LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

from a shower. Not that this was true of the rest of his tribe. It was the peculiar tambo laid upon him by the devil-devil doctors. Other tribesmen the devil-devil doctors tabooed against eating shark, or handling turtle, or contacting with crocodiles or the fossil remains of crocodiles, or from ever being smirched by the profanity of a woman’s touch or of a woman’s shadow cast across the path.

      So Ishikola, whose tambo was water, was crusted with the filth of years. He was sealed like a leper, and, weazen-faced and age-shrunken, he hobbled horribly from an ancient spear-thrust to the thigh that twisted his torso droopingly out of the vertical. But his one eye gleamed brightly and wickedly, and Van Horn knew that it observed as much as did both his own eyes.

      Van Horn shook hands with him—an honour he accorded only chiefs—and motioned him to squat down on deck on his hams close to the fear-struck girl, who began trembling again at recollection of having once heard Ishikola offer five twenties of drinking coconuts for the meat of her for a dinner.

      Jerry needs must sniff, for future identification purposes, this graceless, limping, naked, one-eyed old man. And, when he had sniffed and registered the particular odour, Jerry must growl intimidatingly and win a quick eye-glance of approval from Skipper.

      “My word, good fella kai-kai dog,” said Ishikola. “Me give ’m half-fathom shell money that fella dog.”

      For a mere puppy this offer was generous, because half a fathom of shell-money, strung on a thread of twisted coconut fibres, was equivalent in cash to half a sovereign in English currency, to two dollars and a half in American, or, in live-pig currency, to half of a fair-sized fat pig.

      “One fathom shell-money that fella dog,” Van Horn countered, in his heart knowing that he would not sell Jerry for a hundred fathoms, or for any fabulous price from any black, but in his head offering so small a price over par as not to arouse suspicion among the blacks as to how highly he really valued the golden-coated son of Biddy and Terrence.

      Ishikola next averred that the girl had grown much thinner, and that he, as a practical judge of meat, did not feel justified this time in bidding more than three twenty-strings of drinking coconuts.

      After these amenities, the white master and the black talked of many things, the one bluffing with the white-man’s superiority of intellect and knowledge, the other feeling and guessing, primitive statesman that he was, in an effort to ascertain the balance of human and political forces that bore upon his Su’u territory, ten miles square, bounded by the sea and by landward lines of an inter-tribal warfare that was older than the oldest Su’u myth. Eternally, heads had been taken and bodies eaten, now on one side, now on the other, by the temporarily victorious tribes. The boundaries had remained the same. Ishikola, in crude bêche-de-mer, tried to learn the Solomon Islands general situation in relation to Su’u, and Van Horn was not above playing the unfair diplomatic game as it is unfairly played in all the chancellories of the world powers.

      “My word,” Van Horn concluded; “you bad fella too much along this place. Too many heads you fella take; too much kai-kai long pig along you.” (Long pig, meaning barbecued human flesh.)

      “What name, long time black fella belong Su’u take ’m heads, kai-kai along long pig?” Ishikola countered.

      “My word,” Van Horn came back, “too much along this place. Bime by, close up, big fella warship stop ’m along Su’u, knock seven balls outa Su’u.”

      “What name him big fella warship stop ’m along Solomons?” Ishikola demanded.

      “Big fella Cambrian, him fella name belong ship,” Van Horn lied, too well aware that no British cruiser had been in the Solomons for the past two years.

      The conversation was becoming rather a farcical dissertation upon the relations that should obtain between states, irrespective of size, when it was broken off by a cry from Tambi, who, with another lantern hanging overside at the end of his arm had made a discovery.

      “Skipper, gun he stop along canoe!” was his cry.

      Van Horn, with a leap, was at the rail and peering down over the barbed wire. Ishikola, despite his twisted body, was only seconds behind him.

      “What name that fella gun stop ’m along bottom?” Van Horn indignantly demanded.

      The dandy, in the stern, with a careless look upward, tried with his foot to shove over the green leaves so as to cover the out-jutting butts of several rifles, but made the matter worse by exposing them more fully. He bent to rake the leaves over with his hand, but sat swiftly upright when Van Horn roared at him:

      “Stand clear! Keep ’m fella hand belong you long way big bit!”

      Van Horn turned on Ishikola, and simulated wrath which he did not feel against the ancient and ever-recurrent trick.

      “What name you come alongside, gun he stop along canoe belong you?” he demanded.

      The old salt-water chief rolled his one eye and blinked a fair simulation of stupidity and innocence.

      “My word, me cross along you too much,” Van Horn continued. “Ishikola, you plenty bad fella boy. You get ’m to hell overside.”

      The old fellow limped across the deck with more agility than he had displayed coming aboard, straddled the barbed wire without assistance, and without assistance dropped into the canoe, cleverly receiving his weight on his uninjured leg. He blinked up for forgiveness and in reassertion of innocence. Van Horn turned his face aside to hide a grin, and then grinned outright when the old rascal, showing his empty pipe, wheedled up:

      “Suppose ’m five stick tobacco you give ’m along me?”

      While Borckman went below for the tobacco, Van Horn orated to Ishikola on the sacred solemnity of truth and promises. Next, he leaned across the barbed wire and handed down the five sticks of tobacco.

      “My word,” he threatened. “Somo day, Ishikola, I finish along you altogether. You no good friend stop along salt-water. You big fool stop along bush.”

      When Ishikola attempted protest, he shut him off with, “My word, you gammon along me too much.”

      Still the canoe lingered. The dandy’s toe strayed privily to feel out the butts of the Sniders under the green leaves, and Ishikola was loth to depart.

      “Washee-washee!” Van Horn cried with imperative suddenness.

      The paddlers, without command from chief or dandy, involuntarily obeyed, and with deep, strong strokes sent the canoe into the encircling darkness. Just as quickly Van Horn changed his position on deck to the tune of a dozen yards, so that no hazarded bullet might reach him. He crouched low and listened to the wash of paddles fade away in the distance.

      “All right, you fella Tambi,” he ordered quietly. “Make ’m music he fella walk about.”

      And while “Red Wing” screeched its cheap and pretty rhythm, he reclined elbow on deck, smoked his cigar, and gathered Jerry into caressing inclosure.

      As he smoked he watched the abrupt misting of the stars by a rain-squall that made to windward or to where windward might vaguely be configured. While he gauged the minutes ere he must order Tambi below with the phonograph and records, he noted the bush-girl gazing at him in dumb fear. He nodded consent with half-closed eyes and up-tilting face, clinching his consent with a wave of hand toward the companionway. She obeyed as a beaten dog, spirit-broken, might have obeyed, dragging herself to her feet, trembling afresh, and with backward glances of her perpetual terror of the big white master that she was convinced would some day eat her. In such fashion, stabbing Van Horn to the heart because of his inability to convey his kindness to her across the abyss of the ages that separated them, she slunk away to the companionway and crawled down it feet-first like some enormous, large-headed worm.

      After he had sent Tambi to follow her with the precious phonograph, Van Horn continued to smoke on while the sharp, needle-like spray of the rain impacted soothingly on his heated body.

      Only for five minutes did the rain descend. Then, as the stars

Скачать книгу