Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories by George Lewis Becke (best fiction novels to read TXT) 📖

the hissing froth and smoky spume that curled in foaming ridges from beneath her clean-cut bows.

The brig was bound from Auckland to Samoa and the islands of the north-west, and carried a cargo of trade goods for the white traders who hoisted the _Indiana's_ house-flag in front of their thatched dwellings. Packenham thought a good deal of this flag--it bore the letters R. P. in red in a yellow square on a blue ground--until one day Hammerfeld, the German supercargo of the _Iserbrook_, said it stood for Remorseless Plunderer. Some one told this to Packenham, and although he gave the big Dutchman a bad beating for it, the thing travelled all over the South Seas and made him very wroth. So then he got Nerida to sew another half turn in red to the loop of the P, and thereby made it into a B.

"That'll do fine," he said to Denison. '"Bob Packenham' instead of 'Robert Packenham,' eh?"

"Ye-s," answered, Denison thoughtfully, "I daresay it will be all right." And a month later, when Captain Bully Hayes came on board the _Indiana_ in Funafuti Lagoon, he gravely told Packenham that a lot of people were saying the letters stood for "Bloody Pirate."

But all this has nothing to do with this story.

As I have said, the brig was running before a stiff southerly gale. Packenham came on deck, and flinging his six feet of muscular manhood upon the up-ended flaps of the skylight, had just lit his cigar when Alan the bos'un came aft and said that the peak of Tutuila was looming high right ahead, thirty miles away.

"Bully old ship!" said the skipper, "give the _Indiana_ a good breeze that catches her fair and square in the stern and she'll run like a scared dog with a tin-pot tied to his tail. Denison, you sleepy beast, come up on deck and look at Samoa the Beautiful, where every prospect pleases and only the German trader is vile."

And so as he and Denison sat aft on the skylight drinking their afternoon coffee and smoking their Manilas, and the brown-skinned native crew sat below in the dark and stuffy foc's'le and gambled for tobacco, the _Indiana_ foamed and splashed and rolled before the gale till she ran under the lee of the land into a sea of transparent green, whose gentle rollers scarce broke in foam as they poured over the weed-clad ledges of the barrier-reef into the placid waters or the islet-studded lagoon encompassing the mainland about the village of Sa Lotopa.

Then as some of the merry-hearted kanaka crew ranged the cable, and others ran aloft to clew-up the sails, Packenham steered the brig between a narrow reef-bound passage till she brought up abreast a sweeping curve of sandy beach, shining white under the wooded spurs of a mountain peak two thousand feet above. Back from the beach and showing golden-brown among the sunlit green lay the thatched houses of a native village, and as the brig came head to wind, and the cable clattered through the hawse-pipes, the brown-skinned people ran joyously down to their canoes and swarmed off to the ship. For they all knew Pakenami the _kapeni_, and Tenisoni the supercargo, and Alan the half-caste bos'un, and the two mates, and the Chinaman cook, and every one else on board, and for years past had laughed and joked and sang and hunted the wild boar with them all; and sometimes lied to and robbed and fought with them, only to be better friends than ever when the white men came back again, and the skipper and Denison made the young men presents of meerschaum pipes and condemned Snider rifles; and Alan the Stalwart "asked" every fourth girl in the village when he got drunk at a dance and denied it when sober, yet paid damages like an honourable man (2 dols, in trade goods for each girl) to the relatives.

In a few minutes the first batch of canoes reached the ship, and the occupants, men, women, and children, clambered up the brig's side, and then rushed aft to the poop to rub noses with Packenham and Denison, after the custom of the country, and then for a time a wild babble of voices reigned.

"Hallo, Iakopo, how are you!" said the skipper, shaking hands with a fat-faced, smiling native, who was clad in a white duck suit, and was accompanied by a pretty, dark-eyed girl; "how's the new church getting on? Nearly finished, is it. Well, I didn't forget you. I've brought you down the doors and windows from Auckland."

Iakopo (_Anglice_ Jacob), who was the local teacher and rather a favourite with the _Indiana's_ company, said he was very glad. He was anxious to get the church finished before the next visit of the missionary ship, he said. That vain fellow Pita, the teacher at Leone Bay, had been boasting terribly about _his_ church, and he (Iakopo) meant to crush him utterly with these European-made doors and windows, which his good friend Pakenami had brought him from Nui Silani.

"You bet," said the skipper; "and what's more, I'll help you to take the shine out of Pita. I'll fix the doors and windows for you myself," and he winked slily at the teacher's daughter, who returned it as promptly as any Christian maiden, knowing that Nerida wasn't on board, and that she had nothing to fear.

"I wish to goodness that fellow hadn't come aboard," grumbled Denison to Packenham, after the missionary and his daughter had gone ashore. "Peter Deasy and the Dutchman don't like it, I can see, or they would have been aboard before now. No white man likes boarding a ship _after_ a native teacher, and both these fellows are d----d touchy. The chances are that they won't come aboard at all to-day."

"That's true," said the captain thoughtfully; "I didn't think of that." (He never did think.) "Shall I go ashore first, and smooth down their ruffled plumage?"

Denison said he thought it would be a good thing to do. Deasy and the Dutchman (_i.e._, the German) were both independent traders, who had always bought their trade goods from and sold their produce to the _Indiana_ for years past, and were worth humouring. So Packenham went ashore, leaving Denison to open out his wares in the brig's trade room in readiness for the two white men.

*****


Now both Peter Deasy and Hans Schweicker were feeling very sulky--as Denison imagined--and at that moment were talking to each other across the road from their respective doorways, for their houses were not far apart. They had intended boarding the ship the moment she anchored, but abandoned the idea as soon as they saw the teacher going off. Not that they disliked Iakopo personally, but then he was only a low-class native, and had no business thrusting himself before his betters. So they sat down and waited till Denison or the captain came ashore.

Peter wore a pair of clean white moleskins and a bright pink print shirt covered with blue dogs; and as the lower portion of this latter garment was hanging outside instead of being tucked inside his moleskins, quite a large number of dogs were visible. Hans, dressed in pyjamas of a green and yellow check, carefully starched, smoked a very bad German cigar; Deasy puffed a very dirty clay dhudeen.

Presently one of Hans's wife's numerous relatives ran up to him, and told him that the captain was coming ashore, and the atmosphere at once cleared a little. Deasy was the elder trader, and by right of custom expected the skipper would come to his house first. Hans, however, was the "warmest" man of the two, and thought _he_ should be the honoured man, especially as he had the larger quantity of copra and other island produce to sell Packenham. Both men were very good friends at that moment, and had been so for years past. They had frequently lied manfully on each other's behalf when summoned before the Deputy-Commissioner for selling arms and ammunition to the natives. But while in social matters--such as getting drunk, circumventing the missionaries, and making fools of her Majesty's representatives--the two were in perfect and truly happy accord, they were often devoured with the bitterest business jealousies, and their wives and relatives generally shared this feeling with them. And as Mrs. Deasy and Mrs. Schweicker each had a large native following who all considered _their_ white man was the better of the two, the question of commercial supremacy between Peter Deasy and Hans Schweicker was one of much local importance.

As the word was passed along that the captain was coming, the female inmates of the two houses each surrounded their respective head, and looked anxiously over his shoulders at the approaching visitor. Deasy's wife had put on her best dress; so had Schweicker's. Pati-lima--otherwise Mrs. Peter Deasy--who was a huge eighteen stone creature, with a round good-humoured face and a piping childish voice, had arrayed her vast proportions in a flowing gown of Turkey-red twill, and the radiant glory thereof had a pleasing and effective background in the garments of her three daughters, who were dressed in 'green, yellow, and blue respectively. Manogi--Mrs. Schweicker--who had no children, and was accounted the prettiest woman in Samoa, was clothed, like her husband, in spotless white, and her shining black tresses fell in a wavy mantle down to her waist. Unlike Pati-lima's daughters, whose heads were encircled by wreaths of orange blossoms, Manogi wore neither ornament nor decoration. She knew that her wavy hair drooped gracefully down her clear-cut, olive-hued face like the frame of a picture, and set off her bright eyes and white teeth to perfection; and that no amount of orange blossoms could make her appear more beautiful. So in the supreme and blessed consciousness of being the best-dressed and best-looking woman in the whole village, she sat behind her husband fanning herself languidly, and scarce deigning to answer the Deasy girls when they spoke to her.

Presently the boat touched the beach. The captain jumped out, shook hands with a number of natives who thronged around him, and stepped along the path. Half-way between the white men's houses was the unfinished church, and near to that the teacher's house, embowered in a grove of orange and lemon trees. As Packenham walked along he looked up the road, smiled and nodded at the Deasy and Schweicker crowd, then deliberately turned to the left and walked into the teacher's dwelling! And Manogi and all the Deasy women saw Miriamu, the teacher's daughter, come to the open window and make a face at them in derision. Peter and Schweicker looked at each other in speechless indignation.

"The swape av the wurruld!" and Deasy dashed his pipe down at his feet and smashed it in small pieces, "to go to a native's house first an' white min sthandin' awaitin' his pleasure. By the sowl av' me mother, Hans, devil a foot does he put inside my door till he explains phwat he manes by it."

"Shoost vat you mide expeg from a new chum!" replied Hans, who had lived in Australia. Then they both went back to their respective houses to await events.

Now Packenham meant no harm, and had not the faintest idea he was giving offence. But then, as Denison said, he never would think. Yet on this occasion he had been thinking. Iakopo had told him that he had collected enough money to pay for the doors and windows right away, and then Packenham, who knew that this would surprise and please Denison, told the teacher that he would call for the money when he came ashore.

"Come to my father's house first--before you go to the white men's," said Iakopo's