O's Head

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Title:     O's Head
Author: Lloyd Osbourne [More Titles by Osbourne]

Silver Tongue loved Rosalie, and Rosalie loved Silver Tongue, and ever since they had first met at the Taufusi Club dance their friends had seen the inevitable finish of their acquaintance. They were invited everywhere together, and the affair had progressed from the first or furtive stage to the secondary or solemn Sunday drive about the Eleele Sa. The third, that of carpenters adding a story to the bakery and dressmakers hard at work in Miss Potter's little establishment, was looming up close in view.

Never was a match in Apia that gave a rosier promise of success. Silver Tongue, so called by the Samoans on account of his beautiful voice (but who in ordinary life answered to the homelier appellation of Oppenstedt), had been making a very good thing out of the Southern Cross Bakery, and was regarded throughout Apia as a man of responsibility and substance. He was a tall, spare German of about forty, who, like the most of us, had followed the sea before fate had brought him to the islands, there in years gone by to marry a Samoan maid and settle down. The little Samoan had died, leaving behind her nothing but a memory in Silver Tongue's heart, a tangled grave in the foreign cemetery, and a host of relations who lived in tumble-down quarters in the rear of the bakery. In one way and another these hungry mouths must have been a considerable drain on Silver Tongue's resources; and though they feebly responded to his bounty--one by driving a natty cart and delivering hot morning rolls, and another by pilfering firewood for the furnace--the account (if one had been made) was far from even. But to any objection to this Quixotic generosity Silver Tongue had a reply ever ready on his lips. "I lofe dem like my fader," he would say in his deep, fluty voice, and the conversation was seldom carried further. When it was--by some one ill advised enough to do so--Silver Tongue would flare up, and recall with flashing eyes and a face crimson with indignation the ten-year debt of gratitude he owed his dead wife's ainga.

Indeed, if Silver Tongue had a fault it was a certain moroseness and fierceness of temper, a readiness and even an apparent pleasure in taking offense, that made him somewhat of a solitary in our midst and threw him more than ever on the companionship of his own Kanakas; so that at night, when one had occasion to seek him out, he was usually to be found on the mats of his native house, smoking his pipe or playing sweepy with his bulky father-in-law, Papalangi Mativa. I doubt if he had another intimate in Apia besides myself, and though I must confess we often disagreed, and once or twice approached the verge of estrangement, I was too much his friend and too mindful of the old days on the Ransom to let such trifles come between us.

I was, besides, Rosalie's friend as well, for old Clyde, her father, had died in my arms at Nonootch, and with his last breath had consigned her to my care. This obligation, rendered sacred by an association that extended back to the days of Steinberg and Bully Hayes, when in the Moroa and the Eugenie we had slept under the same mats and had played our part together in the stirring times of Stewart and the great Atuona Plantation--this obligation, I say, I met easily enough so long as Rosalie was a child and safe in the convent at Savalalo. But when she grew to womanhood and went to live with her relations in their shanty near the Firm, I began to experience some anxiety in regard to her. Her relations, to begin with, were not at all the kind of natives I liked. They had been too long the hangers-on of the Firm, and had seen too much of a low class of whites to be the proper guardians of a very pretty half-caste of eighteen. They had an ugly name, besides--but I won't be censorious--and it may have been all beach talk. But they were certainly a whining, begging lot, the girls bold and the men impudent and saucy, and I never saw Rosalie in their midst but it made me heartsick for her future.

I did the little I could, and let it be pretty well understood about the beach that the man who played fast and loose with her would have to reckon with old Captain Branscombe. And then I got the missionary ladies to take her up, and as I never stinted a bit of money for her dresses and what not (as though Clyde's daughter wasn't worthy of the best in the land), she made good headway in what little gayeties took place in the town. Of course, I went about to keep an eye on her--that is, when they asked me to their parties, which wasn't always; and I remember once making very short work of one fellow, a labor captain from the Westward, who seemed bent on mischief till I took him out in the starlight and showed him the business end of my gun. To tell the truth, I never had a peaceful moment till he up anchor and cleared, for he was a good deal the kind of man I was at thirty, and he hung on in spite of me, keeping half the family in his pay while I kept the other, and he even landed the last night with muffled oars, when, instead of finding Rosalie on the beach to fly with him, he ran into me, laying for him under an umbrella!

There were many who said I was in love with the girl myself, which, as like as not, was true; for she was one of those tall, queenly women, with a wonderful grace to anything she did, and magnificent dark eyes, and a way of smiling,--brilliant, arch, and tender--that made even an old stager of sixty remember he still wore a heart under his jumper. Yes, I had a pretty soft spot for Rosalie, though I had sense enough to know that God had never meant her for an old sea horse like myself. And lacking me--whom the weight of three-score years had put out of the ring (not but what I'm a pretty game old devil yet)--I could see nobody in sight I preferred half so much as Silver Tongue.

So there was the situation till the war of Ninety-three came along to jumble us all up and knock everything to spillikins. Oppenstedt in love with Rosalie; Rosalie in love with Oppenstedt; Bahn and old Taylor working on the second story of the Southern Cross Bakery; Miss Potter doing double tides at the trousseau, and I, the friend of both, with a six-hundred-dollar piano on the way from Bremen for their wedding present. A fair wind, port in sight, and (say you) everything drawing nicely alow and aloft. So it was till that wretched fight at Vaitele, when the Vaimaunga came pouring in at dusk, bearing wounded, chorusing their songs, and tossing in the air above them the heads of their dead enemies. It made me feel bad to see it all, for to me these people were children, and it seemed horrible they should kill one another; and it made me sicker still to watch the wounded carried into the Mission and stretched out in rows on the blood-stained boards. Though not a drinking man, I braced up at Peter's bar and then went on to pass the time of day with Oppenstedt.

I found him, as usual, on the mats of the native house, glumly smoking a pipe and talking politics with Papalangi Mativa. His lean, dark, handsome face was overcast, his eyes uneasy, and had I not known him for a brave man I should have thought that he was frightened. He was certainly very curt and short in greeting me, and I had a dim perception that my visit was unwelcome.

"This is a black business, Silver Tongue," I said; though, to be exact, I called him Leoalio, which means the same thing in native.

"Plack!" he exclaimed. "It's horrible! It's disgusting! They have been cutting off beople's heads!"

"Fourteen by one count," I said; "twenty-two by another."

"Gabtain," said he with a look of extraordinary gravity, "dere's worse nor that!"

"Worse?" I said.

"I have it straight from Papalangi Mativa himself."

"Have what?" I asked.

"Excellency," said Papalangi Mativa, "perhaps it is not high-chief-known to thee that I and mine come from a noble Savai'i stock, and that the son of my mother's sister, a stripling named O, numbered himself among the enemy and was to-day killed and his head taken on the field of Vaitele."

"Aue!" I said, which in Kanaka is being sympathetic.

"Dat is not all," said Silver Tongue. "Listen, gabtain!"

"I'm listening," I said.

"The warrior that killed O was To'oto'o, the matai," continued Papalangi Mativa with the air of one announcing the end of the world.

"To'oto'o!" I said in all innocence.

"To'oto'o," cried Silver Tongue; "why, Rosalie's uncle, the faipule, in whose house this very minute the head of my murdered relation lies!"

"'Pon my soul," I exclaimed, "this is really unfortunate!"

"Unfordunate!" cried Silver Tongue; "is it with such a word you describe two hearts broken, two lives plasted, the fairest prospect with suddenly crash the curdain led down!"

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "It's disagreeable, I admit, but I can't see what difference it can make to you and Rosalie."

"An Oppenstedt," said Silver Tongue, "could never indermarry with the family of a murderer, and least of all with a family that had the head of my dead wife's relation cut off and carried with gapers and cries of joy down the main street of Apia and past my place of peeziness!"

"Do you mean to say it's all off with you and Rosalie?" I demanded.

Silver Tongue nodded grimly. "All off," he said.

"And you're going to break my girl's heart," I cried with what I think, under the circumstances, was a very justifiable indignation, "because the son of the aunt of your father-in-law has had his head cut off by poor Rosalie's adopted uncle?"

"That's right," said Silver Tongue.

"Old friend," I said, "let me go before I say something I might regret." I got up without waiting for any answer and strode into the street, too consumed with anger to utter another word. I walked along the beach, stopping here and there to discuss the news of the battle with those of my friends I happened to meet, until at last I passed Savalalo and drew near To'oto'o's house at Songi. Rosalie was standing at the gate, and when she saw me she ran up, threw her arms round my neck and kissed me. I had never known her so excited or so gay, and even in the dark I could see that her beautiful eyes were shining.

"Captain," she said, giving me a hug, "nobody will ever say a word against To'oto'o again, or try to belittle him as they used to, just because he's poor and lives on Seu's land, for to-day he fought like a lion and covered himself with glory!"

"Took a head, or something?" I said.

"A hero!" she exclaimed. "They are composing a song in his honor; all Songi is ringing with his name; and he was complimented for his valor by the President and Chief Justice! You must come in and see it at once."

"See what?" I asked.

"The head!" she cried.

* * * * *

I haven't the heart to write how the news was broken to Rosalie, who steadfastly refused to believe the truth until she had heard it from Silver Tongue himself. I had hoped he might relent, with a night to think it over and a letter from myself in the morning pointing out his injustice and folly. Perhaps, now I remember it, that letter was a mistake. It was a trifle warm in spots, and I dare say I let a natural irritation get the better of me. Be that as it may, Oppenstedt was deaf to reason and protested with undiminished vehemence that he refused to ally himself with the family of a murderer. Indeed, so ridiculous did he get on the subject that he sent to Sydney for a tombstone (I daren't write headstone, though it was one, about the size of a silk hat) and put it behind the bakery above the spot where O's head was buried in a gin case.

When a girl has gone a certain length she seems less able than a man to withstand a disappointment in love. Silver Tongue simply clenched his teeth, withdrew from the Concordia Club and the Wednesday night bowls at Conrad's, and went on baking bread and rolls much as usual. Poor Rosalie drooped like a flower in the sun, and though she had pride enough to act a part and show a becoming spirit before the world, she had received a wound that I sometimes feared might prove mortal. I sent her to Tonga Taboo for a month, and she came back no better, her eyes black ringed and her cheeks hollow, and her smile (always to me the most beautiful smile in the world), with a curious, haunting pathos that I remember so well in the old slaving days among the Line women in their chains.

You must not think I tamely acquiesced in this state of affairs, or allowed my old friend an undisturbed possession of the Kanaka quarters behind the bakery. Late or early I gave him no peace, and plagued him, I dare say, to the very verge of distraction. But I might as well have tried to argue with his bread or soften his brick furnace for any impression I succeeded in making upon him. In his crazy obstinacy he would listen to nothing, and I would find myself, after one of these interviews, in a state of indescribable exasperation and determined never to go near him again.

One night, when I was up at Malifa calling on a dear good friend of mine, Sasa French, a charming and most accomplished young native lady, our talk happened to run for the thousandth time on this vexing matter of Rosalie and Silver Tongue. All of a sudden an idea came into Sasa's pretty head--one of those brilliant, clever, feminine ideas--that seemed to us, in that triumphant moment, to be the means of untangling all our difficulties. Though it was eight o'clock, and there was the risk of gossip in my driving Sasa French alone about the Municipality at such an hour, I put her into my buggy, whipped up my horse, and set a straight course for Seumanutafa, the high chief of Apia. He laughed a good deal, demurred somewhat, and was finally persuaded to squeeze his Herculean dimensions into the trap and start off with us for To'oto'o's house at Songi. Here, after the usual ceremonious exchanges, the womenfolk and children melted away and left us alone with To'oto'o, whose ferretty eyes betrayed no small degree of curiosity and alarm. This man was one of the few Samoans I never liked. He was a gaunt, dangerous, crafty-looking customer of about fifty, and I never had had any use for him since he had stolen my tethering rope one evening when I was calling on the king. Well, to get on with my story, we talked about the weather, and the war, and what an ass the Ta'ita'ifono was, and finally got round to the matter in hand.

Seumanutafa began mild, for he was a past master in the art of graduation, and thought to go slow at first. To'oto'o was informed that he had to make ifonga for the death of O and be carried on the morrow by the taulelea to Papalangi Mativa's house behind the bakery. This ifonga, as they call it, is a sort of public humiliation to expiate a fault, and nobody's very keen about doing it unless they have to--for it involves rubbing dirt in your hair, and singing small, and suffering a sort of social eclipse for a week or two afterwards. To'oto'o's face grew several shades darker at the suggestion, and though I promised him twenty dollars out of hand for himself and two kegs of beef and three tins of biscuit by way of peace offering to Papalangi Mativa, he hemmed and hawed and finally said no.

Then Sasa bore a hand and spoke beautifully of Rosalie, and how this unfortunate business of O's head had divided her from Silver Tongue.

"If thou makest peace with his ainga," said Sasa, "lo, what is there left for the white man to say? His bond is that of marriage; theirs, that of blood; and if the last be satisfied, what room is there for the former to complain?"

"But to be carried like a pig through the public street!" cried To'oto'o. "Preferable far would be death itself than that the son of chiefs should be thus degraded, and his name become a mock throughout the Tuamasanga!"

"O To'oto'o," said Seumanutafa, "we know thee for a brave man, and that thou tookst this head in open battle, even as David did that of Goliath, and I swear thee thy honor shall remain undimmed for all the seeming appearance of humiliation. Besides, is it not written in the Holy Book that thou shouldst turn the other cheek to the smiter? Is it not said also that blessed is the peacemaker, and that the meek shall inherit the earth?"

"Weighty is my grief and pain," said To'oto'o, "but what your Highness asks of me is impossible!"

"O To'oto'o," said Seumanutafa, "this house is mine; this land is mine; the plantation i uta is mine also. Thou livest under the shadow of my power, and it is meet thou shouldst pay in service for the bounty thou hast so long enjoyed. First I spoke to thee as one brave man to another; then as a Christian to a fellow-Christian; now I command thee as thy chief, and verily thou shalt obey!"

"And I will add to that twenty, making it twenty-five," I said.

"And Rosalie shall marry her Silver Tongue after all," said Sasa.

To'oto'o argued a little more for form's sake, and blustered somewhat about the Chief Justice, and how he would fight the matter out in the courts; but Seumanutafa's tone grew peremptory, and the old fellow finally gave way all round. Then 'ava was brought in, the arrangements made for the morrow, and we at length said tofa on the threshold, well pleased with our night's work.

* * * * *

I wish you could have seen us next day going through the town in a little procession, headed by To'oto'o lashed to a pole and borne by a crowd of retainers. There was a flavor of the burial of Sir John Moore about the whole business--especially the hush--and not a funeral note being heard; we marching with measured tread, the municipal police bringing up the rear, and Seumanutafa in the center, nearly seven feet high, and bearing a white umbrella above his stately head.

Silver Tongue was standing in the front of his shop having an altercation with the Chief Justice about a ham (for he did a little in groceries as well as baked) as we hove in sight and began to file down the lane to Papalangi Mativa's quarters behind the Southern Cross Bakery. I suppose Silver Tongue thought our man was hurt, or something, for he came running after us with a bottle of square-face and a packet of first aid to the wounded, elbowing his way excitedly through the crowd to where we had deposited To'oto'o at the feet of Papalangi Mativa. He was the most astonished baker in the South Seas as he saw who lay there in the jumble of beef and biscuit, and for a moment was too stupefied to let out a word.

I don't mean to go into the speech-making part of the performance, for what between Seumanutafa and Papalangi Mativa, and the talking-man Sasa had lent me for the occasion, and a divinity student who happened along, and somebody who said he was Fale Upolu and spoke for the entire Group, and an aged faipule from the Union Islands who seemed to have some kind of a grievance about his father's head, and the Chief Justice who had to butt in with the capitation tax--we were kept there a matter of three hours or more, until at last the principals officially made it up, To'oto'o was forgiven, and everything ended happily.

"Now, Silver Tongue," I said as the meeting dispersed, "we'll consider that head affair canceled, and if you'll come over to my house to-night I dare say you'll find Rosalie sitting on the front veranda!"

"And do you for a moment think," he said with a strange, writhen smile, "dat all dis talk and domfoolery will a gruel murder undo, and the young man cut off in his brime restore? Weel those lips, so gold in death, stir, think you, in the box where we laid him? Will my dead wife's family be less bereaved because of two kegs of peef and three tins of biscuit, or Rosalie's family less disgraced because her uncle was triced through the streets like a big? No, Gaptain Branscombe, I'm only a poor paker, but I'd count myself a traidor to my family were I to dake a murderess for my pride!"

"Rosalie isn't a murderess," I said.

"I meant niece of a murderer," he returned.

I was too speechless with indignation to utter another word. In the course of sixty years on this planet I've seen many kinds of men, and I've learned to detect in some a certain look about the eyes--a curious light and a far-away dreaminess of expression--that seems always the sign or mark of an unflinching obstinacy. I remember that self-same look on Brand's face as we lay all flattened on the water tanks of the Moroa, and he blew the main deck off the ship together with three hundred human beings; and I guess the Christian martyrs had it, too, when lions tore them to pieces and bulls kited them on their horns in the Colosseum. Anyway, it was as plain as daylight that I had lost my time and money in bothering about Oppenstedt, and that I might as well give him up as the most incorrigible, stiff-necked, self-opinionated, blunder-headed ass and lunatic this side of Muggin.

I gave him a wide berth after this, and took the other side of the street when I saw him coming; while he, for his part, would have cheerfully run a mile for the chance of avoiding me. I had cares of my own, too, about this time, what with the loss of the Daisy Walker, and my libel suit with Grevsmuhl, and other things to think about than that of bringing twin souls together. So the days drifted on and months came and went, and it seemed all over for good between Rosalie and Silver Tongue. Then that labor captain turned up again, him I had had trouble with before, a black-eyed, fierce, handsome little fellow, who was hotter than ever after my girl. Rosalie was just in the humor to do something awful, for she was desperately unhappy, with spells of wild gayety between, and a recklessness about herself that frightened me more than I can tell. She laughed in my face when I warned her about the labor captain, and told me straight out she was only a half-caste and it didn't matter what became of her. And from the way she carried on and got herself talked about from one end of the beach to the other, it began to look as though she meant what she said. Altogether I felt pretty blue about her, and savage enough against Silver Tongue to have--Well, what on earth could I do? What could anybody do? Why had God ever made such a silly ass of a baker?

One day I got a note from Sasa French that took me up to Malifa at a tearing run. Scanlon, the half-caste policeman, was there, and when I had listened to his story I threw my hat in the air and shouted like a boy, and Sasa and I waltzed up and down the veranda to the petrifaction of two missionary ladies who happened to be passing in tow of some square-toes from the Home Society. Sasa and I plumped into a buggy, and with Scanlon on horseback pounding behind us we made all sail for Seumanutafa's. Bidding him follow, we then raced off to Mulinu'u, where, sure enough, we found a young man named Tautala in one of the houses, who brought out the music box and very soon satisfied me as to the truth of what Scanlon had said. Then at a slower pace, so that Tautala might keep up with us, we walked to To'oto'o's house and taxed him with the whole business!

At first he made some show of denying it, but what could he say with Scanlon and Tautala in risen witness against him? He tried to refuse to come with us (which would have spoiled everything), until Scanlon took a hand in the fray and let his imagination run riot about the law, which, as he was the official representative of it and wore a pewter star on his breast, soon settled To'oto'o's half-hearted objections. If anything else were wanted, it was the arrival at this juncture of Seumanutafa at the head of a dozen retainers, who added the finishing stroke to the little resistance To'oto'o had left. Then we all started off for the Southern Cross Bakery, and, as we walked slowly and naturally, attracted a good deal of attention; and as we told every one we met where we were going to, and why, we grew and grew until, as I looked down the procession, I couldn't see the end of it. The Chief Justice was sucked in. Likewise the President. Marquardt, the chief of police, joined us; Haggard, the land commissioner; some Mormon missionaries; two lay brothers from the school; a lot of passengers from the mail boat, with handkerchiefs stuck into their sweaty collars; Captain Hufnagel on horseback, with a small army of Guadalcanaar laborers; half the synod of the Wesleyan church in white lavalavas and hymn-books; a picnic party that had just returned (not wholly sober) from the Papase'ea; blue-jackets from the Sperber; blue-jackets from the Walleroo; three survivors of the British bark Windsor Castle, burned at sea; a German scientist in Jaeger costume, with blue spectacles and a butterfly net; six whole boatloads of an aumoenga party from Manu'a; a lot of political prisoners on parole; two lepers, and Charley Taylor!

It was well we had brought Marquardt with us, for he and his police caught the humor of the thing, and on reaching the bakery formed us up in a great hollow square with one side blank for Silver Tongue, who stood and gazed at us transfixed from the shade of his veranda. Then Seumanutafa, Sasa, Scanlon, Tautala, To'oto'o, and I broke ranks and marched up to him.

"Old man," I said, "if you were to think a year you'd never guess what brought us here to-day!"

"It's O's head again," he said, grinding his teeth and casting a vitriolic glance at To'oto'o, "and if there was any law or order in this Godforsaken land"--he looked daggers at the Chief Justice as he said this--"that fellar would have got short jift for murdering my fader-in-law's aunt's son!"

"He didn't murder him," I said.

Silver Tongue's jaw fell. He looked at us quite overcome. For a minute he couldn't say a word.

"Oh, but he deed!" he said at last.

"It was Tautala that killed him," I said, indicating the young man we had brought from Mulinu'u, "and it turns out he sold your relation's head to To'oto'o for seven dollars and a music box." At this, smiling from ear to ear, Tautala held up the music box to public view, and would have set it going had not something fortunately caught in the works.

"It's a lie!" gasped Silver Tongue. "It's a lie!"

"Scanlon himself was at the battle," I went on, "and he saw the whole thing and was a witness to Tautala getting the seven dollars, and he made To'oto'o pony up four dollars more as the price of his own secrecy."

"Four dollars," ejaculated Scanlon. "That's right, Captain Branscombe. Four dollars!"

"So, if you are angry with anybody," I said, "you ought to be angry with Tautala. All To'oto'o did was to buy a little cheap notoriety for eleven dollars and a music box."

I never saw a man so stung in all my life as Oppenstedt. The eyes seemed to start from his head, and he glared at To'oto'o as though he could have strangled him. Tautala was quite forgotten in the intensity of his indignation toward Rosalie's uncle. You see, he had been hating To'oto'o ferociously for six months, and couldn't switch off at a moment's notice on an absolute stranger like Tautala. Besides, his hatred for To'oto'o had become a kind of monomania with him, and now here I was telling him what a fool he had made of himself, and proving it with two witnesses and a music box. No wonder that he was staggered.

"Now, old fellow," I said, "we'll call bygones bygones, and maybe you'll let us see a little more of you than we've been doing lately."

"You mean Rosalie, of gourse," he said, snapping the words like a mad dog.

"Yes, Rosalie," I said.

"Gaptain Branscombe," he said, his face convulsed with passion, "that gossumate liar and hybocrite has made such a thing impossible. Far rader would I lay me in the grave--far rader would I have wild horses on me trample--than that I should indermarry with a family and bossibly betaint my innocent kinder with the plood of so shogging and unprincibled a liar. A man so lost to shame, so beplunged in cowardice and deceit that he couldn't his own heads cut off, but must buy dem of others, and faunt himself a hero while honest worth bassed unnoticed and bushed aside."

"It was honest worth that chopped off the head of your father-in-law's aunt's son!" I said.

"Gaptain," he returned, "there are oggasions when in condrast to a liar--to a golossal liar--to one who has made a peeziness of systematic deception--a murderer is a shentlemans!"

"Oh, you villain baker!" cried Sasa, joining in. "You make tongafiti. You never want marry the girl at all. All the time you say something different. Oh, you bad mans, you break girls' hearts--and serve you right somebody cut your head off!"

"Wish they would," I said, out of all patience with the fellow. "First he can't marry Rosalie because her uncle's a murderer. Now he can't marry her because her uncle's a liar. Disprove that, and he'd dig up some fresh objection!"

"I lofe her! I lofe her!" protested Silver Tongue.

"Come, come," I said, "you aren't marrying the girl's adopted uncle."

"A traidor to my family? No, gaptain, dat is what I can never be," said Silver Tongue.

"Traitor--nothing!" I said.

"Oh, the silly baker!" said Sasa.

"He speaks like a delirious person," said Seumanutafa.

"Now about that ham," said the Chief Justice, belligerently coming forward and speaking in rich Swedish accents, "when I send my servant for a ham, Mr. Oppenstedt, I want a good ham--not a great, coarse, fat, stinking lump of dog meat----"

"Let's go," I said to Sasa; "Captain Morse is holding back the Alameda for a talk, and I know there's an iced bucket of something in the corner of his cabin."

"Wish the dear old captain would land and punch his head off!" said Sasa vindictively.

"Whose head?" I asked.

"Silver Tongue's," she returned.

* * * * *

Sasa had always plagued me to get up a moonlight sailing party on the Nukanono, a little fifteen-ton schooner of mine that plied about the Group. From one reason and another the thing had never come off, though we had talked and arranged it all time and time again. Now that I had remasted her and overhauled her copper and painted her inside and out, the subject had bobbed up again; and as I couldn't make any objection, and as the moon for the first time in seven years had happened to be full at the same moment when the vessel happened to be free, Sasa informed me (in the autocratic manner of lovely woman dealing with an old sea horse) that the invitations were out, the music engaged, and that my part was to plank down fifty dollars, keep my mouth shut, and do what I was told.

I perceived from the beginning that there was something queer about the trip, for Sasa, usually so communicative, could scarcely be induced to speak of it at all; and then when she did it was with such a parade of mystery and reserve that I felt myself completely baffled. However, like the jossers in the poem, it wasn't for me to reason why, and so I obediently ran about the beach, did what I was bidden, and discreetly asked no questions. I confess, though, that on the day itself my curiosity began to reach the breaking point, when I was told, with gentle impressiveness, that I was to remain in my house till the minute of nine forty-five, pull off quietly to the Nukanono, board her by the fore chains, and crouch there in the bow till I was told to get up!

It was a glorious moonlight night as I got into Joe's boat and saw the Nukanono across the bay, her loosened sails flapping in the first faint breath of the land breeze, and her booms sparkling from end to end with Chinese lanterns. The water was like black glass, the outer reefs were silent, and the downpouring air from the mountains was fragrant with moso'oi, and so warm and scented against the cheek that I doubt not but what you could have smelled Upolu ninety miles to leeward. As we drew nearer, the sound of girls' laughter, the tuning of musical instruments, the hum and talk and gayety of a large company, floated over to us from the schooner's deck, wonderfully mellowed by the intervening water and (as it seemed to me) softened into a sort of harmony with the night itself.

However, I did not allow these reflections to put me off my duty or make me forgetful of the strict commands I had previously received from Sasa. I came up softly under the bow of the Nukanono, dismissed Joe in a whisper, and climbed silently to my appointed station. I had not been there a minute when I felt Sasa's hand on my shoulder and heard her say softly in my ear, "Malie," which in Samoan means good or well done. Then she slipped away, and I heard her with sweet imperiousness ordering about the crew and bidding them slip the moorings. We had hardly got steerage-way when I heard a commotion aft, a choking, angry voice, that sounded through the hubbub like Silver Tongue's, a quick, fierce, violent struggle, and then suddenly the companion hatch went shut with a bang. Even as it did so the fore-hatch followed with a crash, and everybody began to cheer. From below there rose the sound of thumping, smothered Teutonic protests, and a long, poignant, and unmistakably feminine wail.

"All finish, captain," said Sasa, coming up to me cheerfully.

"Would you mind telling me what it's all about?" I asked.

"Just a little tongafiti to bring loving hearts together," said Sasa. "They threw Silver Tongue down the after hatchway, while me and the girls we pushed Rosalie down the forehold. There they are, all alone in the dark, with five hours to make it up!"

I could not help laughing at Sasa's plan, especially when under my feet I began to hear more frenzied thumping and more feminine wails. Then I recollected there wasn't five feet of headroom below, and that the place, even with the hatches off, was hot enough to boil water in.

"They'll die down there, Sasa," I said.

"No fear," said Sasa. "Rosalie is half Samoa, and as for Silver Tongue--if he get roast like his own bread nobody care a banana."

"But, Sasa--" I protested.

"Now you go flirt with some my girls," she said, "and don't bother your old head about nothings!"

"But, my dear girl--" I protested.

"They'll do very nicely, thank you," said Sasa, interrupting me, "and if they're hungry, isn't there ham sandwich? And if they're thirsty, isn't there claret punch in a milk can? And as for lights--true lovers don't want no lights!"

"Well, Sasa," I said, "I dare say it's a bright idea, and that you deserve the greatest credit for arranging it all; but for the lord's sake, let me off the ship before you remove the hatches."

"Oh, no," said Sasa, "everybody stay and see the fun!"

Fun, indeed, I thought, as I heard a terrific pounding below, and an uproar that would have been creditable to a sinking liner. The deck shook with sledge-hammer blows, and a lot of glasses tumbled off one of our improvised tables. Then we heard what was obviously a revengeful wrecking of the whole ship's interior--the smashing of crockery and lamps, a tramping and a kicking and a throwing down of everything that was loose or could be wrenched off, together with a hollow, reverberatory boom of German profan---- No, I won't be unjust, and one really couldn't hear well. Sasa stamped on the deck with her little foot and cried out: "Be quiet, you silly baker!" But the silly baker only roused himself to a renewed ferocity, and, instead of calming down, went off again like twenty-five bunches of firecrackers under a barrel--and large firecrackers, too.

Off and on he must have kept this up for more than an hour; then at length he subsided, finding, I suppose, that one German baker, however infuriated, was unable to make an impression on a three-inch deck. By the end of the second hour we had forgotten all about him, for heeling over in the pleasant breeze, and what with singing and telling stories and flirting in the moonlight we were all too happy and too busy to take thought of the stifling lovers below our feet. Occasionally I had a haunting sense of a day of reckoning, but I held my peace and forebore to disquiet my pretty hostess, who was the life and soul of the whole party aboard, and whose silvery laughter chimed in so sweetly with the tropic night and the rippling gurgle of water along our keel.

It was past three o'clock when we picked up the Mission light and ran back to our moorings off the Firm. Then the question arose as to who would uncage our love-birds and bear the first brunt of Silver Tongue's explosion. I confess I was very little eager for the job, and felt a peculiar sinking in the region of my watch pocket as we unlocked the after-hatch and rolled it softly back, Sasa, with a bull's-eye lantern penetrating the gloom with a dazzling circle of light. It fell on the figures of Rosalie and Silver Tongue seated on a settee and locked in each other's arms. Rosalie was asleep, with her graceful head lying on Silver Tongue's breast and her long lashes still wet with tears. The baker, his face crimson with heat and streaked with rivulets of perspiration, looked up at us grimly through a sort of mist. I waited for him to spring to his feet and throw himself like a lion on my shrinking form; but, instead of doing so, he pressed his arms closer round Rosalie and smiled--yes, by Jove, smiled--and, if you'll take the word of a retired master mariner, winked, with a peculiar, tender and calfish expression that in anybody else would have been called skittish.

"How goes it, old man?" I said.

"Gaptain," he returned in the tone of a clarionet tootling a love passage in grand opera, "me and Rosalie invites you all to the Bublic Hall Thursday night to dance at our wedding!"

[The end]
Lloyd Osbourne's short story: O's Head

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