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

long gun on the ship would destroy every house and canoe on the island, even if no one were killed. That meant much to them, whereas one man's life was but little. But, first, the natives tried cunning. One and then another wretched slave was caught and bound and taken off to the naval officer as the murderer, only to be scornfully rejected by Randolph and the captain. Then the officer's patience was exhausted. If the man who murdered Keyes was not surrendered in an hour he would open fire, and also hang some of the chiefs then detained on board as hostages.

Randolph's gloomy face quickened their fears. This captain could neither be frightened nor fooled. In half an hour the slayer of the trader was brought on board. The old men admitted their attempt at deception, but pleaded that the murderer was a man of influence, and they would rather the two others (who were absolutely innocent) were hanged than this one; but their suggestion was not acted upon. The trial was just and fair, but short, and then Randolph urged the captain to have the man executed on shore by being shot. It would impress the people more than hanging him on board. And hanging they regarded as a silly way of killing a man.

The naval officer had no relish for work of this nature, and when Randolph told him that the natives had consented to execute the prisoner in his (Randolph's) presence (and the captain's presence also if necessary) he, no doubt, felt glad. Bob Randolph then became M.C., and gave his instructions to the old men. The whole village assembled in front of Randolph's to see the show. An old carronade lying in the corner of the copra house was dragged out, cleaned, and loaded with a heavy blank charge. Then the prisoner, sullen and defiant to the last, but wondering at the carronade, was lashed with his back to the muzzle, and, at a signal from one of the old men, a firestick was applied to the gun. A roar, a rush of fragments through the air, and all was finished. Bob Randolph's fox-terrier was the only creature that seemed to trouble about making any search for the remnants of the body. Half an hour afterwards, as Bob was at supper, he came in and deposited a gory lump of horror at his master's feet.



NINA

When Captain Henry Charlton--generally known as "Bully Charlton"--stepped on shore at Townsville in North Queensland with his newly-wedded wife, his acquaintances stared at them both in profound astonishment. They had heard that he had married in Sydney, and from their past knowledge of his character expected to see a loudly-attired Melbourne or Sydney barmaid with peroxided hair, and person profusely adorned with obtrusive jewelry. Instead of this they beheld a tall, ladylike girl with a cold, refined face, and an equally cold and distant manner.

"Well, I _have_ seen some curious things in my time," said Fryer, the American master of a Torres Straits pearling schooner, to the other men, as they watched Charlton and his wife drive away from the hotel, "but to think that _that_ fellow should marry a lady! I wonder if she has the faintest idea of what an anointed scoundrel he is?"

"He's been mighty smart over it, anyway," said a storekeeper named Lee. "Why, it isn't six months since Nina drowned herself. I suppose it's true, Fryer, that she did bolt with Jack Lester?"

The American struck his hand upon the table in hot anger. "That's a lie! I know Lester well, and Nina Charlton was as good a woman as ever breathed."

"Well, you see, Fryer, we don't know as much as you do about the matter. But when Nina cleared out from her husband and Lester disappeared a day or two later and went no one knows where, it did look pretty queer."

"And I tell you that Lester never saw Mrs. Charlton after the day he took it out of Charlton. He's a gentleman. And if you want to know where he is now I'll tell you. He's pearling at Thursday Island in Torres Straits. And Nina Charlton, thank God, is at rest. After the fight between Lester and her husband she ran away, and reached Port Denison almost dead from exposure in the bush. Shannon, of the _Lynndale_, who had known her in her childhood, gave her a passage to Sydney. Two days before the steamer reached there she disappeared--jumped overboard in the night, I suppose."

"Well, I'm sorry I repeated what is common gossip; but Charlton himself put the story about. And the papers said a lot about the elopement of the wife of a well-known plantation manager.'"

Fryer laughed contemptuously. "Just the thing Charlton would do. He's an infernal scoundrel. He told Lester that he'd make it warm for him--the beast. But I'm sorry for that sad-faced girl we saw just now. Fancy the existence she will lead with an unprincipled and drunken brute like Charlton! Good-bye; I'm off aboard. And look here, if ever any of you hear any more talk about Lester and Nina Charlton and repeats it in my hearing I'll do my best to make him sorry."

*****


Lester was the manager of a mine and quartz-crushing battery near Charlton's plantation on the Lower Burdekin River when he "took it out" of its owner. He was a quiet, self-possessed man of about thirty, and occasionally visited Charlton and his wife and played a game of billiards--if Charlton was sober enough to stand. Sometimes in his rides along the lonely bush tracks he would meet Mrs. Charlton and go as far as the plantation gates with her. She was a small, slenderly built woman, or rather girl, with dark, passionate eyes, in whose liquid depths Lester could read the sorrows of her life with such a man as Henry Charlton. Once as he rode beside her through the grey monotone of the lofty, smooth-barked gum-trees she told him that her father was an Englishman and her mother a Portuguese.

"I married Captain Charlton in Macao. He was in the navy, you know; and although it is only four years since I left my father's house I feel so old; and sometimes when I awake in the night I think I can hear the sound of the beating surf and the rustle of the nipa-palms in the trade wind. And, oh! I so long to see----" Her eyes filled with tears, and she turned her face away.

Perhaps Lester's unconsciously pitying manner to her whenever they met, and the utter loneliness of her existence on the Belle Grace Plantation made Nina Charlton think too much of the young mine manager, and, without knowing it, to eagerly look forward to their chance meetings.

One day as Lester was walking through Charlton's estate, gun in hand, looking for wild turkeys, he met her. She was seated under the widespreading branches of a Leichhardt-tree, and was watching some of her husband's labourers felling a giant gum.

"I came out to see it fall," she said. "It is the largest tree on Belle Grace. And it is so dull in the house." She turned her face away quickly.

Lester muttered a curse under his breath. He knew what she meant. Charlton had returned from Townsville the day before in a state of frenzy, and after threatening to murder his servants had flung himself upon a couch to sleep the sleep of drunkenness.

As the men hewed at the bole of the mighty tree Lester and Nina Charlton talked. She had spent the first year of her married life in Sydney, which was Lester's native town, and in a few minutes she had quite forgotten the tree, and was listening eagerly to Lester's account of his wanderings through the world, for his had been an adventurous career--sailor, South Sea trader, pearl-sheller, and gold miner in New Guinea and the Malayan Archipelago.

"And now here I am, Mrs. Charlton, over thirty years of age, and not any the richer for all my roving. Of course," he added, with boyish candour, "I know when I'm well off, and I have a good billet here and mean to save money. And I intend to be back in Sydney in another fortnight."

"But you will return to Queensland, will you not?" she said quickly.

Lester laughed. "Oh yes, I suppose I shall settle down here finally. But I'm going to Sydney to be married. Would you care to see my future wife's photograph? You see, Mrs. Charlton, you're the only lady I've ever talked to about her, and I should like you to see what she is like."

She made no answer, and Lester in wondering ignorance saw that her face had paled to a deathly white and that her hands were trembling.

"You are ill, Mrs. Charlton. You must be getting a touch of fever. Let me take you home."

"No," she answered quickly; "let me stay here. I shall be better in a minute." And then she began to sob passionately.

Charlton, awakening from his drunken sleep, looked at them from the window of the sitting-room. He hated his wife because she feared him, and of late had almost shuddered when he touched her. Picking up his whip from the table, he walked out of the house to where she was sitting.

"So this is your little amusement, is it?" he said savagely to Nina; "and this fellow is the cause of all my trouble. I might have known what to expect from a woman like you. Your Portuguese nature is too much for you. Go back to the house, and leave me to settle with your lover."

The next instant Lester launched out and struck him on the mouth. He lay where he fell, breathing heavily, and when he rose to his feet he saw Lester carrying his wife, who had fainted, to the house.

Placing Mrs. Charlton in the care of a servant, Lester returned quickly to where Charlton, who was no coward, awaited him.

"You drunken scoundrel!" he burst out; "I've come back to settle up with you!"

And Lester did "settle up" to his heart's content, for he half-killed Charlton with his own whip.

A week later, however, Charlton had his first bit of revenge. Lester was dismissed, the directors of the mine being determined, as they said, to show their disapproval of his attack upon "a justice of the peace and one of their largest shareholders."

Lester sat down and wrote to the "girl of his heart," and told her that he could not see her for another year or so. "I have had to leave the mine, Nell, dear," he said. "I won't tell you why--it would anger you perhaps. But it was not all my fault. However, I have decided what to do. I am going back to my old vocation of pearler in Torres Straits. I can make more money there than I could here."

The following morning, as he was leaving Belle Grace, he heard that Mrs. Charlton had left her husband two days previously, and had made her way through the bush to Port Denison, from where she had gone to Sydney.

Soon after Lester had sailed for Torres Straits in Fryer's schooner, the owner of Belle Grace Plantation received a telegram from Sydney telling him that his wife was dead--she had jumped overboard on the passage down. And, later on, Lester heard it also.

*****


Lester was doing well, but wondering why Nellie March did not write. He little knew that Charlton was in Sydney working out his revenge. This he soon accomplished.

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