Kitabı oku: «Rídan The Devil And Other Stories», sayfa 5

‘Why is it that none of ye speak either to me, or to one another? Am I a corpse that is dressed for the funeral rites?’

Then one of them, named Tanéo, his foster-brother, answered, and bent his head as he spoke,—

‘Oh, Narü, son of Mahua, and mine own brother, hast thou not heard of the dream of Milli?’

At the name of Milli, the hot blood leapt into the face of the chief’s son; but he answered quickly,—

‘Nay, naught have I heard, and how can the dream of a slave girl concern me on such a day as this?’

‘Oh, Narü!’ replied Tanéo, ‘’tis more than a dream; for the god Oro hath spoken to her, and shown her things that concern thee and all of thy father’s people.’ And with that the young men arose and left him without further speech.

Little did Narü know that scarce a stone’s throw away from where he stood, Milli, with love in her eyes, was watching him from behind a clump of plantain trees. She, too, was arrayed as if for a dance or a marriage, and behind her were a number of women, who were crouched together and spoke only in whispers.

As they stood, the sounds of the drums and flutes and conches came from the village, and then Narü went forth from the little house, and walked towards it through the palm grove.

As he stepped proudly along the shaded path he heard his name called in a low voice, and Milli the Slave stood before him with downcast eyes, and barred his path.

Now, Narü, bold as he was, feared to meet this girl, and so for some moments no words came to him, and Milli, looking quickly up, saw that he had placed his right hand over his eyes. Then she spoke,—

‘See, Narü, I do but come to thee to speak some little words; so turn thy face to me once more; for from this day thou shalt never again see Milli the Slave.’

But Narü, still keeping his hand to his eyes, turned aside, and leaning his forehead against the trunk of a palm-tree, kept silence awhile. Then he said, in a low voice,—

‘Oh, Milli, be not too hard! This woman Laea hath bewitched me—and then—thou art but a slave.’

‘Aye,’ answered the girl, softly, ‘I am but a slave, and this Laea is very beautiful and the daughter of a great chief. So for that do I come to say farewell, and to ask thee to drink with me this bowl of orange juice. ‘Tis all I have to offer, for I am poor and have no wedding gift to give thee; and yet with this mean offering do I for ever give thee the hot love of my heart—ay, and my life also, if thou should’st need it.’

And so, to please the girl whom he had once loved, he received from her hand the drink of orange juice, which she took from a basket she carried, and yet as he drank he looked away, for he feared to see her eyes looking into his.

Only one word did he say as he turned away, and that was ‘Farewell,’ and Milli answered ‘Farewell, Narü;’ but when he had gone some distance she followed him and sobbed softly to herself.

And soon, as Narü walked, his body swayed to and fro and his feet struck the roots of the trees that grew out through the soil along the path. Then Milli, running swiftly up, caught him as he fell, and laid his head upon her knees. His eyes were closed and his skin dead to her touch.

Presently the bushes near by parted, and two women came out, and lifting Narü between them, they carried the young man to a shady place and laid him down.

And then Milli wept as she bent her face over that of the man she loved, but the two older women bade her cease.

Once more the girl looked at Narü, and then, stepping out into the path, ran swiftly towards the village.

The five canoes were now sailing quickly over the smooth lagoon, with the streamers from their mat sails floating in the wind, and on the stages that ran from their sides to the outriggers were grouped parties of singers and dancers, with painted bodies and faces dyed scarlet with the juice of the mati berry, who sang and danced, and shouted, and made a brave show for the people who awaited their coming on the shore.

On the great stage of the first canoe, which was painted black, was seated Laea, surrounded by her women attendants, who joined in the wild singing whenever the name of their mistress formed the singers’ theme.

Then suddenly, as each steersman let fall from his hand his great steering paddle, which was secured by a rope to the side, the canoes ran up into the wind, the huge mat sails were lowered, the stone anchors dropped overboard, and the music and dancing ceased.

And then a strange thing happened, and Laea, who was of a proud and haughty disposition, as became her lineage, grew pale with anger; for suddenly the great crowd of people which had assembled on the beach seemed to sway to and fro, and then separate and form into two bodies; and she saw that the women and children had gathered apart from the men and stood in a compact mass on the brow of the beach, and the men, in strange, ominous quiet, spear and club in hand, had ranged, without a sound, in battle array before her escort.

There was silence awhile, and then Tanéo, the foster brother of Narü, clothed in his armour of cinnet fibre, and grasping a short stabbing spear in his hand, stepped out of the ranks.

‘Get thee back again to Tahiti, O men of Paré,’ he said quietly, striking his spear into the sand. ‘This marriage is not to our minds.’

Then Laea, as she looked at the amazed and angered faces of her people as they heard Tanéo’s insulting words, dashed aside her attendants, and leaping from the canoe into the shallow water, walked to the shore, and stood face to face with him.

‘Who art thou, fellow, to stand before the daughter of Tetoro the King, with a spear in thy rude hand, and thy mouth filled with saucy words?’

‘I am Tanéo, the foster brother of the man thou seekest to marry. And because that a warning hath come to us against this marriage do I stand here, spear in hand.’

Laea laughed scornfully.

‘I seek thy brother in marriage? Thou fool! Would I, the daughter of my father, seek any man for husband? Hath not this Narü pestered me so with his presents and his love-offerings that, for very weariness, and to please my father, I turned my face from the Englishman who buildeth ships for him, and said “Aye” to this Narü—who is but a little man¹³—when he besought me to be wife to him. Ah! the Englishman, who is both a clever and strong man, is more to my liking.’

‘Get thee back, then, to thy Englishman, and leave to me my lover,’ cried a woman’s voice, and Milli the Slave, thrusting aside the armed men who sought to stay her, sprang out upon the sand, and clenching her hands tightly, gazed fiercely at the king’s daughter.

‘Thy lover!’ and Laea looked contemptuously at the small, slender figure of the slave girl, and then her cheek darkened with rage as she turned to her followers. ‘See how this dog of a Narü hath insulted me! Have I come all this way to be fooled for the sake of such a miserable creature as this?’ and she pointed scornfully to Milli and then spat on the ground. ‘Where is this fellow? Let him come near to me so that I may tell him to his face that I have ever despised him as one beneath me. Where is he, I ask thee, girl?’ And she seized the slave girl by her wrist.

The savage fury of her voice, her blazing eyes, and noble, commanding presence, excited alike both her own people and the clustering throng of armed men that stood watching on the beach, for these latter, by some common impulse moved nearer, and at the same time every man in the five canoes sprang out, and, dashing through the water, ranged themselves beside their mistress.

‘Back!’ cried Tanéo, warningly; ‘back, ye men of Paré, back, ere it be too late, and thou, Laea, harm not the girl, for see, O foolish woman! we here are as ten to one, and ‘twill be a bloody day for thee and thy people if but a spear be raised.’

And then, facing round, he cried, ‘And back, O men of Tetuaroa. Why draw ye so near? Must blood run because of the vain and bitter words of a silly woman?’

Then, with an angry gesture, Laea released her hold of the slave girl’s slender wrist, and she, too, held up a warning hand to her warriors.

‘True, Tanéo,’ she said mockingly; ‘thy people are as ten to one of mine, as thou sayest, and for this alone dost thou dare insult me. Oh, thou coward, Tanéo!’

A swift gleam of anger shone in Tanéo’s eyes, and his hand grasped his spear tightly. Then he looked steadily at the king’s daughter, and answered.

‘Nay, no coward am I, Laea. And see, if but a little blood will appease thee, take this spear and slay me. It is better for one to die than many.’ Stretching out his hand, he gave her his spear.

She waved it back sneeringly.

‘Thy words are brave, Tanéo; but only because that behind them lieth no danger. Only a coward could talk as—’

He sprang back.

‘Ho, men of Paré! Listen! So that but one or two men may die, and many live, let this quarrel lie between me and any one of ye that will battle with me here, spear to spear, on this beach. Is it not better so than that Tetoro the King should weep for so many of his people?’

A tall, grey-headed old warrior leapt out from the ranks of those that stood behind Laea.

‘Thou and I, Tanéo, shall fight till one of us be slain.’

Suddenly Milli the Slave sprang between them with outstretched arms.

‘Peace, peace! Drop thou thy spear, Tanéo, and thou thine, old man. There is no need for blood but mine—for Narü is dead.’

Then, kneeling on the sand she said, ‘Draw near to me and listen.’

Quickly the opposing parties formed a circle around her; before her stood the haughty and angry Laea; behind her, and standing side by side, Tanéo and the grey-haired Tahitian warrior.

‘I am Milli, the bond-woman of Mahua, the father of Narü. And Narü loved me; but because of thee, O Laea, he turned from me, and my heart became cold. For who would give food to my child when it was born—the child of a slave whose lover was a chief and who had cast her off? And then there came a vision to me in the night, and I saw the things of which I have told ye, O men of Tetuaroa. And I knew that the black cloud of my vision was sent to warn the people of this land against the marriage, and the hunger and the bitter days of poverty that would come of it. And so, because thou art a great woman, O Laea, and I but a poor slave, did I meet Narü but a little while since and give him to drink; and when he drank of that which I gave him he died, for it was poisoned.’

A low murmur, half anger, half pity, broke from the assembled people.

‘Thou fool!’ said Laea, pityingly; and then she turned to Tanéo.

‘And so thy brother hath died by the hand of a slave? Let us part in peace. Farewell!’

And then, as the men of Paré returned in silence to their canoes, Tanéo and his people closed in upon the kneeling figure of the slave girl, who bent her head as a man stepped before her with a club.

When the five canoes had sailed away a little distance from the beach, Laea saw the men of Tetuaroa open out their ranks, and, looking in the midst, she saw, lying face downwards on the sand, the body of Milli the Slave.

DENISON GETS A BERTH ASHORE

After many years as supercargo, ‘blackbirder‘¹⁴ and trader in the South Seas, Tom Denison one day found himself in Sydney with less than ten shillings in his pocket, and with a strong fraternal yearning to visit his brother, who was a bank manager in North Queensland and a very good-natured man. So he sent a telegram, ‘Tired of the sea. Can you find me a billet ashore?’ An answer soon came, ‘Yes, if you can manage poultry farm and keep books. If so, will wire passage money and expenses.’

Denison pondered over the situation. He had seen a lot of poultry in his time—in coops on board the Indiana and the Palestine; and one Captain ‘Bully’ Hayes, with whom he had once sailed as supercargo, had told him a lot of things about game fowls, to which birds the genial ‘Bully’ had a great leaning—but was not sure that he was good at books. In fact, the owners of the Palestine had said that his system of book-keeping had driven the senior partner to drink, and they always sent a ‘Manual of Book-keeping’ on board every time the ship sailed from Sydney. At the same time Denison was touched by the allusion to passage money and expenses, and felt that making entries about the birth of clutches of chickens and ducklings, and the number of eggs sold, would be simple enough—much easier than the heartbreaking work of a supercargo, when such customers as Flash Harry of Apia or Fiji Bill of Apamama would challenge the correctness of their grog bills, and offer to fight him instead of paying. And then, he thought, it would be simply delightful to sit in a room in a quiet farmhouse and hear the gentle moaning of calves and the cheerful cackle of exultant hens, as he wrote items in a book about eggs and things, and drink buttermilk, instead of toiling in the ill-smelling trade-room on board the Palestine, bottling off Queensland rum and opening tierces of negrohead tobacco, while the brig was either standing on her head or rolling her soul out, and Packenham the skipper was using shocking language to everyone on deck.

So he sent a ‘collect’ telegram to his brother, and stated that he thoroughly understood all branches of poultry and book-keeping.

On the voyage up to Cooktown he kept to himself, and studied ‘Pip and Its Remedy,’ ‘Warts and the Sulphur Cure,’ ‘Milligan on Roup in Ducks,’ and other valuable works; so that when the steamer reached the port and he met his brother, the latter was deeply impressed with the profound knowledge he displayed of the various kinds of poultry diseases, and said he felt sure that Denison would ‘make the thing pay.’ The poultry farm, he said, belonged to the bank, which had advanced money to the former proprietor, who had most unjustifiably died in delirium tremens at Cooktown Hospital a few months ago, leaving the farm to the care of some aboriginals, and his estate much in debt to the good, kind bank.

On the following evening Denison was driven out to the place by his brother, who took advantage of the occasion to point out to the youth the beauties of a country life, away from the temptations of cities. Also he remarked upon the folly of a young man spending the bloom of his years among the dissolute natives of the South Seas; and then casually inquired if the women down there were pretty. Then the younger Denison began to talk, and the elder brother immediately pulled up the horse from a smart trot into a slow walk, saying there was no need to rush along on such a hot night, and that he liked to hear about the customs of foreign countries. About ten o’clock they reached their destination, and the elder brother, without getting out of the trap and entering the house, hurriedly bade Tom good-bye and drove off as quickly as possible, fearing that if he stayed till the morning, and the youth saw the place by daylight, the latter would become a fratricide.

The occupants of the farm were, the new manager found, three black fellows and two ‘gins,‘¹⁵ all of whom were in a state of stark nudity; but they welcomed him with smiles and an overpowering smell of ants, the which latter is peculiar to the Australian nigger. One of the bucks, who when Denison entered was sleeping, with three exceedingly mangy dogs, in the ex-proprietor’s bunk—a gorgeous affair made of a badly-smelling new green hide stretched between four posts, at once got up and gave him possession of the couch; and Denison, being very tired, spread his rug over the hide and turned in, determined not to grumble, and make the thing pay, and then buy a place in the Marquesas or Samoa in a few years, and die in comfort. During the night the mosquitoes worried him incessantly, until one of the coloured ladies, who slept on the ground in the next room, hearing his petulant exclamations, brought him a dirty piece of rag, soaked in kerosene, and told him to anoint his hair, face and hands with it. He did so, and then fell asleep comfortably.

Early in the morning he rose and inspected the place (which I forgot to say was twenty miles from Cooktown, and on the bank of the Endeavour River). He found it to consist of two rusty old corrugated iron buildings, vaguely surrounded by an enormous amount of primaeval desolation and immediately encompassed by several hundred dead cattle (in an advanced state of putrefaction) picturesquely disposed about the outskirts of the premises. But Denison, being by nature a cheerful man, remembered that his brother (who was pious) had alluded to a drought, and said that rain was expected every day, as the newly-appointed Bishop of North Queensland had appointed a day of general humiliation and prayer, and that poultry-rearing was bound to pay.

The stock of poultry was then rounded up by the black-fellows for his inspection—thirty-seven dissolute-looking ducks, ninety-three degraded and anaemic female fowls, thirteen spirit-broken roosters, and eleven apathetic geese. Denison caught one of the ducks, which immediately endeavoured to swallow his fore-finger, under the impression it was food of some sort.

‘Jacky,’ he said to the leading coloured gentleman, ‘my brother told me that there were five hundred ducks here. Where are they?’

Jacky said that the ducks would go on the river and that ‘plenty feller big alligator eat ‘em up.’

‘Then where are the seven hundred and fifty laying hens?’

Jacky scratched his woolly head and grinned. ‘Goanner’ eat some, snake eat some, some die, some run away in bush, hawk eat some. By –, this feller duck and fowl altogether dam fool.’ »

During the following week Denison found that Jacky had not deviated from the truth—the alligators did eat the ducks, the tiger and carpet-snakes and iguanas did crawl about the place at night-time and seize any luckless fowl not strong enough to fly up to roost in the branch of a tree, the hawks did prefer live poultry to long-deceased bullock, and those hens physically capable of laying eggs laid them on an ironstone ridge about a mile away from the house. He went there one day, found nine eggs, and saw five death adders and a large and placid carpet snake. Then he wrote to his brother, and said that he thought the place would pay when the drought broke up, but he did not feel justified in taking £3, 10s. a week from the bank under the present circumstances, and would like to resign his berth, as he was afraid he was about to get an attack of fever.

A few days later he received an official letter from the bank, signed ‘C. Aubrey Denison, Manager,’ expressing surprise at his desire to give up the control of a concern that was ‘bound to pay,’ and for the management of which the bank had rejected twenty-three other applications in his favour, and suggesting that, as the poultry were not thriving, he might skin the carcases of such cattle as died in the future, and send the hides to Cooktown—‘for every hide the bank will allow you 2s. 6d. nett.’ With the official letter was a private communication from the Elder Brother telling him not to be disheartened so quickly—the place was sure to pay as soon as the drought broke up; also that as the river water was bad, and tea made from it was not good for anyone with fever, he was sending up a dozen of whisky by the mailman next week. Again Denison was touched by his brother’s thoughtfulness, and decided to remain for another week at least. But at night-time he thought a good deal about the dear old Palestine and Harvey Packenham, her skipper.

While awaiting with considerable anxiety the arrival of the mailman, Denison passed the time in killing tiger-snakes, cremating the dead cattle around the place, bathing in the only pool in the river safe from alligators, and meditating upon the advantages of a berth ashore. But when the mailman arrived (four days late) with only five bottles of whisky, and said in a small, husky voice that the pack-horse had fallen and broken seven bottles, he felt a soured and disappointed man, and knew that he was only fit for the sea. The mailman, to whom he expressed these sentiments, told him to cheer up. It was loneliness, he said, that made him feel like that, and he for his part ‘didn’t like to see no man feelin’ lonely in the bloomin’ bush.’ Therefore he would keep him company for a few days, and let the sanguinary mail go to Hades.

He did keep him company. And then, when the whisky was finished, he bade Denison good-bye, and said that any man who would send ‘his own bloomin’ brother to perish in such a place was not fit to live himself, and ought to be flamin’ well shown up in the bloomin’ noospapers.’ At daybreak next morning Denison told the coloured ladies and gentlemen to eat the remaining poultry; and, shouldering his swag, tramped it into Cooktown to ‘look for a ship.’