Burning Daylight E-Book

Jack London

• Herausgeber: ShadowPOET
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

JOHN BARLEYCORN
by
Jack London (1876-1916)
CHAPTER I


It all came to me one election day. It was on a warm California afternoon, and I had ridden down into the Valley of the Moon from the ranch to the little village to vote Yes and No to a host of proposed amendments to the Constitution of the State of California. Because of the warmth of the day I had had several drinks before casting my ballot, and divers drinks after casting it. Then I had ridden up through the vine-clad hills and rolling pastures of the ranch, and arrived at the farm-house in time for another drink and supper.
"How did you vote on the suffrage amendment?" Charmian asked.
"I voted for it."
She uttered an exclamation of surprise. For, be it known, in my younger days, despite my ardent democracy, I had been opposed to woman suffrage. In my later and more tolerant years I had been unenthusiastic in my acceptance of it as an inevitable social phenomenon.
"Now just why did you vote for it?" Charmian asked.
I answered. I answered at length. I answered indignantly. The more I answered, the more indignant I became. (No; I was not drunk. The horse I had ridden was well named "The Outlaw." I'd like to see any drunken man ride her.)
And yet—how shall I say?—I was lighted up, I was feeling "good," I was pleasantly jingled.
"When the women get the ballot, they will vote for prohibition," I said. "It is the wives, and sisters, and mothers, and they only, who will drive the nails into the coffin of John Barleycorn——"
"But I thought you were a friend to John Barleycorn," Charmian interpolated.
"I am. I was. I am not. I never am. I am never less his friend than when he is with me and when I seem most his friend. He is the king of liars. He is the frankest truthsayer. He is the august companion with whom one walks with the gods. He is also in league with the Noseless One. His way leads to truth naked, and to death. He gives clear vision, and muddy dreams. He is the enemy of life, and the teacher of wisdom beyond life's wisdom. He is a red-handed killer, and he slays youth."
And Charmian looked at me, and I knew she wondered where I had got it.
I continued to talk. As I say, I was lighted up. In my brain every thought was at home. Every thought, in its little cell, crouched ready-dressed at the door, like prisoners at midnight waiting a jail-break. And every thought was a vision, bright-imaged, sharp-cut, unmistakable. My brain was illuminated by the clear, white light of alcohol. John Barleycorn was on a truth-telling rampage, giving away the choicest secrets on himself. And I was his spokesman. There moved the multitudes of memories of my past life, all orderly arranged like soldiers in some vast review. It was mine to pick and choose. I was a lord of thought, the master of my vocabulary and of the totality of my experience, unerringly capable of selecting my data and building my exposition. For so John Barleycorn tricks and lures, setting the maggots of intelligence gnawing, whispering his fatal intuitions of truth, flinging purple passages into the monotony of one's days.

Leseprobe

A Son Of The Sun

BY

JACK LONDON

ShadowPOET 2021

CONTENTS

Chapter I. A Son of the Sun

Chapter II. The Proud Goat of Aloysius Pankburn

Chapter III. The Devils of Fuatino

Chapter IV. The Jokers of New Gibbon

Chapter V. A Little Account With Swithin Hall

Chapter VI. A Goboto Night

Chapter VII. The Feathers of the Sun

Chapter VIII. The Peabls of Parlay

Chapter I. A Son of the Sun

I

The _Willi-Waw_ lay in the passage between the shore-reef and the outer-reef. From

the latter came the low murmur of a lazy surf, but the sheltered stretch of water, not

more than a hundred yards across to the white beach of pounded coral sand, was of

glass-like smoothness. Narrow as was the passage, and anchored as she was in the

shoalest place that gave room to swing, the _Willi-Waw's_ chain rode up-and-down a

clean hundred feet. Its course could be traced over the bottom of living coral. Like some

monstrous snake, the rusty chain's slack wandered over the ocean floor, crossing and

recrossing itself several times and fetching up finally at the idle anchor. Big rock-cod, dun

and mottled, played warily in and out of the coral. Other fish, grotesque of form and

colour, were brazenly indifferent, even when a big fish-shark drifted sluggishly along and

sent the rock-cod scuttling for their favourite crevices.

On deck, for'ard, a dozen blacks pottered clumsily at scraping the teak rail. They were as

inexpert at their work as so many monkeys. In fact they looked very much like monkeys

of some enlarged and prehistoric type. Their eyes had in them the querulous

plaintiveness of the monkey, their faces were even less symmetrical than the monkey's,

and, hairless of body, they were far more ungarmented than any monkey, for clothes

they had none. Decorated they were as no monkey ever was. In holes in their ears they

carried short clay pipes, rings of turtle shell, huge plugs of wood, rusty wire nails, and

empty rifle cartridges. The calibre of a Winchester rifle was the smallest hole an ear

bore; some of the largest holes were inches in diameter, and any single ear averaged

from three to half a dozen holes. Spikes and bodkins of polished bone or petrified shell

were thrust through their noses. On the chest of one hung a white doorknob, on the

chest of another the handle of a china cup, on the chest of a third the brass cogwheel of

an alarm clock. They chattered in queer, falsetto voices, and, combined, did no more

work than a single white sailor.

Aft, under an awning, were two white men. Each was clad in a six-penny undershirt and

wrapped about the loins with a strip of cloth. Belted about the middle of each was a

revolver and tobacco pouch. The sweat stood out on their skin in myriads of globules.

Here and there the globules coalesced in tiny streams that dripped to the heated deck

and almost immediately evaporated. The lean, dark-eyed man wiped his fingers wet with

a stinging stream from his forehead and flung it from him with a weary curse. Wearily,

and without hope, he gazed seaward across the outer-reef, and at the tops of the palms

along the beach.

"Eight o'clock, an' hell don't get hot till noon," he complained. "Wisht to God for a

breeze. Ain't we never goin' to get away?"

The other man, a slender German of five and twenty, with the massive forehead of a

scholar and the tumble-home chin of a degenerate, did not trouble to reply. He was busy

emptying powdered quinine into a cigarette paper. Rolling what was approximately fifty

grains of the drug into a tight wad, he tossed it into his mouth and gulped it down

without the aid of water.

"Wisht I had some whiskey," the first man panted, after a fifteen-minute interval of

silence.

Another equal period elapsed ere the German enounced, relevant of nothing:

"I'm rotten with fever. I'm going to quit you, Griffiths, when we get to Sydney. No more

tropics for me. I ought to known better when I signed on with you."

"You ain't been much of a mate," Griffiths replied, too hot himself to speak heatedly.

"When the beach at Guvutu heard I'd shipped you, they all laughed. 'What? Jacobsen?'

they said. 'You can't hide a square face of trade gin or sulphuric acid that he won't smell

out!' You've certainly lived up to your reputation. I ain't had a drink for a fortnight, what

of your snoopin' my supply."

"If the fever was as rotten in you as me, you'd understand," the mate whimpered.

"I ain't kickin'," Griffiths answered. "I only wisht God'd send me a drink, or a breeze of

wind, or something. I'm ripe for my next chill to-morrow."

The mate proffered him the quinine. Rolling a fifty-grain dose, he popped the wad into

his mouth and swallowed it dry.

"God! God!" he moaned. "I dream of a land somewheres where they ain't no quinine.

Damned stuff of hell! I've scoffed tons of it in my time."

Again he quested seaward for signs of wind. The usual trade-wind clouds were absent,

and the sun, still low in its climb to meridian, turned all the sky to heated brass. One

seemed to see as well as feel this heat, and Griffiths sought vain relief by gazing

shoreward. The white beach was a searing ache to his eyeballs. The palm trees,

absolutely still, outlined flatly against the unrefreshing green of the packed jungle,

seemed so much cardboard scenery. The little black boys, playing naked in the dazzle of

sand and sun, were an affront and a hurt to the sun-sick man. He felt a sort of relief

when one, running, tripped and fell on all-fours in the tepid sea-water.

An exclamation from the blacks for'ard sent both men glancing seaward. Around the

near point of land, a quarter of a mile away and skirting the reef, a long black canoe

paddled into sight.

"Gooma boys from the next bight," was the mate's verdict.

One of the blacks came aft, treading the hot deck with the unconcern of one whose bare

feet felt no heat. This, too, was a hurt to Griffiths, and he closed his eyes. But the next

moment they were open wide.

"White fella marster stop along Gooma boy," the black said.

Both men were on their feet and gazing at the canoe. Aft could be seen the

unmistakable sombrero of a white man. Quick alarm showed itself on the face of the

mate.

"It's Grief," he said.

Griffiths satisfied himself by a long look, then ripped out a wrathful oath.

"What's he doing up here?" he demanded of the mate, of the aching sea and sky, of the

merciless blaze of sun, and of the whole superheated and implacable universe with

which his fate was entangled.

The mate began to chuckle.

"I told you you couldn't get away with it," he said.

But Griffiths was not listening.

"With all his money, coming around like a rent collector," he chanted his outrage, almost

in an ecstasy of anger. "He's loaded with money, he's stuffed with money, he's busting

with money. I know for a fact he sold his Yringa plantations for three hundred thousand

pounds. Bell told me so himself last time we were drunk at Guvutu. Worth millions and

millions, and Shylocking me for what he wouldn't light his pipe with." He whirled on the

mate. "Of course you told me so. Go on and say it, and keep on saying it. Now just what

was it you did tell me so?"

"I told you you didn't know him, if you thought you could clear the Solomons without

paying him. That man Grief is a devil, but he's straight. I know. I told you he'd throw a

thousand quid away for the fun of it, and for sixpence fight like a shark for a rusty tin, I

tell you I know. Didn't he give his _Balakula_ to the Queensland Mission when they lost

their _Evening Star_ on San Cristobal?--and the _Balakula_ worth three thousand

pounds if she was worth a penny? And didn't he beat up Strothers till he lay abed a

fortnight, all because of a difference of two pound ten in the account, and because

Strothers got fresh and tried to make the gouge go through?"

"God strike me blind!" Griffiths cried in im-potency of rage.

The mate went on with his exposition.

"I tell you only a straight man can buck a straight man like him, and the man's never hit

the Solomons that could do it. Men like you and me can't buck him. We're too rotten,

too rotten all the way through. You've got plenty more than twelve hundred quid below.

Pay him, and get it over with."

But Griffiths gritted his teeth and drew his thin lips tightly across them.

"I'll buck him," he muttered--more to himself and the brazen ball of sun than to the

mate. He turned and half started to go below, then turned back again. "Look here,

Jacob-sen. He won't be here for quarter of an hour. Are you with me? Will you stand by

me?"

"Of course I'll stand by you. I've drunk all your whiskey, haven't I? What are you going to

do?"

"I'm not going to kill him if I can help it. But I'm not going to pay. Take that flat."

Jacobsen shrugged his shoulders in calm acquiescence to fate, and Griffiths stepped to

the companionway and went below.

II

Jacobsen watched the canoe across the low reef as it came abreast and passed on to the

entrance of the passage. Griffiths, with ink-marks on right thumb and forefinger,

returned on deck Fifteen minutes later the canoe came alongside. The man with the

sombrero stood up.

"Hello, Griffiths!" he said. "Hello, Jacobsen!" With his hand on the rail he turned to his

dusky crew. "You fella boy stop along canoe altogether."

As he swung over the rail and stepped on deck a hint of catlike litheness showed in the

apparently heavy body. Like the other two, he was scantily clad. The cheap undershirt

and white loin-cloth did not serve to hide the well put up body. Heavy muscled he was,

but he was not lumped and hummocked by muscles. They were softly rounded, and,

when they did move, slid softly and silkily under the smooth, tanned skin. Ardent suns

had likewise tanned his face till it was swarthy as a Spaniard's. The yellow mustache

appeared incongruous in the midst of such swarthiness, while the clear blue of the eyes

produced a feeling of shock on the beholder. It was difficult to realize that the skin of

this man had once been fair.

"Where did you blow in from?" Griffiths asked, as they shook hands. "I thought you were

over in the Santa Cruz."

"I was," the newcomer answered. "But we made a quick passage. The _Wonder's_ just

around in the bight at Gooma, waiting for wind. Some of the bushmen reported a ketch

here, and I just dropped around to see. Well, how goes it?"

"Nothing much. Copra sheds mostly empty, and not half a dozen tons of ivory nuts. The

women all got rotten with fever and quit, and the men can't chase them back into the

swamps. They're a sick crowd. I'd ask you to have a drink, but the mate finished off my

last bottle. I wisht to God for a breeze of wind."

Grief, glancing with keen carelessness from one to the other, laughed.

"I'm glad the calm held," he said. "It enabled me to get around to see you. My

supercargo dug up that little note of yours, and I brought it along."

The mate edged politely away, leaving his skipper to face his trouble.

"I'm sorry, Grief, damned sorry," Griffiths said, "but I ain't got it. You'll have to give me a

little more time."

Grief leaned up against the companionway, surprise and pain depicted on his face.

"It does beat hell," he communed, "how men learn to lie in the Solomons. The truth's

not in them. Now take Captain Jensen. I'd sworn by his truthfulness. Why, he told me

only five days ago--do you want to know what he told me?"

Griffiths licked his lips.

"Go on."

"Why, he told me that you'd sold out--sold out everything, cleaned up, and was pulling

out for the New Hebrides."

"He's a damned liar!" Griffiths cried hotly.

Grief nodded.

"I should say so. He even had the nerve to tell me that he'd bought two of your stations

from you--Mauri and Kahula. Said he paid you seventeen hundred gold sovereigns, lock,

stock and barrel, good will, trade-goods, credit, and copra."

Griffiths's eyes narrowed and glinted. The action was involuntary, and Grief noted it with

a lazy sweep of his eyes.

"And Parsons, your trader at Hickimavi, told me that the Fulcrum Company had bought

that station from you. Now what did he want to lie for?"

Griffiths, overwrought by sun and sickness, exploded. All his bitterness of spirit rose up

in his face and twisted his mouth into a snarl.

"Look here, Grief, what's the good of playing with me that way? You know, and I know

you know. Let it go at that. I _have_ sold out, and I _am_ getting away. And what are

you going to do about it?"

Grief shrugged his shoulders, and no hint of resolve shadowed itself in his own face. His

expression was as of one in a quandary.

"There's no law here," Griffiths pressed home his advantage. "Tulagi is a hundred and

fifty miles away. I've got my clearance papers, and I'm on my own boat. There's nothing

to stop me from sailing. You've got no right to stop me just because I owe you a little

money. And by God! you can't stop me. Put that in your pipe."

The look of pained surprise on Grief's face deepened.

"You mean you're going to cheat me out of that twelve hundred, Griffiths?"

"That's just about the size of it, old man. And calling hard names won't help any. There's

the wind coming. You'd better get overside before I pull out, or I'll tow your canoe

under."

"Really, Griffiths, you sound almost right. I can't stop you." Grief fumbled in the pouch

that hung on his revolver-belt and pulled out a crumpled official-looking paper. "But

maybe this will stop you. And it's something for _your_ pipe. Smoke up."

"What is it?"

"An admiralty warrant. Running to the New Hebrides won't save you. It can be served

anywhere."

Griffiths hesitated and swallowed, when he had finished glancing at the document. With

knit brows he pondered this new phase of the situation. Then, abruptly, as he looked up,

his face relaxed into all frankness.

"You were cleverer than I thought, old man," he said. "You've got me hip and thigh. I

ought to have known better than to try and beat you. Jacobsen told me I couldn't, and I

wouldn't listen to him. But he was right, and so are you. I've got the money below. Come

on down and we'll settle."

He started to go down, then stepped aside to let his visitor precede him, at the same

time glancing seaward to where the dark flaw of wind was quickening the water.

"Heave short," he told the mate. "Get up sail and stand ready to break out."

As Grief sat down on the edge of the mate's bunk, close against and facing the tiny table,

he noticed the butt of a revolver just projecting from under the pillow. On the table,

which hung on hinges from the for'ard bulkhead, were pen and ink, also a battered log-

book.

"Oh, I don't mind being caught in a dirty trick," Griffiths was saying defiantly. "I've been

in the tropics too long. I'm a sick man, a damn sick man. And the whiskey, and the sun,

and the fever have made me sick in morals, too. Nothing's too mean and low for me

now, and I can understand why the niggers eat each other, and take heads, and such

things. I could do it myself. So I call trying to do you out of that small account a pretty

mild trick. Wisht I could offer you a drink."

Grief made no reply, and the other busied himself in attempting to unlock a large and

much-dented cash-box. From on deck came falsetto cries and the creak and rattle of

blocks as the black crew swung up mainsail and driver. Grief watched a large cockroach

crawling over the greasy paintwork. Griffiths, with an oath of irritation, carried the cash-

box to the companion-steps for better light. Here, on his feet, and bending over the box,

his back to his visitor, his hands shot out to the rifle that stood beside the steps, and at

the same moment he whirled about.

"Now don't you move a muscle," he commanded.

Grief smiled, elevated his eyebrows quizzically, and obeyed. His left hand rested on the

bunk beside him; his right hand lay on the table.

His revolver hung on his right hip in plain sight. But in his mind was recollection of the

other revolver under the pillow.

"Huh!" Griffiths sneered. "You've got everybody in the Solomons hypnotized, but let me

tell you you ain't got me. Now I'm going to throw you off my vessel, along with your

admiralty warrant, but first you've got to do something. Lift up that log-book."

The other glanced curiously at the log-book, but did not move.

"I tell you I'm a sick man, Grief; and I'd as soon shoot you as smash a cockroach. Lift up

that log-book, I say."

Sick he did look, his lean face working nervously with the rage that possessed him. Grief

lifted the book and set it aside. Beneath lay a written sheet of tablet paper.

"Read it," Griffiths commanded. "Read it aloud."

Grief obeyed; but while he read, the fingers of his left hand began an infinitely slow and

patient crawl toward the butt of the weapon under the pillow.

"On board the ketch Willi-Waw, Bombi Bight, Island of Anna, Solomon Islands," he read.

"Know all men by these presents that I do hereby sign off and release in full, for due

value received, all debts whatsoever owing to me by Harrison J. Griffiths, who has this

day paid to me twelve hundred pounds sterling."

"With that receipt in my hands," Griffiths grinned, "your admiralty warrant's not worth

the paper it's written on. Sign it."

"It won't do any good, Griffiths," Grief said. "A document signed under compulsion won't

hold before the law."

"In that case, what objection have you to signing it then?"

"Oh, none at all, only that I might save you heaps of trouble by not signing it."

Grief's fingers had gained the revolver, and, while he talked, with his right hand he

played with the pen and with his left began slowly and imperceptibly drawing the

weapon to his side. As his hand finally closed upon it, second finger on trigger and

forefinger laid past the cylinder and along the barrel, he wondered what luck he would

have at left-handed snap-shooting.

"Don't consider me," Griffiths gibed. "And just remember Jacobsen will testify that he

saw me pay the money over. Now sign, sign in full, at the bottom, David Grief, and date

it."

From on deck came the jar of sheet-blocks and the rat-tat-tat of the reef-points against

the canvas. In the cabin they could feel the _Willi-Waw_ heel, swing into the wind, and

right. David Grief still hesitated. From for'ard came the jerking rattle of headsail halyards

through the sheaves. The little vessel heeled, and through the cabin walls came the

gurgle and wash of water.

"Get a move on!" Griffiths cried. "The anchor's out."

The muzzle of the rifle, four feet away, was bearing directly on him, when Grief resolved

to act. The rifle wavered as Griffiths kept his balance in the uncertain puffs of the first of

the wind. Grief took advantage of the wavering, made as if to sign the paper, and at the

same instant, like a cat, exploded into swift and intricate action. As he ducked low and

leaped forward with his body, his left hand flashed from under the screen of the table,

and so accurately-timed was the single stiff pull on the self-cocking trigger that the

cartridge discharged as the muzzle came forward. Not a whit behind was Griffiths. The

muzzle of his weapon dropped to meet the ducking body, and, shot at snap direction,

rifle and revolver went off simultaneously.

Grief felt the sting and sear of a bullet across the skin of his shoulder, and knew that his

own shot had missed. His forward rush carried him to Griffiths before another shot could

be fired, both of whose arms, still holding the rifle, he locked with a low tackle about the

body. He shoved the revolver muzzle, still in his left hand, deep into the other's

abdomen. Under the press of his anger and the sting of his abraded skin, Grief's finger

was lifting the hammer, when the wave of anger passed and he recollected himself.

Down the companion-way came indignant cries from the Gooma boys in his canoe.

Everything was happening in seconds. There was apparently no pause in his actions as

he gathered Griffiths in his arms and carried him up the steep steps in a sweeping rush.

Out into the blinding glare of sunshine he came. A black stood grinning at the wheel, and

the _Willi-Waw_, heeled over from the wind, was foaming along. Rapidly dropping

astern was his Gooma canoe. Grief turned his head. From amidships, revolver in hand,

the mate was springing toward him. With two jumps, still holding the helpless Griffiths,

Grief leaped to the rail and overboard.

Both men were grappled together as they went down; but Grief, with a quick updraw of

his knees to the other's chest, broke the grip and forced him down. With both feet on

Griffiths's shoulder, he forced him still deeper, at the same time driving himself to the

surface. Scarcely had his head broken into the sunshine when two splashes of water, in

quick succession and within a foot of his face, advertised that Jacobsen knew how to

handle a revolver. There was a chance for no third shot, for Grief, filling his lungs with

air, sank down. Under water he struck out, nor did he come up till he saw the canoe and

the bubbling paddles overhead. As he climbed aboard, the _Wlli-Waw_ went into the

wind to come about.

"Washee-washee!" Grief cried to his boys. "You fella make-um beach quick fella time!"

In all shamelessness, he turned his back on the battle and ran for cover. The _Willi-

Waw_, compelled to deaden way in order to pick up its captain, gave Grief his chance for

a lead. The canoe struck the beach full-tilt, with every paddle driving, and they leaped

out and ran across the sand for the trees. But before they gained the shelter, three times

the sand kicked into puffs ahead of them. Then they dove into the green safety of the

jungle.

Grief watched the _Willi-Waw_ haul up close, go out the passage, then slack its sheets as

it headed south with the wind abeam. As it went out of sight past the point he could see

the topsail being broken out. One of the Gooma boys, a black, nearly fifty years of age,

hideously marred and scarred by skin diseases and old wounds, looked up into his face

and grinned.

"My word," the boy commented, "that fella skipper too much cross along you."

Grief laughed, and led the way back across the sand to the canoe.

III

How many millions David Grief was worth no man in the Solomons knew, for his

holdings and ventures were everywhere in the great South Pacific. From Samoa to New

Guinea and even to the north of the Line his plantations were scattered. He possessed

pearling concessions in the Paumotus. Though his name did not appear, he was in truth

the German company that traded in the French Marquesas. His trading stations were in

strings in all the groups, and his vessels that operated them were many. He owned atolls

so remote and tiny that his smallest schooners and ketches visited the solitary agents

but once a year.

In Sydney, on Castlereagh Street, his offices occupied three floors. But he was rarely in

those offices. He preferred always to be on the go amongst the islands, nosing out new

investments, inspecting and shaking up old ones, and rubbing shoulders with fun and

adventure in a thousand strange guises. He bought the wreck of the great steamship

_Gavonne_ for a song, and in salving it achieved the impossible and cleaned up a quarter

of a million. In the Louisiades he planted the first commercial rubber, and in Bora-Bora

he ripped out the South Sea cotton and put the jolly islanders at the work of planting

cacao. It was he who took the deserted island of Lallu-Ka, colonized it with Polynesians

from the Ontong-Java Atoll, and planted four thousand acres to cocoanuts. And it was he

who reconciled the warring chief-stocks of Tahiti and swung the great deal of the

phosphate island of Hikihu.

His own vessels recruited his contract labour. They brought Santa Cruz boys to the New

Hebrides, New Hebrides boys to the Banks, and the head-hunting cannibals of Malaita to

the plantations of New Georgia. From Tonga to the Gilberts and on to the far Louisiades

his recruiters combed the islands for labour. His keels plowed all ocean stretches. He

owned three steamers on regular island runs, though he rarely elected to travel in them,

preferring the wilder and more primitive way of wind and sail.

At least forty years of age, he looked no more than thirty. Yet beachcombers

remembered his advent among the islands a score of years before, at which time the

yellow mustache was already budding silkily on his lip. Unlike other white men in the

tropics, he was there because he liked it. His protective skin pigmentation was excellent.

He had been born to the sun. One he was in ten thousand in the matter of sun-

resistance. The invisible and high-velocity light waves failed to bore into him. Other

white men were pervious. The sun drove through their skins, ripping and smashing

tissues and nerves, till they became sick in mind and body, tossed most of the Decalogue

overboard, descended to beastliness, drank themselves into quick graves, or survived so

savagely that war vessels were sometimes sent to curb their license.

But David Grief was a true son of the sun, and he flourished in all its ways. He merely

became browner with the passing of the years, though in the brown was the hint of

golden tint that glows in the skin of the Polynesian. Yet his blue eyes retained their blue,

his mustache its yellow, and the lines of his face were those which had persisted through

the centuries in his English race. English he was in blood, yet those that thought they

knew contended he was at least American born. Unlike them, he had not come out to

the South Seas seeking hearth and saddle of his own. In fact, he had brought hearth and

saddle with him. His advent had been in the Paumotus. He arrived on board a tiny

schooner yacht, master and owner, a youth questing romance and adventure along the

sun-washed path of the tropics. He also arrived in a hurricane, the giant waves of which

deposited him and yacht and all in the thick of a cocoanut grove three hundred yards

beyond the surf. Six months later he was rescued by a pearling cutter. But the sun had

got into his blood. At Tahiti, instead of taking a steamer home, he bought a schooner,

outfitted her with trade-goods and divers, and went for a cruise through the Dangerous

Archipelago.

As the golden tint burned into his face it poured molten out of the ends of his fingers.

His was the golden touch, but he played the game, not for the gold, but for the game's

sake. It was a man's game, the rough contacts and fierce give and take of the

adventurers of his own blood and of half the bloods of Europe and the rest of the world,

and it was a good game; but over and beyond was his love of all the other things that go

to make up a South Seas rover's life--the smell of the reef; the infinite exquisiteness of

the shoals of living coral in the mirror-surfaced lagoons; the crashing sunrises of raw

colours spread with lawless cunning; the palm-tufted islets set in turquoise deeps; the

tonic wine of the trade-winds; the heave and send of the orderly, crested seas; the

moving deck beneath his feet, the straining canvas overhead; the flower-garlanded,

golden-glowing men and maids of Polynesia, half-children and half-gods; and even the

howling savages of Melanesia, head-hunters and man-eaters, half-devil and all beast.

And so, favoured child of the sun, out of munificence of energy and sheer joy of living,

he, the man of many millions, forbore on his far way to play the game with Harrison J.

Griffiths for a paltry sum. It was his whim, his desire, his expression of self and of the

sun-warmth that poured through him. It was fun, a joke, a problem, a bit of play on

which life was lightly hazarded for the joy of the playing.

IV

The early morning found the _Wonder_ laying close-hauled along the coast of

Guadalcanal She moved lazily through the water under the dying breath of the land

breeze. To the east, heavy masses of clouds promised a renewal of the southeast trades,

accompanied by sharp puffs and rain squalls. Ahead, laying along the coast on the same

course as the _Wonder_, and being slowly overtaken, was a small ketch. It was not the

_Willi-Waw_, however, and Captain Ward, on the _Wonder_, putting down his glasses,

named it the _Kauri_.

Grief, just on deck from below, sighed regretfully.

"If it had only been the _Willi-Waw_" he said.

"You do hate to be beaten," Denby, the supercargo, remarked sympathetically.

"I certainly do." Grief paused and laughed with genuine mirth. "It's my firm conviction

that Griffiths is a rogue, and that he treated me quite scurvily yesterday. 'Sign,' he says,

'sign in full, at the bottom, and date it,' And Jacobsen, the little rat, stood in with him. It

was rank piracy, the days of Bully Hayes all over again."

"If you weren't my employer, Mr. Grief, I'd like to give you a piece of my mind," Captain

Ward broke in.

"Go on and spit it out," Grief encouraged.

"Well, then--" The captain hesitated and cleared his throat. "With all the money you've

got, only a fool would take the risk you did with those two curs. What do you do it for?"

"Honestly, I don't know, Captain. I just want to, I suppose. And can you give any better

reason for anything you do?"

"You'll get your bally head shot off some fine day," Captain Ward growled in answer, as

he stepped to the binnacle and took the bearing of a peak which had just thrust its head

through the clouds that covered Guadalcanar.

The land breeze strengthened in a last effort, and the _Wonder_, slipping swiftly

through the water, ranged alongside the _Kauri_ and began to go by. Greetings flew

back and forth, then David Grief called out:

"Seen anything of the _Willi-Waw_?"

The captain, slouch-hatted and barelegged, with a rolling twist hitched the faded blue

_lava-lava_ tighter around his waist and spat tobacco juice overside.

"Sure," he answered. "Griffiths lay at Savo last night, taking on pigs and yams and filling

his water-tanks. Looked like he was going for a long cruise, but he said no. Why? Did you

want to see him?"

"Yes; but if you see him first don't tell him you've seen me."

The captain nodded and considered, and walked for'ard on his own deck to keep abreast

of the faster vessel.

"Say!" he called. "Jacobsen told me they were coming down this afternoon to Gabera.

Said they were going to lay there to-night and take on sweet potatoes."

"Gabera has the only leading lights in the Solomons," Grief said, when his schooner had

drawn well ahead. "Is that right, Captain Ward?"

The captain nodded.

"And the little bight just around the point on this side, it's a rotten anchorage, isn't it?"

"No anchorage. All coral patches and shoals, and a bad surf. That's where the _Molly_

went to pieces three years ago."

Grief stared straight before him with lustreless eyes for a full minute, as if summoning

some vision to his inner sight. Then the corners of his eyes wrinkled and the ends of his

yellow mustache lifted in a smile.

"We'll anchor at Gabera," he said. "And run in close to the little bight this side. I want

you to drop me in a whaleboat as you go by. Also, give me six boys, and serve out rifles.

I'll be back on board before morning."

The captain's face took on an expression of suspicion, which swiftly slid into one of

reproach.

"Oh, just a little fun, skipper," Grief protested with the apologetic air of a schoolboy

caught in mischief by an elder.

Captain Ward grunted, but Denby was all alertness.

"I'd like to go along, Mr. Grief," he said.

Grief nodded consent.

"Bring some axes and bush-knives," he said. "And, oh, by the way, a couple of bright

lanterns. See they've got oil in them."

V

An hour before sunset the _Wonder_ tore by the little bight. The wind had freshened,

and a lively sea was beginning to make. The shoals toward the beach were already white

with the churn of water, while those farther out as yet showed no more sign than of

discoloured water. As the schooner went into the wind and backed her jib and staysail

the whaleboat was swung out. Into it leaped six breech-clouted Santa Cruz boys, each