Dakaru assisted in the understanding. What would ultimately have happened to Raikes had best be left to the imagination, for he was only an ignorant, greedy fellow.

About the time that a new lock appeared on the chest in Williams's cabin a thing took place that rather gave coloring to certain hints I had been dropping, when chance offered, into Davenant's ear, i.e. that I hated Williams. What I really hated was not to find out why Davenant and his sinister niece were laying so mysteriously their course for Grahame's “empire.” Miss Davenant had retired into incommunicable reserve. She spoke and passed, or passed without speaking.

We ran into a bit of good weather; and the sun being warm, the wind steady, and Hawkins having the wheel and the deck to himself, I approached, gave him what was left in a bottle, and we fell into an argument about something or other. There was a woman in it, I know. There is a woman in all the troubles that come to men.

Davenant came up and took a seat by the rail, but we did not notice him. We did not notice much of anything, and the Sally Martin, being always up to something, veered from her course and was in a fair way to go stern on when Williams appeared.

Without warning, without a word, his iron fist crashed on Hawkins's head, and the ox-like man went to the deck with a grunt. Williams swung his weight to the wheel and brought her around, then gave me the helm and such a look as made shivers ripple from neck to heel.

Hawkins got up dizzily, ragefully, saying something about no man could treat him like that. Williams—braced, feet apart, knees slightly bent and neck drawn in—waited.

Every man forward had suddenly found some reason to be on the rigging or forecastle. They probably wished afterward that they had had wit enough to rush the poop and choose a new captain; but men have to be prodded and welded into organized action, even into mutiny.

And Williams had to accept a fight whenever it was offered. Nothing but praise and reward would await any crew that overpowered and brought him into port. The fierce laws that uphold the captain on the high seas denied to him their support. He was an outlaw; and men took his commands because they were afraid of him, not because they were afraid of some obscure, vague judge in a distant city with powers of death and imprisonment between his teeth.

Hawkins, powerful, huge of body, murderously aroused, came at him—and was met more than half-way. I feared a knife-flash, for Williams was deadly in a corner; and nothing could have seemed more of a handicap than to be in front of that enormous fellow, who, even though setting down much of his weight to fat, was still powerful.

Williams did not dodge or duck. He refused such artifice of fighting. He seemed to have the uncanny gift of being able to precipitate himself headlong, as if thrown; such was his rush then. An iron-taloned left hand closed like a dog's teeth on Hawkins's neck, and the overhand drive of the right arm smote again and again before Hawkins, awkwardly but powerfully, clawed Williams to him with crushing embrace and lifted him clear of the deck.

So rapidly as almost to elude perception, Williams brought a knee into the bulging belly, and, releasing his left hand, struck a short blow with the point of his crooked elbow at the base of Hawkins's jaw. Both men went to the deck together, but Hawkins did not get up.

Williams waited, his tense face more fierce than ever, and his hand slipped inquiringly to the sheath at his side. He was breathing hard, but with deliberate evenness. Men dropped from the rigging and hurried silently out of sight.

Hawkins, hand to jaw, reelingly sat up. His eyes were dazed and scarcely open. He muttered gutturally, plainly: “Damn you, I liked you!”

Then Williams did an accountable thing, for him, so unbending and molded in a sort of steel-like rigidity. He said: “I still like you. But you two fools are on a ship. Not in a barroom.”

That night Hawkins and I talked it over. I assured him with some sincerity that he had come off with the greater luck.

For one thing, Williams had spoken with me alone for about two minutes. What he said was neither abusive nor pleading, but that I, who had been near him so long, would drunkenly meddle with a man on watch was surprising; he did not expect discipline, but he would have obedience—and punishment.

It hurt, for this was the man who would throw his life into hazard time and again for anybody that had even so faint a claim on his friendship as I; and in more ways than a half dozen I was his debtor. I knew he was fierce-tempered and merciless in every way except at heart.

Those two minutes hurt more than what followed; I went aloft with a tar-bucket. Every dirty job from dumping slops to swabbing the galley was given to me.

Though he could scarcely swallow and had a swollen nose and battered cheek, I told Hawkins he came off the easier; but at that moment we were both nursing a sense of outrage. Williams had gone too far. There was no doubt about it.

“Wouldn't wiggle my little finger to save 'im,” said Hawkins thickly. His articulation was impaired for a time.

“This is my last trip,” I said. “He's planning to make some port some place in the islands. Making a false log. We'll get away there somehow.”

“Don't mind the last beatin'. I ask' for that. But catchin' me when I wasn't lookin'. No. I'm mad.”

Pause, while we meditated. Then—

“Where does he get it, anyhow?”

“That's why they call him a hurricane. Ought to see him when two or three jump him at once. But he hit you when you wasn't looking. He just goes crazy when he catches anybody soldiering. Times, I'm afraid of him. But he didn't use the knife. I was afraid.”

Then Hawkins talked. He had been to Dakaru with Carp Taylor, slaver, the same that Williams had once caused to disembark a load of black boys. Grahame and Carp Taylor were not friends, perhaps, but they had business dealings.

Nobody was a good friend to the brutal, sour, villainous old Grahame. A thousand miles from nowhere, Grahame did as he pleased. Planters not so far away from consuls and governors did pretty much the same. Grahame treated his dogs better than the natives. Most men did treat dogs better than natives.

The best thing that could be said of Grahame was that probably he was no cannibal. He was everything else. No doubt he would have been that, too, if he could have got hold of Williams. He said—or was said to have said—that he would cut Williams's heart out and eat it raw.

Hawkins saw what went on at Dakaru. He heard what Carp Taylor and Grahame said of Williams, and had decided that Williams must be pretty much of a man to fill fellows like that with anger and fear.

Grahame had built himself a paradise on top of hell. He guarded it with Portuguese and hounds. The scoundrel must have had some kind of a sense of beauty, for he had a big house and gardens, all manner of flowers and shrubs, many imported, and it was said—though who had been inside to report truly I do not know—that the house was filled with treasures and also held a wondrously beautiful girl. The native servants may have regarded iron pots and copper pans as “treasures.” Anyway, rumor gave him wealth, enormous wealth; but no money. He paid for everything in pearls, and defended his fishing-grounds as if they belonged to him. He had groves of coconut-palms, but never sold a pound; long avenues of bananas, and fed the fruit to hogs; sago-palm groves and cacao, pineapple-fields—and most of it was wasted. He would sell nothing. He did not want strangers around

If a gunboat came casually, or to inquire into certain stories that missionaries heard from a distance and repeated insistently, Grahame—it was said—would receive and entertain the officers, show them the plantation, so beautifully cared for, give the crew all they could eat and carry, call up the “negroes” and let them tell their own stories—through the Portuguese overseers. The officers would sail away, satisfied in every particular except in failing to have seen the legendary white girl of Dakaru; and on the same evening the natives that had complained would be shot.

Didn't they get enough to eat? Didn't they have tobacco and meat and fruit and fish, all they could cram into their capacious bellies? What if they were whipped and knocked about for being lazy? They were being civilized. The savages. Supposing they never were allowed to return to their islands; what more did they want than they had?

“I heard 'im say it,” Hawkins muttered. “Him an' Carp Taylor was standin' down by the native quarters waitin' for two blacks that had been caught out at sea in a canoe. Runaway. No place to go, but they went anyhow. A big bloodhound was rubbin' a flabby ear 'gainst his leg, an' he reached down an' rubbed its head an' went on cussin' the boys for tryin' to get away.

“They was brought up. Hands tied behind 'em—two old fellows. A little black Portugee, spittin' like a mad cat, whipped 'em up—an' Grahame shot 'em.

“I saw 'im. Just like that—bing-bing, he shot 'em. 'Fore they could get to their knees to 'im.

“Then he cussed 'em. Said no more black boys'd try that. Carp Taylor, he laughed.”

And I told what had taken Williams to Dakaru. A half-drunken blackbirder told a good story on the wharf at Auckland one night. Williams was there, saying nothing, wearing a beard and waiting for a shipment of dynamite from Sydney—and holding up a trader that had agreed to take him and the “trade goods” around to a little island in Carpentaria where Williams had a boat hid.

The drunken slaver told his story: How Grahame had run across him and wanted natives; and, having a crew of Samoans, he sold his crew. It happened that Williams was the close friend of a Samoan chief, that he knew the islands as well as he knew his own deck, that he used Samoan sailors altogether if he could get them; and in more ways than it would take a week to tell he was a man the Samoans liked and trusted.

Something happened to the blackbirder that night. It may be he fell and broke his neck, or it may be somebody pushed him, or possibly somebody just caught the top of his head and twisted it around till his neck cracked. Anyway, something happened.

About three months later something also happened at Dakaru. A drab little schooner, carrying about three times too much sail for her size, puffed in. Clash, slap, splash, boat after boat began to leave her—boats full of natives with rifles.

Grahame's own schooner was in the bay, a long trim little craft, swinging at her moorings as if rocking herself to sleep. She was wakened in a hurry, though. Two boat-loads of natives made for her, and were all over in a minute just as if they belonged there. I suppose they did—they had come to stay on her anyhow.

About the same time the long-boat and twenty natives and two white men hit the beach—and they didn't stop. A Portuguese or two and some dogs got in the way, and died. There was yelling and howling and the cracking snap of rifles going off every which way. It sounded like hell with Grahame's soul just arrived. But he didn't show up, then.

“Up the road of coral sand we went,” I told Hawkins. “Bright-flowered shrubs went down under our feet. We saw the eight-foot coral wall that circled the house, like miniature battlements about a city—Grahame had been working his black boys to death for years at one thing and another.

“We would have gone over that like a cat goes over a fence, but there was no need. The grilled iron gates were swung back, and beyond through the foliage we could see the big squat house.

“But we didn't go through the gate. Right there in the center of the driveway stood a girl. I had heard about her, too. The girl that didn't exist. The sort of legendary saint of Dakaru—that no white man had looked on. Portuguese aren't white. Not the kind Grahame had.

“Some kind of a thin blue silk robe was about her, one hand catching it up and holding it against her breast, the other hand half-raised in a little gesture of alarm.

“I've thought about her. One has lots of time to think at sea. Too much. And I tried to remember how she really did look. Her hair was yellow and her eyes were dark. That's about all I can say for sure—excepting there was a look on her face like a child that hasn't known fear, being suddenly awakened.

“She was only a child. I don't know anything about the ages of women, but she was a child. Not more 'an sixteen or seventeen. Maybe less.

“I caught the hazy impression of two native women peering frightenedly from behind a brilliant screen of hibiscus.

“Williams stopped abruptly and we pressed against him, circling and almost surrounding her. Most of the natives had heard something about angels. Missionaries always give angels blonde hair. I don't know why. This was the first one they had seen.

“She was surprised. She was startled. But she wasn't frightened. One'd never have thought there were devil Portugees and bloodhounds and a lot of bruised backs—even if the bellies were full—around there.

“'Where's Grahame?' said Williams.

“You know how he would have said it. Just as if he had grabbed her by the neck.

“'Father's gone for a ride—over there.'

“Her white arm slipped from the loose sleeve and pointed, but her eyes didn't follow her gesture.

“'Why, what is the matter?' she asked tremulously.

“Williams hesitated. You know, as a matter of principle with him—if not memory—he never believes a woman.

“For a minute I thought he was going to strike her aside and go on. She stared at him with alarm showing more and more on her delicate face. She realized that he was a terrible man. Maybe she had read of pirates. It's said Grahame's house is full of books.

“Williams whirled around. He's abrupt as lightning. He snarled two or three words, and off we went again, cutting across the grounds for the native quarters.

“We saw two or three figures scooting at a distance and yelled. It scared 'em the more.

“We started searchin' the houses and found two or three women trying to hide under mats. They said the men were working on a road about a mile off. Yes, there were Samoans with them.

“Off we started again, panting and straggling out. Two or three Portugees came nearly meeting us. They had come down the road to see what was going on. They turned and ran, shooting wildly and yelling worse.

“We came on to some black boys that had been at work, now scared half to death; but in about two seconds others began to pop from behind trees and out of the bush. There was an excited jabber of slaves and rescuers.

“Grahame had at least seventy-five black men, and about ten of them were Samoans. He had killed two.

“When word was passed they were to be carried off, those fellows—all of 'em—went crazy. Some from the Solomons. Many from Santa Cruz. Bad fellows. They wanted to burn everything and— You know. It wasn't Grahame only. It was the Portugees too. And the white girl.

“Bad natives are the most vicious beasts under the sun. Williams knows it—only he says whites ought to let 'em alone.

“There was a fine boiling and bubbling of trouble, I can tell you. The Samoans were all right; they are always all right. But the others were excited. They'd been beaten and kicked around, chewed by dogs and—well, they were dead set on just tearing the top of that old island off and making a grand stew of Portugees and Grahame.

“There was a hubbub in more tribal languages than wrecked Babel. They grabbed axes and picks and shovels, trying a war-dance and whoopin' it up as if the pot was already boiling.

“Right then an' there, I sympathized with Grahame, his Portugees and hounds. He must have known he was sitting on top of a volcano, and we'd come along an' let the black men blow up.

“We weren't in danger or anything like that. If a fight started there'd be more dead cannibals than were already buried at Dakaru.

“It was that girl at the gate that saved Grahame. I can't look very far into Williams's brain, but I have an idea if he hadn't run into that vision he would have gone off with his Samoans and left Grahame and his Portugees to fight it out. The first thing the wild blacks would have done was raid the house.

“As it was, there was no wastin' time trying to herd up that crowd. They were scattered in groups and raced about, yelling.

“Back on the run we started, and I wasn't as near the rear on the return trip as I'd been coming. I didn't want to get to straggling among that crazy mob of cannibals.

“It's not easy to tell about. Some of the Portugees were shooting from away off. The naked natives were galloping around brandishin' picks and shovels—and a Solomon Islander and Santa Cruzian too usually has a bone through his nose and a face like a hell-fiend. Chipped teeth, and bushy hair, and clattering shell beads around his neck. Missionaries say they have souls, these devils.

“Up to the wall about the house and garden we went. A big cannibal streaked through the gate, waving an ax. He was going to be first. Williams shot him, then whirled the rifle around and clubbed down another that was boltin' past.

“In a minute he had a guard at the gate, and we were running through the grounds inside to find what other entrances there might be, and guard 'em too. We saw no one inside. The girl must've been frightened by that time.

“We did not go to the house, but a kind of cordon was thrown around it to finish any energetic cannibal that got over the wall; and Williams and I went back to the iron gates.

“The cannibals had us outnumbered two to one, but what are numbers? More targets in a case like that. We could see that the fellows on board the schooner had taken her from the mooring and were tacking—it was an open bay with a bare arm of reef stretching out as a breakwater—to bring her 'longside of our boat. The cannibals were celebrating at a distance, settin' fire to their quarters and yellin' defiance at us.

“There was a pretty situation for you. The sort that Williams is always into. He defending Grahame's daughter and property from blacks he himself had released and wanted to carry off.

“He tried to make them understand that they would be taken to their own islands if they would gather down at the beach; but he might as well have talked to a whirlwind. Pretty near everything he gets into doubles around with some kind of ironical twist, like that.

“Moreover the Samoans, who can be stubborn, were saying they wouldn't have them savages on the same ship; and were stealing pot-shots at the war-party.

“It was a mix-up to make Satan himself wriggle about in joy; and even I grinned when Williams wasn't looking. Ruffians—black or white—might be human beings, as he said of the black ones; but I couldn't ever sympathize with his sympathy for 'em.

“I boil when I think of what they go through on plantations, but I cool off when I think what I'd go through if they ever got hold of me in a nice spot for an oven. Wrap me in plantain-leaves and bury me in a coffin of hot rocks.

“There was a flying clatter of hoofs—an' a big man, bareheaded, with long black mustaches like walrus-tusks, came into sight, and he came on. He had a pistol in his hand.

“I had a long look at him afterward, but I remember him from that first glimpse. His hair was rather long and white, but the mustache was black, and his face was big and full, a bit fat. No doubt it was usually red, with that overfed complexion of the beef-eater some Englishmen never lose, no matter where they go.

“But then it was not red. There wasn't a drop of blood in it. His mouth was half-open and the teeth stood out. Surprisin' what one notices in a flash. His lips were drawn back as though he were going to tear somebody with his teeth.

“The cannibals made as if to run at him. They did run a few steps, but stopped to throw whatever they had. Perhaps the fear of him was too deep.

“Anyway he paid no attention to them. He rode for the gate. He came at a gallop.

“The Samoans with us made as if to stand, then parted right and left. I pitched myself to one side. Grahame was coming through—and he was comin' fast.

“It's a wonder nobody shot. Because he was white, perhaps. Besides, anybody knew why he came on like that. We had seen the girl.

“Williams was left alone in the gateway. As though a panic's breath had blown the rest of us aside we cleared the road. He lifted a hand and cried: 'Stop!' By, he meant it, too.

“Grahame didn't even try to stop. He had a crop and reins in the same hand and struck the horse's shoulder—a big bay with a white streak on the chest—and the pistol fired almost pointblank. It missed though, for Williams had jumped—in that sudden way of his, like a stone from a sling—at the horse's head.

“All I saw was a blur of figures; a powerful horse with head dragged down, stumbling for a tenth of a second, with Williams clear of the ground, holdin' on by dead weight, likely to be shaken off and crushed under hoof, or smashed when the horse fell going like that. Leaning over, striking with the crop an' cursing, was Grahame.

“That picture didn't last much longer than one could snap finger an' thumb; then the horse was down, kicking out terribly. Grahame lay some yards ahead, moving drunkenly in an effort to get to his feet. His head was cut and blood streaked down his gray hair and smeared the whole side of his face.

“Williams scrambled out with sudden, fierce movements like a fish jerks itself off a hook. His shirt was torn away. The shoulder and back were a bluish red—as if he had been flayed, or had started to be flayed, and broken away. Gravel and sand were ground into his flesh. The side of his face was scraped too; and blood appeared.

“He staggered a little, an' then took a step forward, limping, almost sinking. The effort it took to straighten himself was as plain as—well, as the chance he took in goin' off his feet at that horse's head. The horse was up and galloping crazily through the garden, the stirrup flappin' an' frightenin' him the more.

“Grahame didn't have his bearings for a moment or two. He only had the urge to reach the house. He still held the pistol. He reeled forward, crisscross like a drunken man, leanin' way over, about to fall every instant.

“'Stop,' said Williams again.

“He had a broken ankle, but he stayed on his feet. He even walked a step or two. I don't suppose he felt pain just then, but a barefoot man with a broken ankle hasn't anything but grit to stand on.

“And as for pain, it made no difference when he did feel it later. Nothing exists for him but the thing he wants.

“'Stop,' Williams had said, and that seemed to remind Grahame.

“He staggered around. There was a kind of mystified expression on his face that went off at once.

“He raised the pistol. He forgot it was empty. We had all forgot.

“Williams's knife went from his hand—like an arrow. It buried itself high on the left side of Grahame's shoulder. It was meant for his heart. He was already unsteady on his feet. The blow put him to the ground.

“Then the girl came out of the house. She came tearing herself from the frightened black women that tried to hold her back; and her thin blue silk robe was torn and pieces of it were left in the hands of the women.

“She pulled the flimsy, ragged silk about her as she ran down the path. She was gettin' it out of the way of her running. Not thinking about the ivory shoulder that showed, and the silken white chemise. Her yellow hair streamed behind her, an' she flung herself by her father as if lifelessly pitched there. And she moaned, too choked for even sobs to get out.”

And that was the beginning of what happened to us at Dakaru. The rest of it was like this:

Williams walked up to them, the father and daughter, where Grahame, half-risen, was tugging to pull the knife from his shoulder and cursing Williams, me, us—all, everything, everybody, even God Himself—with a steady, implacable flow of terrible words. Williams went up. He limped a little. Not much. He said nothing, then.

It was very quiet, or seemed so, though down by the quarters the dogs were howling in the distance—barking and rushing in and out at the cannibals, who howled too, worse than the dogs. The Portuguese were shooting. Ragged reports of rifles, and yelling now and then. But that was at a distance. It seemed very far away.

Right there it was silent, still, except for half-choked oaths of Grahame, flowing out. All oaths.

He was not in a senseless passion. No. He was like a man who stands with his heels on the brink of hell, his face toward the Judge, and does not care. Determined to say what he thinks.

Williams stooped and picked up the pistol. It was then he saw it was empty, or remembered. I edged a little nearer. I could not see his face. I could not see the face of the girl, huddled motionless, her arms about Grahame.

Only Grahame's face I could see, and that was on Williams. It was distorted almost to tears; the long black mustache hung down even with the point of his chin, or below, and the chin and lips worked at his oaths like some horrible, humanized mask.

I suppose he thought Williams would kill him. The end of a fight is death in those far places and between such men as go there to break laws.

I don't know what Williams thought; I never knew; nor how he felt. I know he was hurt, hurt more somewhere inside of himself than by the flayed skin and broken ankle. The men who hate men, and women too, who are grimly implacable—they are really tender-hearted. They hate because they have suffered; and they wouldn't have suffered if they were not more sensitive, more trusting, than those who are not deeply wounded and made bitter when people don't keep faith with them.

Take it the other way around. The terrible women are those who've been hurt, and could not, would not, forgive. So with men.

I am not defending him. I shall have enough to do in interpreting certain records of the Great Angel so as to keep myself from injustice in the Last Judgment Hall, without being an advocate for better men than I.

Let it be remembered why Williams made that raid; friends of his friends had been put into bondage. The Samoans were his people. They gave him welcome and harborage and sanctuary, greeting him with that limitless generosity that is peculiar to uncivilized, to barbaric and savage people. And some of them were already so civilized as to be willing to spread his whereabouts for the stuff with which gin is bought. These were the last days of real kingly power on the islands, and such civilized natives would have paid dearly for their betrayal, and paid by the savage code.

Williams broke laws, and he broke heads, and he was often a brute, ferocious; but he never tormented. No one else tormented anybody or anything if he saw. He struck and he killed as the need seemed to require.

He was always brief in his speech. He did not question Grahame. He did not tell Grahame that he had come back to the garden to keep the cannibals out, and that the two carcasses there at the edge of the road where they had been thrown were muted witnesses on his behalf. He never defended himself anyway, anywhere. Perhaps he thought it a waste of words.

He said he had come for the Samoan sailors; that he would take all the natives that would go with him—take them home.

With that Grahame knew him as Hurricane Williams. Stories of incomprehensible audacity were told of him; how he made slavers disgorge and in other ways offensive to civilized men won the worship of savages.

“Cannibal himself,” said rumor.

Cannibalism—the crime so terrible that there are no laws among white people to punish it. It is the crime unthinkable.

Grahame stopped cursing. He looked at Williams as if he had recognized some—some monstrosity. It was as if his curses were inadequate; not that he was intimidated. A certain inexpressible loathing seemed to cover his face, as one might look at an armed leper.

Of course this was all in rapid seconds but they stamped themselves on me like powerful dies.

One had to know Williams even better than I to see how deeply he regretted—I don't know precisely what. Perhaps the flower of a girl in the torn blue silk, splotched with her father's blood. Here was contagious, shaking grief, inconsolable as if she wept over a coffin. The Orphean lyre that moved stones and tamed wild beasts must have struck the notes of sobbing virgins.

Perhaps Williams regretted the knife sent into the body of a man who, however he might bruise and butcher blacks, asked no quarter and offered no parley when his daughter seemed in danger. I know it was an effort to resist offering to carry Grahame into the house.

Williams was skilful with wounds, too. But he turned away—as if his heart were harder than the stones that moved vibrantly before the half-god's sobbing lyre.

That is about all.

With two fairly heavy sticks, one on the outside and one on the inside of the ankle, bound tightly as I could make them under his direction, he ignored his injury. He was insensible to pain and to fatigue, shaking them off as an angry man shakes off drowsiness.

The Samoans were flung out in a long thin line and moved down to encircle the other natives. He managed at a distance to make the four or five overseers understand, and they helped eagerly, perhaps hoping to see a massacre in the end.

Nobody was to shoot unless the line was rushed. He was emphatic. Alone he went down to talk with the trapped natives, using the meager “trade” English as a basis for the harangue.

He was always surprisingly patient with natives. It is part of their life to bicker and debate, hesitate, refuse and evade when they have already decided to agree.

He persuaded them to give themselves up. The leader among them was one who claimed to be the son of a Guadalcanar chief. The assurance that he and the few of his tribe were to be taken home was too good to be really believed, but too tempting to be rejected. Others among them had heard of Williams in that vague, half-legendary, inchoative way that rumor spreads farther than white men's footprints.

The Samoans objected. They wouldn't have the wild blacks on the same ship with them. Never. Let them be killed.

More parleying, and much formal dignity. Strange from a man who would not use words in explanation or argument with anybody of his own blood.

We sailed out with two ships. Williams was down for another act of piracy. But most amazingly he said, after certain provisions and supplies—with some boxes painted warningly with red lead—had been transferred:

“This is Grahame's ship. He'll get it back.”

And that was all.

He laid the course for the small schooner and left me with her to head for Savaii. About all I know of navigation is to follow the wind and hope nothing'll get in the way.

He turned and made for Santa Cruz, bumped around from village to village until every man that belonged in the group was in reach of home; then he went on to the Solomons. He put those islanders right down on the beach of their village.

There was a big feast—probably with some stray bushman in the oven, and tinned meats served generously; and the chief offered Williams the earth. It happened that among those who came back was his own son.

There is no prouder blood than a savage chieftain's, and somewhere, probably around the great heart-fire of mankind's first and common fathers, the traditions of hauteur and munificent gratitude were learned by the kingly families, black and brown as well as white and yellow.

Some days later Williams started on his way. A German gunboat—the Germans were getting meddlesome in those waters even then—from a diminishing distance asked for some intimate information, and began to shoot. Probably her officers identified the schooner, for naval officers of all countries liked to visit Grahame. Escape on the sea was impossible.

Williams did not dilly-dally. He made straight for the rocks. The Germans found a burning schooner—and dynamite. Williams and his Samoans vanished among unsuspected friends, and the German landing-party was beaten back and out.

Revengeful, the boat shelled and burned the village, and destroyed priceless high-stemmed war-canoes that had been fittingly christened at the launching by the blood of women. But the natives considered the bargain fair. There were sleek, thick German heads to smoke amid the rafters of the restored gamal house.

As I finished that book of Williams's odyssey I slipped to the side and furtively threw over the bottle Hawkins and I had emptied in the course of my narrative. When I came back to his side, Hawkins had nothing to say for a long, long time.

“What do you think'll happen when we get to Dakaru?” he asked.

“Blood will be splashed to the moon.”

“Curious—Grahame has that big plantation. Keeps it right up, an' won't sell a thing.”

“And what'd you sell if you had all you wanted?” I inquired in a lazy Socratic tone.

“All I”

He stopped. The idea was novel. He had to toy with it.

“All I wanted?”

Then with something like a snort:

“Can't have all you want o' nothin'. Not even o' trouble. Look at Williams. He goes huntin' it.”

With renewed emphasis:

“Grahame ain't got all he wants. Man don't work like that to amuse hisself. I mean make others work—them niggers. Queer, ain't it? In this world you can't get all you want.”

“I guess you got all you wanted this afternoon.”

Hawkins rubbed his jaw and peered at me. It was dark, but he did not need light for the retort:

“An' you smell like a reg'lar sailor—all tar an' dishwater. Me? I was walloped like a man. But you— Humm! You got yours like as if you was a crippled girl.” Well pleased with his wit, he began a self-satisfied tune and accompanied it by drumming on his belly. “I wisht I was in Dixie,” he hummed. Then breaking off—“I never been in Dixie, but I like the tune.”

His spirit was irrepressible. None others on the Sally Martin so much as smiled. Had the schooner carried a cargo of dead kings Hawkins's was the only manner that would have seemed unbecoming.

“Lord,” he said with feeling, “I'd like to be ap-prehended [sic] for stealin' an' eatin' an ox—an' be guilty! Plenty to eat at Dakaru, anyway. Nice fat pigs. We'll catch a couple an' roast 'em.”

He smacked his lips anticipatingly.

“Roast pig an' pineapple. Um-mm.” A reflective pause.

“Knowing what I do about him, sort o' havin' some first-hand personal facts, so to speak, I know well who to put my money on. I wisht he hit you—just one time. Knocked you so far we wouldn't had to waste no canvas wrappin' you. You led me into temptation, you did. Go on, Red Top. Tempt me some more. Ain't you got another un stowed away handy?”

I had. We drank it—toasting Williams.