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The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton, a fiction by Louis Becke |
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Chapter 8 |
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_ CHAPTER VIII As soon as I arrived at Utiroa village with my new boat, I had her hauled up above high-water mark, close to the boat-shed, and then turned her over so as to get a good look at the bottom in the morning. Then without telling either Tematau or Niabon the reason for my purchase, I bade them open my trade-room door, and in a few minutes we were engaged in paying the late owners their tobacco, guns, ammunition, and bolts of turkey twill. They were well satisfied with the price I paid them, especially when I supplemented it with the gift of a case of biscuit and a case of tinned Australian meats, of which I had an ample stock. They were very much disposed to remain in the house and give my servants their view of the cause of Krause's strange disappearance, which was--as they had previously told me--that he had been seized and devoured by an enormous reptile, half eel and half turtle, which had been known to swallow not only human beings, but such trifles as double canoes, groves of coco-nut trees, etcetera; but on my telling them that I was very tired and wanted a quiet house, they retired to the native village to spend the night. Calling Niabon and Tematau to me, I told them why I had bought the boat. They both seemed very pleased, but somewhat to my astonishment showed no surprise at the change in my plans; and for a moment or two a swift suspicion crossed my mind. Did they--or Niabon at least--_know_ that it was Mrs. Krause who had brought this boat to my notice? Had Mrs. Krause said anything on the matter to Niabon herself? I determined to ask. "Niabon," I said in English, which Tematau also understood fairly well, though he never spoke it, "tell me truly--did you or Tematau ever speak to Lucia of this boat which I have just bought?" "No, never, Mr. Sherry," she replied calmly, and the quiet dark eyes met mine with such an expression of truthfulness that I was instantly ashamed of my transitory suspicion. "I have never spoken to her about this boat, and never has Tematau, I am sure." "Oh, well, it was a very lucky thought of hers," I said; "we have now a boat that will be much better than my own, which I must try and sell, for we shall want money, Niabon, we shall want money badly in the strange country to which we are going, and I have but little." "Kaibuka and the head men will buy the other boat, I think." "How do you know?" I said in surprise, for I had never even been approached on the subject of selling my boat. "I will ask them to buy it," she replied, with a smile. "I will go to them now, if you wish. How much money do you want?" "The boat is worth two hundred dollars, but I will take one hundred. If they cannot give me one hundred dollars I will take no less--but because they and I are good friends, I will give it to them freely, for it will be of no further use to me." "They will buy the boat," she said confidently, and lighting her cigarette, she went out. A quarter of an hour later she returned, accompanied by old Kaibuka and another head man. Each of them carried a small bag of money, which they handed to me, and simply observing that it was the price of the boat, sat down and waited for me to count the coins. I found there were two hundred dollars. "There are one hundred dollars more than the price I asked," I said, pushing one-half of the money apart. "The boat is well worth the two hundred; for she is but new, and cost me more than that. But one hundred is all I asked for." Hawk-eyed Kaibuka--one of the most avaricious old fellows I had ever met with in the South Seas--shook his head and said I was trying to wrong myself. The people would be glad to get such a fine boat for two hundred dollars, and that if he and the other head men announced that I had parted with her for a hundred dollars, the entire population of Utiroa would arise as one man and curse them as mean creatures; also they (the people) would refuse to use the boat, and he, Kaibuka, would be regarded as a hog--a man devoid of gratitude to the white man who had been kind to and had not cheated them. "Take the money, Mr. Sherry," said Niabon in English; "they are glad to get the boat; and if I had said you wanted five, instead of one hundred dollars, they would give it. I would _make_ them give it." "Very well, Niabon. I'll take it. But as it is more than I ought to expect under the circumstances, I will give them half a tierce of tobacco as a _mea alofa_ (a gift of friendship). "That means that you give them a hundred and twenty-five dollars' worth of tobacco as a present," she said, with an amused smile, "and so you sell your beautiful boat for seventy-five dollars." "Never mind my extravagance, Niabon," I said, in the same spirit; "the one hundred and twenty-five pounds of tobacco in the half-tierce, which only cost me a quarter of a dollar a pound, is better given away to these people than left here to rot." "Indeed it is," she replied, as she watched Tepi and Pai roll out the half-tierce of the beloved tobacco from my trade-room into that in which we were sitting; "these people here will never forget you." As soon as old Kaibuka and the other head man had left--each after taking a stiff glass of grog--and the house was again quiet, Niabon, Tepi, and I set to work to take stock, they calling out the various articles of my trade goods whilst I made out the list. We worked at this throughout the night, had an early breakfast, and then went at it again, and by nine o'clock the work was over, and I knew how I stood with my employers financially. It was pretty satisfactory, considering the short time I had been on the island; for with my salary of ten pounds a month, and the five per cent, commission I was allowed on all the goods I sold, there were over three hundred pounds due to me. Then, in addition to my cash takings, which came to over three thousand dollars, I had bought over a hundred tons of copra (dried coco-nut) at a very low price, paying for it with trade goods--muskets, rifles, ammunition, tobacco, and liquor--on which latter article my esteemed employers made something like a thousand per cent, profit. Of course I had had a big pull over Krause, whose stock of trade was almost exhausted when I landed, whilst I had come ashore with half a schooner-load. But apart from this, it was a fillip to my vanity to think that even if Krause had had his store packed from floor to roof with trade, the natives would rather have come to me than to him, for as I have said, they all--even those in his own village of Taritai--disliked him for his domineering German-like manner, and his contemptuous disregard of their feelings, whilst I was _persona grata_ with them from the day I landed. But I had never yet, in all my ten years' experience of the South Seas, either seen, or heard, of any "Dutchman"--as we English and American traders call all Teutons--who was liked by the natives. I closed up my account-books, and, lighting my pipe, considered the situation. Firstly, I was certainly breaking my engagement with my employers by leaving the island without giving them "due notice of one month"; but as I could only communicate with them once in eight months, when they sent a ship round the group, that particular item in my agreement did not disturb my mind to any great extent. Secondly, there was a nice little sum of money due to me--oyer three hundred pounds--which in all probability I should never get if I awaited my firm's good pleasure to pay me, unless I went to Sydney and brought legal pressure to bear on them. Would not I be perfectly justified in paying myself my salary and commission out of the money in my possession? They would certainly look on me as an ass of the first water if I did not--of that I was sure. But again, I must not leave it in their power to say that "Jim Sherry had bolted from Tarawa," and had not acted squarely with them. Niabon, I knew, could both read and write English fairly, so of course could Mrs. Krause. The latter would be at Utiroa in a few hours, and instead of starting them at sewing sails I would get them to make an exact copy of every entry in the station books from the day I took charge to the day we left the island. This copy I would leave behind, and take the books themselves with me. The idea was a good one, and later on I was glad it occurred to me. The whaleboat was my own, and as I thought of her, I felt pleased that my employers, who were as mean as Polish Jews, would not get to windward of me as far as she was concerned. I had bought her from the captain of an American whaler, intending her for my own personal use and pleasure as a fishing boat, naturally expecting that the firm would provide me with a boat for trading purposes, _i.e._, to send around the lagoon and collect copra. The boss supercargo, however, who had drawn up the agreement, refused to do so, on the grounds that I had a boat already, and I was too weak and too racked with the damnable pains of fever to make more than a brief protest against what was certainly a very mean trick. But I had now sold her to the natives, and old Kaibuka was not a man to be trifled with. If any supercargo or captain of the firm endeavoured to claim her as property belonging to Utiroa Station, there would be such a blazing row that the firm would not forget it--they could never again land a trader on the island. I decided to at least take a hundred pounds out of the station cash--less than a third of the amount due to me. This, with the two hundred dollars I had received from old Kaibuka, would make seven hundred dollars--something better than poor little Mrs. Krause's twenty, I thought with a smile. And I meant that she--if we succeeded in reaching Guam--should land there with five hundred American dollars, not Chili or Bolivian half-iron rubbish, but good honest silver. At noon Mrs. Krause arrived in my old whaleboat, which I had borrowed from the new owners, and sent away at daylight, and whilst she and Niabon set to work at copying the books, I, with Tepi, began cutting out the new suit of sails from a bolt of light but very strong American twill---just the very stuff for boat sails, as strong as No. 1 canvas and four times lighter. That was the first of eight or ten very pleasant days we spent together, it taking us all that time to complete our preparations; for after the sails were finished I had to rig the boat anew, caulk her decks, and make a proper cabin amidships for the two women. This would have taken me more than another week had it not been for a couple of native boatbuilders, whom old Kaibuka had sent to me. They were good workmen, though neither had ever handled such a thing as a plane or saw in his life--everything was done either with a hatchet or a _toki_--a plane-iron or a broad chisel lashed to a wooden handle in such a manner that it was used as an adze. [Illustration: Two good coatings of red lead 110] Then I gave her two good coatings of red lead from keel to above water-line, and above that painted her white. The people from whom I had bought her told me frankly that she was a poor sailer, and I quite believed them, for she was altogether too heavily built for her size--her timbers and planking being of German oak. Her mast, too, had been placed too far for'ard, and so I shifted it eighteen inches or two feet further aft. But heavy and clumsy-looking as she was, I was sure she would prove a good sea boat, for she had great beam and a corresponding floor--in fact, rather too much for her length. However, when I had finished with and launched her, we made a trial trip over to Mrs. Krause's station, and I was well satisfied with her. She sailed much better than she did formerly, owing to the mast being further aft, and her new mainsail and jib, though smaller than the old ones, setting better. On our reaching Taritai, Mrs. Krause sent for the head men and told them that she was now satisfied that her husband was dead. What did they think? she asked. They replied that there could be not the slightest doubt of it. Every islet of the whole chain encompassing the lagoon had been searched, but not the slightest trace of the missing man had been found. He was dead. Then she told them that as I was leaving the island, and she did not care to remain now that her husband was dead, she had decided to go away with me and my party. The trading station itself, and all her late husband's property, she would leave in their care, to hand over to the captain of the next German ship that came to take away the copra and oil that he had bought. And as it might be many months before a ship did come, she would pay them in advance for their caretaking; and also leave a letter with them for the captain, asking him to make them a further present, as she knew they were good men and would be true to their trust. Let them, to-morrow, come and choose from the store goods to the value of two hundred dollars. The head men were delighted, and one of them, in his exuberance, expressed the sorrow they all felt at her leaving them; but no doubt, he said, she and I were going to some island where there was a missionary, so that we might be married according to the customs of white people. Perhaps, however, we would return. The poor little woman turned scarlet, and I shot a furious glance at the offender, and sharply told him that he was talking like a child instead of a grown man, and that his words had hurt the lady greatly. He put his hand over his eyes and collapsed. Then after a little further talk with them, we sent them away, and I arranged with Mrs. Krause to send the whaleboat for her on the following morning; for, all going well, we should start at sunset. Before I left her, she asked me, with a nervous tremor in her voice, to read the letter she had written, and if I thought it would do, or needed to be altered in any way. It was a letter which I had suggested she should write and leave with the head men. It was addressed to "The captain or supercargo of any ship belonging to Messrs. G----, of Hamburg," and contained but a few lines, stating that her husband, "Ferdinand Alexis Krause, left this station on the 27th July last for Mr. James Sherry's station at Utiroa village, and has not since been seen, and although a most careful search has been made, no trace of him has been found, and the natives are of the opinion that he was drowned between here and Utiroa in crossing one of the channels between the islets. As I am not equal to the task of carrying on my late husband's trading business, and an opportunity of leaving the island presents itself to me, through the kindness of Mr. Sherry, a trader here, I have placed this station in the care of the head men. I have given them two hundred dollars in trade goods, and trust you will be so satisfied with their integrity and their care of the property I have entrusted to their charge, that you will make them a further present. I make no claim whatever on the money due to my husband, and will feel glad if you will see that it is sent to his relatives in Germany." "That will do very well," I said, as I took her hand; "now, goodbye till to-morrow evening, Mrs. Krause. By this time to-morrow we should be getting under way. And, do you mind?--I have called the boat the _Lucia_--in fact I've painted the name on both bows." "Indeed, I am very proud. And why don't you call _me_ Lucia, too, Mr. Sherry? Every one else does." "Very well," I said, with a laugh, "I will talk Tarawan to you: Tiakapo, Lucia." "Tiakapo, Simi;" and her voice was pleasant and sweet to hear, although the word _tiakako_ meant nothing more than "good-night." _ |
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