Jack London
The Proud Goat of Aloysius Pankburn
From "A Son of the Sun"
I
Quick eye that he had for the promise of adventure, prepared always for the
unexpected to leap out at him from behind the nearest cocoanut tree,
nevertheless David Grief received no warning when he laid eyes on Aloysius
Pankburn. It was on the little steamer Berthe. Leaving his schooner to follow,
Grief had taken passage for the short run across from Raiatea to Papeete. When
he first saw Aloysius Pankburn, that somewhat fuddled gentleman was drinking
a lonely cocktail at the tiny bar between decks next to the barber shop. And
when Grief left the barber's hands half an hour later Aloysius Pankburn was
still hanging over the bar, still drinking by himself.
Now it is not good for man to drink alone, and Grief threw sharp scrutiny
into his passing glance. He saw a well-built young man of thirty, well-
featured, well-dressed, and evidently, in the world's catalogue, a gentleman.
But in the faint hint of slovenliness, in the shaking, eager hand that spilled
the liquor, and in the nervous, vacillating eyes, Grief read the unmistakable
marks of the chronic alcoholic.
After dinner he chanced upon Pankburn again. This time it was on deck, and
the young man, clinging to the rail and peering into the distance at the dim
forms of a man and woman in two steamer chairs drawn closely together, was
crying, drunkenly. Grief noted that the man's arm was around the woman's waist.
Aloysius Pankburn looked on and cried.
"Nothing to weep about," Grief said genially.
Pankburn looked at him, and gushed tears of profound self-pity.
"It's hard," he sobbed. "Hard. Hard. That man's my business manager.
I employ him. I pay him a good screw. And that's how he earns it."
"In that case, why don't you put a stop to it?" Grief advised.
"I can't. She'd shut off my whiskey. She's my trained nurse."
"Fire her, then, and drink your head off."
"I can't. He's got all my money. If I did, he wouldn't give me sixpence to
buy a drink with."
This woful possibility brought a fresh wash of tears. Grief was interested.
Of all unique situations he could never have imagined such a one as this.
"They were engaged to take care of me," Pankburn was blubbering, "to keep
me away from the drink. And that's the way they do it, lollygagging all about
the ship and letting me drink myself to death. It isn't right, I tell you. It
isn't right. They were sent along with me for the express purpose of not
letting me drink, and they let me drink to swinishness as long as I leave them
alone. If I complain they threaten not to let me have another drop. What can
a poor devil do? My death will be on their heads, that's all. Come on down and
join me."
He released his clutch on the rail, and would have fallen had Grief not
caught his arm. He seemed to undergo a transformation, to stiffen physically,
to thrust his chin forward aggressively, and to glint harshly in his eyes.
"I won't let them kill me. And they'll be sorry. I've offered them fifty
thousand - later on, of course. They laughed. They don't know. But I know." He
fumbled in his coat pocket and drew forth an object that flashed in the faint
light. "They don't know the meaning of that. But I do." He looked at Grief with
abrupt suspicion. "What do you make out of it, eh? What do you make out of it?"
David Grief caught a swift vision of an alcoholic degenerate putting a very
loving young couple to death with a copper spike, for a copper spike was what
he held in his hand, an evident old-fashioned ship-fastening.
"My mother thinks I'm up here to get cured of the booze habit. She doesn't
know. I bribed the doctor to prescribe a voyage. When we get to Papeete my
manager is going to charter a schooner and away we'll sail. But they don't
dream. They think it's the booze. I know. I only know. Good night, sir. I'm
going to bed - unless - er - you'll join me in a night cap. One last drink, you
know."
II
In the week that followed at Papeete Grief caught numerous and bizarre
glimpses of Aloysius Pankburn. So did everybody else in the little island
capital; for neither the beach nor Lavina's boarding house had been so
scandalized in years. In midday, bareheaded, clad only in swimming trunks,
Aloysius Pankburn ran down the main street from Lavina's to the water front. He
put on the gloves with a fireman from the Berthe in a scheduled four-round bout
at the Folies Bergères, and was knocked out in the second round. He tried
insanely to drown himself in a two-foot pool of water, dived drunkenly and
splendidly from fifty feet up in the rigging of the Mariposa lying at the
wharf, and chartered the cutter Toerau at more than her purchase price and was
only saved by his manager's refusal financially to ratify the agreement. He
bought out the old blind leper at the market, and sold breadfruit, plantains,
and sweet potatoes at such cut-rates that the gendarmes were called out to
break the rush of bargain-hunting natives. For that matter, three times the
gendarmes arrested him for riotous behaviour, and three times his manager
ceased from love-making long enough to pay the fines imposed by a needy
colonial administration.
Then the Mariposa sailed for San Francisco, and in the bridal suite were
the manager and the trained nurse, fresh-married. Before departing, the manager
had thoughtfully bestowed eight five-pound banknotes on Aloysius, with the
foreseen result that Aloysius awoke several days later to find himself broke
and perilously near to delirium tremens. Lavina, famed for her good heart even
among the driftage of South Pacific rogues and scamps, nursed him around and
never let it filter into his returning intelligence that there was neither
manager nor money to pay his board.
It was several evenings after this that David Grief, lounging under the
after deck awning of the Kittiwake and idly scanning the meagre columns of the
Papeete Avant-Coureur, sat suddenly up and almost rubbed his eyes. It was
unbelievable, but there it was. The old South Seas Romance was not dead. He
read:
Wanted, - To exchange a half interest in buried treasure, worth five
million francs, for transportation for one to an unknown island in the Pacific
and facilities for carrying away the loot. Ask for Folly, at Lavina's.
Grief looked at his watch. It was early yet, only eight o'clock.
"Mr. Carlsen," he called in the direction of a glowing pipe. "Get the crew
for the whaleboat. I'm going ashore."
The husky voice of the Norwegian mate was raised for'ard, and half a dozen
strapping Rapa Islanders ceased their singing and manned the boat.
"I came to see Folly, Mr. Folly, I imagine," David Grief told Lavina.
He noted the quick interest in her eyes as she turned her head and flung
a command in native across two open rooms to the outstanding kitchen. A few
minutes later a barefooted native girl padded in and shook her head.
Lavina's disappointment was evident.
"You're stopping aboard the Kittiwake, aren't you?" she said. "I'll tell
him you called."
"Then it is a he?" Grief queried.
Lavina nodded.
"I hope you can do something for him, Captain Grief. I'm only a good-
natured woman. I don't know. But he's a likable man, and he may be telling the
truth; I don't know. You'll know. You're not a softhearted fool like me. Can't
I mix you a cocktail?"
III
Back on board his schooner and dozing in a deck chair under a three-months-
old magazine, David Grief was aroused by a sobbing, Blubbering noise from
overside. He opened his eyes. From the Chilean cruiser, a quarter of a mile
away, came the stroke of eight bells. It was midnight. From overside came
a splash and another slubbering noise. To him it seemed half amphibian, half
the sounds of a man crying to himself and querulously chanting his sorrows to
the general universe.
A jump took David Grief to the low rail. Beneath, centred about the
slubbering noise, was an area of agitated phosphorescence. Leaning over, he
locked his hand under the armpit of a man, and, with pull and heave and quick-
changing grips, he drew on deck the naked form of Aloysius Pankburn.
"I didn't have a sou-markee," he complained. "I had to swim it, and
I couldn't find your gangway. It was very miserable. Pardon me. If you have
a towel to put about my middle, and a good stiff drink, I'll be more myself.
I'm Mr. Folly, and you're the Captain Grief, I presume, who called on me when I
was out. No, I'm not drunk. Nor am I cold. This isn't shivering. Lavina allowed
me only two drinks to-day. I'm on the edge of the horrors, that's all, and
I was beginning to see things when I couldn't find the gangway. If you'll take
me below I'll be very grateful. You are the only one that answered my
advertisement."
He was shaking pitiably in the warm night, and down in the cabin, before he
got his towel, Grief saw to it that a half-tumbler of whiskey was in his hand.
"Now fire ahead," Grief said, when he had got his guest into a shirt and
a pair of duck trousers. "What's this advertisement of yours? I'm listening."
Pankburn looked at the whiskey bottle, but Grief shook his head.
"All right, Captain, though I tell you on whatever is left of my honour
that I am not drunk—not in the least. Also, what I shall tell you is true, and
I shall tell it briefly, for it is clear to me that you are a man of affairs
and action. Likewise, your chemistry is good. To you alcohol has never been
a million maggots gnawing at every cell of you. You've never been to hell. I am
there now. I am scorching. Now listen.
"My mother is alive. She is English. I was born in Australia. I was
educated at York and Yale. I am a master of arts, a doctor of philosophy; and I
am no good. Furthermore, I am an alcoholic. I have been an athlete. I used to
swan-dive a hundred and ten feet in the clear. I hold several amateur records.
I am a fish. I learned the crawl-stroke from the first of the Cavilles. I have
done thirty miles in a rough sea. I have another record. I have punished more
whiskey than any man of my years. I will steal sixpence from you for the price
of a drink. Finally, I will tell you the truth.
"My father was an American - an Annapolis man. He was a midshipman in the
War of the Rebellion. In '66 he was a lieutenant on the Suwanee. Her captain
was Paul Shirley. In '66 the Suwanee coaled at an island in the Pacific which I
do not care to mention, under a protectorate which did not exist then and which
shall be nameless. Ashore, behind the bar of a public house, my father saw
three copper spikes - ship's spikes."
David Grief smiled quietly.
"And now I can tell you the name of the coaling station and of the
protectorate that came afterward," he said.
"And of the three spikes?" Pankburn asked with equal quietness. "Go ahead,
for they are in my possession now."
"Certainly. They were behind German Oscar's bar at Peenoo-Peenee. Johnny
Black brought them there from off his schooner the night he died. He was just
back from a long cruise to the westward, fishing bêche-de-mer and sandalwood
trading. All the beach knows the tale."
Pankburn shook his head.
"Go on," he urged.
"It was before my time, of course," Grief explained. "I only tell what I've
heard. Next came the Ecuadoran cruiser, of all directions, in from the
westward, and bound home. Her officers recognized the spikes. Johnny Black was
dead. They got hold of his mate and log-book. Away to the westward went she.
Six months after, again bound home, she dropped in at Peenoo-Peenee. She had
failed, and the tale leaked out."
"When the revolutionists were marching on Guayaquil," Pankburn took it up,
"the federal officers, believing a defence of the city hopeless, salted down
the government treasure chest, something like a million dollars gold, but all
in English coinage, and put it on board the American schooner Flirt. They were
going to run at daylight. The American captain skinned out in the middle of the
night. Go on."
"It's an old story," Grief resumed. "There was no other vessel in the
harbour. The federal leaders couldn't run. They put their backs to the wall and
held the city. Rohjas Salced, making a forced march from Quito, raised the
siege. The revolution was broken, and the one ancient steamer that constituted
the Ecuadoran navy was sent in pursuit of the Flirt. They caught her, between
the Banks Group and the New Hebrides, hove to and flying distress signals. The
captain had died the day before-blackwater fever."
"And the mate?" Pankburn challenged.
"The mate had been killed a week earlier by the natives on one of the
Banks, when they sent a boat in for water. There were no navigators left. The
men were put to the torture. It was beyond international law. They wanted to
confess, but couldn't. They told of the three spikes in the trees on the beach,
but where the island was they did not know. To the westward, far to the
westward, was all they knew. The tale now goes two ways. One is that they all
died under the torture. The other is that the survivors were swung at the
yardarm. At any rate, the Ecuadoran cruiser went home without the treasure.
Johnny Black brought the three spikes to Peenoo-Peenee, and left them at German
Oscar's, but how and where he found them he never told."
Pankburn looked hard at the whiskey bottle.
"Just two fingers," he whimpered.
Grief considered, and poured a meagre drink. Pankburn's eyes sparkled, and
he took new lease of life.
"And this is where I come in with the missing details," he said. "Johnny
Black did tell. He told my father. Wrote him from Levuka, before he came on to
die at Peenoo-Peenee. My father had saved his life one rough-house night in
Valparaiso. A Chink pearler, out of Thursday Island, prospecting for new
grounds to the north of New Guinea, traded for the three spikes with a nigger.
Johnny Black bought them for copper weight. He didn't dream any more than the
Chink, but coming back he stopped for hawksbill turtle at the very beach where
you say the mate of the Flirt was killed. Only he wasn't killed. The Banks
Islanders held him prisoner, and he was dying of necrosis of the jawbone,
caused by an arrow wound in the fight on the beach. Before he died he told the
yarn to Johnny Black. Johnny Black wrote my father from Levuka. He was at the
end of his rope—cancer. My father, ten years afterward, when captain of the
Perry, got the spikes from German Oscar. And from my father, last will and
testament, you know, came the spikes and the data. I have the island, the
latitude and longitude of the beach where the three spikes were nailed in the
trees. The spikes are up at Lavina's now. The latitude and longitude are in my
head. Now what do you think?"
"Fishy," was Grief's instant judgment. "Why didn't your father go and get
it himself?"
"Didn't need it. An uncle died and left him a fortune. He retired from the
navy, ran foul of an epidemic of trained nurses in Boston, and my mother got
a divorce. Also, she fell heir to an income of something like thirty thousand
dollars, and went to live in New Zealand. I was divided between them, half-time
New Zealand, half-time United States, until my father's death last year. Now my
mother has me altogether. He left me his money - oh, a couple of millions - but
my mother has had guardians appointed on account of the drink. I'm worth all
kinds of money, but I can't touch a penny save what is doled out to me. But the
old man, who had got the tip on my drinking, left me the three spikes and the
data thereunto pertaining. Did it through his lawyers, unknown to my mother;
said it beat life insurance, and that if I had the backbone to go and get it
I could drink my back teeth awash until I died. Millions in the hands of my
guardians, slathers of shekels of my mother's that'll be mine if she beats me
to the crematory, another million waiting to be dug up, and in the meantime I'm
cadging on Lavina for two drinks a day. It's hell, isn't it? - when you
consider my thirst."
"Where's the island?"
"It's a long way from here."
"Name it."
"Not on your life, Captain Grief. You're making an easy half-million out of
this. You will sail under my directions, and when we're well to sea and on our
way I'll tell you and not before."
Grief shrugged his shoulders, dismissing the subject.
"When I've given you another drink I'll send the boat ashore with you," he
said.
Pankburn was taken aback. For at least five minutes he debated with himself,
then licked his lips and surrendered.
"If you promise to go, I'll tell you now."
"Of course I'm willing to go. That's why I asked you. Name the island."
Pankburn looked at the bottle.
"I'll take that drink now, Captain."
"No you won't. That drink was for you if you went ashore. If you are going
to tell me the island, you must do it in your sober senses."
"Francis Island, if you will have it. Bougainville named it Barbour
Island."
"Off there all by its lonely in the Little Coral Sea," Grief said. "I know
it. Lies between New Ireland and New Guinea. A rotten hole now, though it was
all right when the Flirt drove in the spikes and the Chink pearler traded for
them. The steamship Castor, recruiting labour for the Upolu plantations, was
cut off there with all hands two years ago. I knew her captain well. The
Germans sent a cruiser, shelled the bush, burned half a dozen villages, killed
a couple of niggers and a lot of pigs, and - and that was all. The niggers
always were bad there, but they turned really bad forty years ago. That was
when they cut off a whaler. Let me see? What was her name?"
He stepped to the bookshelf, drew out the bulky "South Pacific Directory,"
and ran through its pages.
"Yes. Here it is. Francis, or Barbour," he skimmed. "Natives warlike and
treacherous - Melanesian - cannibals. Whaleship Western cut off - that was her
name. Shoals - points - anchorages - ah, Redscar, Owen Bay, Likikili Bay,
that's more like it; deep indentation, mangrove swamps, good holding in nine
fathoms when white scar in bluff bears west-southwest." Grief looked up.
"That's your beach, Pankburn, I'll swear."
"Will you go?" the other demanded eagerly.
Grief nodded.
"It sounds good to me. Now if the story had been of a hundred millions, or
some such crazy sum, I wouldn't look at it for a moment. We'll sail to-morrow,
but under one consideration. You are to be absolutely under my orders."
His visitor nodded emphatically and joyously.
"And that means no drink."
"That's pretty hard," Pankburn whined.
"It's my terms. I'm enough of a doctor to see you don't come to harm. And
you are to work - hard work, sailor's work. You'll stand regular watches and
everything, though you eat and sleep aft with us."
"It's a go." Pankburn put out his hand to ratify the agreement. "If it
doesn't kill me," he added.
David Grief poured a generous three-fingers into the tumbler and extended
it.
"Then here's your last drink. Take it."
Pankburn's hand went halfway out. With a sudden spasm of resolution, he
hesitated, threw back his shoulders, and straightened up his head.
"I guess I won't," he began, then, feebly surrendering to the gnaw of
desire, he reached hastily for the glass, as if in fear that it would be
withdrawn.
IV
It is a long traverse from Papeete in the Societies to the Little Coral
Sea - from 150 west longitude to 150 east longitude - as the crow flies the
equivalent to a voyage across the Atlantic. But the Kittiwake did not go as the
crow flies. David Grief's numerous interests diverted her course many times. He
stopped to take a look-in at uninhabited Rose island with an eye to colonizing
and planting cocoanuts. Next, he paid his respects to Tui Manua, of Eastern
Samoa, and opened an intrigue for a share of the trade monopoly of that dying
king's three islands. From Apia he carried several relief agents and a load of
trade goods to the Gilberts. He peeped in at Ontong-Java Atoll, inspected his
plantations on Ysabel, and purchased lands from the salt-water chiefs of
northwestern Malaita. And all along this devious way he made a man of Aloysius
Pankburn.
That thirster, though he lived aft, was compelled to do the work of
a common sailor. And not only did he take his wheel and lookout, and heave on
sheets and tackles, but the dirtiest and most arduous tasks were appointed him.
Swung aloft in a bosun's chair, he scraped the masts and slushed down.
Holystoning the deck or scrubbing it with fresh limes made his back ache and
developed the wasted, flabby muscles. When the Kittiwake lay at anchor and her
copper bottom was scrubbed with cocoanut husks by the native crew, who dived
and did it under water, Pankburn was sent down on his shift and as many times
as any on the shift.
"Look at yourself," Grief said. "You are twice. the man you were when you
came on board. You haven't had one drink, you didn't die, and the poison is
pretty well worked out of you. It's the work. It beats trained nurses and
business managers. Here, if you're thirsty. Clap your lips to this."
With several deft strokes of his heavy-backed sheath-knife, Grief clipped a
triangular piece of shell from the end of a husked drinking-cocoanut. The thin,
cool liquid, slightly milky and effervescent, bubbled to the brim. With a bow,
Pankburn took the natural cup, threw his head back, and held it back till the
shell was empty. He drank many of these nuts each day. The black steward, a New
Hebrides boy sixty years of age, and his assistant, a Lark Islander of eleven,
saw to it that he was continually supplied.
Pankburn did not object to the hard work. He devoured work, never shirking
and always beating the native sailors in jumping to obey a command. But his
sufferings during the period of driving the alcohol out of his system were
truly heroic. Even when the last shred of the poison was exuded, the desire, as
an obsession, remained in his head. So it was, when, on his honour, he went
ashore at Apia, that he attempted to put the public houses out of business by
drinking up their stocks in trade. And so it was, at two in the morning, that
David Grief found him in front of the Tivoli, out of which he had been
disorderly thrown by Charley Roberts. Aloysius, as of old, was chanting his
sorrows to the stars. Also, and more concretely, he was punctuating the rhythm
with cobbles of coral stone, which he flung with amazing accuracy through
Charley Roberts's windows.
David Grief took him away, but not till next morning did he take him in
hand. It was on the deck of the Kittiwake, and there was nothing kindergarten
about it. Grief struck him, with bare knuckles, punched him and punished him -
gave him the worst thrashing he had ever received.
"For the good of your soul, Pankburn," was the way he emphasized his blows.
"For the good of your mother. For the progeny that will come after. For the
good of the world, and the universe, and the whole race of man yet to be. And
now, to hammer the lesson home, we'll do it all over again. That, for the good
of your soul; and that, for your mother's sake; and that, for the little
children, undreamed of and unborn, whose mother you'll love for their sakes,
and for love's sake, in the lease of manhood that will be yours when I am done
with you. Come on and take your medicine. I'm not done with you yet. I've only
begun. There are many other reasons which I shall now proceed to expound."
The brown sailors and the black stewards and cook looked on and grinned.
Far from them was the questioning of any of the mysterious and incomprehensible
ways of white men. As for Carlsen, the mate, he was grimly in accord with the
treatment his employer was administering; while Albright, the supercargo,
merely played with his mustache and smiled. They were men of the sea. They
lived life in the rough. And alcohol, in themselves as well as in other men,
was a problem they had learned to handle in ways not taught in doctors'
schools.
"Boy! A bucket of fresh water and a towel," Grief ordered, when he had
finished. "Two buckets and two towels," he added, as he surveyed his own hands.
"You're a pretty one," he said to Pankburn. "You've spoiled everything.
I had the poison completely out of you. And now you are fairly reeking with it.
We've got to begin all over again. Mr. Albright! You know that pile of old
chain on the beach at the boat-landing. Find the owner, buy it, and fetch it on
board. There must be a hundred and fifty fathoms of it. Pankburn! To-morrow
morning you start in pounding the rust off of it. When you've done that, you'll
sandpaper it. Then you'll paint it. And nothing else will you do till that
chain is as smooth as new."
Aloysius Pankburn shook his head.
"I quit. Francis Island can go to hell for all of me. I'm done with your
slave-driving. Kindly put me ashore at once. I'm a white man. You can't treat
me this way."
"Mr. Carlsen, you will see that Mr. Pankburn remains on board."
"I'll have you broken for this!" Aloysius screamed. "You can't stop me."
"I can give you another licking," Grief answered. "And let me tell you one
thing, you besotted whelp, I'll keep on licking you as long as my knuckles hold
out or until you yearn to hammer chain rust. I've taken you in hand, and I'm
going to make a man out of you if I have to kill you to do it. Now go below and
change your clothes. Be ready to turn to with a hammer this afternoon.
Mr. Albright, get that chain aboard pronto. Mr. Carlsen, send the boats ashore
after it. Also, keep your eye on Pankburn. If he shows signs of keeling over or
going into the shakes, give him a nip - a small one. He may need it after last
night."
V
For the rest of the time the Kittiwake lay in Apia Aloysius Pankburn
pounded chain rust. Ten hours a day he pounded. And on the long stretch across
to the Gilberts he still pounded. Then came the sandpapering. One hundred and
fifty fathoms is nine hundred feet, and every link of all that length was
smoothed and polished as no link ever was before. And when the last link had
received its second coat of black paint, he declared himself.
"Come on with more dirty work," he told Grief. "I'll overhaul the other
chains if you say so. And you needn't worry about me any more. I'm not going to
take another drop. I'm going to train up. You got my proud goat when you beat
me, but let me tell you, you only got it temporarily. Train! I'm going to train
till I'm as hard all the way through, and clean all the way through, as that
chain is. And some day, Mister David Grief, somewhere, somehow, I'm going to be
in such shape that I'll lick you as you licked me. I'm going to pulp your face
till your own niggers won't know you."
Grief was jubilant.
"Now you're talking like a man," he cried. "The only way you'll ever lick
me is to become a man. And then, maybe -"
He paused in the hope that the other would catch the suggestion. Aloysius
groped for it, and, abruptly, something akin to illumination shone in his eyes.
"And then I won't want to, you mean?"
Grief nodded.
"And that's the curse of it," Aloysius lamented. "I really believe I won't
want to. I see the point. But I'm going to go right on and shape myself up just
the same."
The warm, sunburn glow in Grief's face seemed to grow warmer. His hand went
out.
"Pankburn, I love you right now for that."
Aloysius grasped the hand, and shook his head in sad sincerity.
"Grief," he mourned, "you've got my goat, you've got my proud goat, and
you've got it permanently, I'm afraid."
VI
On a sultry tropic day, when the last flicker of the far southeast trade
was fading out and the seasonal change for the northwest monsoon was coming on,
the Kittiwake lifted above the sea-rim the jungle-clad coast of Francis Island.
Grief, with compass bearings and binoculars, identified the volcano that marked
Redscar, ran past Owen Bay, and lost the last of the breeze at the entrance to
Likikili Bay. With the two whaleboats out and towing, and with Carlsen heaving
the lead, the Kittiwake sluggishly entered a deep and narrow indentation. There
were no beaches. The mangroves began at the water's edge, and behind them rose
steep jungle, broken here and there by jagged peaks of rock. At the end of
a mile, when the white scar on the bluff bore west-southwest, the lead
vindicated the "Directory," and the anchor rumbled down in nine fathoms.
For the rest of that day and until the afternoon of the day following they
remained on the Kittiwake and waited. No canoes appeared. There were no signs
of human life. Save for the occasional splash of a fish or the screaming of
cockatoos, there seemed no other life. Once, however, a huge butterfly, twelve
inches from tip to tip, fluttered high over their mastheads and drifted across
to the opposing jungle.
"There's no use in sending a boat in to be cut up," Grief said.
Pankburn was incredulous, and volunteered to go in alone, to swim it if he
couldn't borrow the dingey.
"They haven't forgotten the German cruiser," Grief explained. "And I'll
wager that bush is alive with men right now. What do you think, Mr. Carlsen?"
That veteran adventurer of the islands was emphatic in his agreement.
In the late afternoon of the second day Grief ordered a whaleboat into the
water. He took his place in the bow, a live cigarette in his mouth and a short-
fused stick of dynamite in his hand, for he was bent on shooting a mess of
fish. Along the thwarts half a dozen Winchesters were placed. Albright, who
took the steering-sweep, had a Mauser within reach of hand. They pulled in and
along the green wall of vegetation. At times they rested on the oars in the
midst of a profound silence.
"Two to one the bush is swarming with them—in quids," Albright whispered...
Pankburn listened a moment longer and took the bet. Five minutes later they
sighted a school of mullet. The brown rowers held their oars. Grief touched the
short fuse to his cigarette and threw the stick. So short was the fuse that the
stick exploded in the instant after it struck the water. And in that same
instant the bush exploded into life. There were wild yells of defiance, and
black and naked bodies leaped forward like apes through the mangroves.
In the whaleboat every rifle was lifted. Then came the wait. A hundred
blacks, some few armed with ancient Sniders, but the greater portion armed with
tomahawks, fire-hardened spears, and bone-tipped arrows, clustered on the roots
that rose out of the bay. No word was spoken. Each party watched the other
across twenty feet of water. An old, one-eyed black, with a bristly face,
rested a Snider on his hip, the muzzle directed at Albright, who, in turn,
covered him back with the Mauser. A couple of minutes of this tableau endured.
The stricken fish rose to the surface or struggled half-stunned in the clear
depths.
"It's all right, boys," Grief said quietly. "Put down your guns and over
the side with you. Mr. Albright, toss the tobacco to that one-eyed brute."
While the Rapa men dived for the fish, Albright threw a bundle of trade
tobacco ashore. The one-eyed man nodded his head and writhed his features in an
attempt at amiability. Weapons were lowered, bows unbent, and arrows put back
in their quivers.
"They know tobacco," Grief announced, as they rowed back aboard. "We'll
have visitors. You'll break out a case of tobacco, Mr. Albright, and a few
trade-knives. There's a canoe now."
Old One-Eye, as befitted a chief and leader, paddled out alone, facing
peril for the rest of the tribe. As Carlsen leaned over the rail to help the
visitor up, he turned his head and remarked casually:
"They've dug up the money, Mr. Grief. The old beggar's loaded with it."
One-Eye floundered down on deck, grinning appeasingly and failing to hide
the fear he had overcome but which still possessed him. He was lame of one leg,
and this was accounted for by a terrible scar, inches deep, which ran down the
thigh from hip to knee. No clothes he wore whatever, not even a string, but his
nose, perforated in a dozen places and each perforation the setting for
a carved spine of bone, bristled like a porcupine. Around his neck and hanging
down on his dirty chest was a string of gold sovereigns. His ears were hung
with silver half-crowns, and from the cartilage separating his nostrils
depended a big English penny, tarnished and green, but unmistakable.
"Hold on, Grief," Pankburn said, with perfectly assumed carelessness. "You
say they know only beads and tobacco. Very well. You follow my lead. They've
found the treasure, and we've got to trade them out of it. Get the whole crew
aside and lecture them that they are to be interested only in the pennies.
Savve? Gold coins must be beneath contempt, and silver coins merely tolerated.
Pennies are to be the only desirable things."
Pankburn took charge of the trading. For the penny in One-Eye's nose he
gave ten sticks of tobacco. Since each stick cost David Grief a cent, the
bargain was manifestly unfair. But for the half-crowns Pankburn gave only one
stick each. The string of sovereigns he refused to consider. The more he
refused, the more One-Eye insisted on a trade. At last, with an appearance of
irritation and anger, and as a palpable concession, Pankburn gave two sticks
for the string, which was composed of ten sovereigns.
"I take my hat off to you," Grief said to Pankburn that night at dinner.
"The situation is patent. You've reversed the scale of value. They'll figure
the pennies as priceless possessions and the sovereigns as beneath price.
Result: they'll hang on to the pennies and force us to trade for sovereigns.
Pankburn, I drink your health! Boy!—another cup of tea for Mr. Pankburn."
VII
Followed a golden week. From dawn till dark a row of canoes rested on their
paddles two hundred feet away. This was the dead-line. Rapa sailors, armed with
rifles, maintained it. But one canoe at a time was permitted alongside, and but
one black at a time was permitted to come over the rail. Here, under the
awning, relieving one another in hourly shifts, the four white men carried on
the trade. The rate of exchange was that established by Pankburn with One-Eye.
Five sovereigns fetched a stick of tobacco; a hundred sovereigns, twenty
sticks. Thus, a crafty-eyed cannibal would deposit on the table a thousand
dollars in gold, and go back over the rail, hugely satisfied, with forty cents'
worth of tobacco in his hand.
"Hope we've got enough tobacco to hold out," Carlsen muttered dubiously, as
another case was sawed in half.
Albright laughed.
"We've got fifty cases below," he said, "and as I figure it, three cases
buy a hundred thousand dollars. There was only a million dollars buried, so
thirty cases ought to get it. Though, of course, we've got to allow a margin
for the silver and the pennies. That Ecuadoran bunch must have salted down all
the coin in sight.
Very few pennies and shillings appeared, though Pankburn continually and
anxiously inquired for them. Pennies were the one thing he seemed to desire,
and he made his eyes flash covetously whenever one was produced. True to his
theory, the savages concluded that the gold, being of slight value, must be
disposed of first. A penny, worth fifty times as much as a sovereign, was
something to retain and treasure. Doubtless, in their jungle-lairs, the wise
old gray-beards put their heads together and agreed to raise the price on
pennies when the worthless gold was all worked off. Who could tell? Mayhap the
strange white men could be made to give even twenty sticks for a priceless
copper.
By the end of the week the trade went slack. There was only the slightest
dribble of gold. An occasional penny was reluctantly disposed of for ten
sticks, while several thousand dollars of silver came in.
On the morning of the eighth day no trading was done. The graybeards had
matured their plan and were demanding twenty sticks for a penny. One-Eye
delivered the new rate of exchange. The white men appeared to take it with
great seriousness, for they stood together debating in low voices. Had One-Eye
understood English he would have been enlightened.
"We've got just a little over eight hundred thousand, not counting the
silver," Grief said. "And that's about all there is. The bush tribes behind
have most probably got the other two hundred thousand. Return in three months,
and the salt-water crowd will have traded back for it; also they will be out of
tobacco by that time."
"It would be a sin to buy pennies," Albright grinned. "It goes against the
thrifty grain of my trader's soul."
"There's a whiff of land-breeze stirring," Grief said, looking at Pankburn.
"What do you say?"
Pankburn nodded.
"Very well." Grief measured the faintness and irregularity of the wind
against his cheek. "Mr. Carlsen, heave short, and get off the gaskets. And
stand by with the whaleboats to tow. This breeze is not dependable."
He picked up a part case of tobacco, containing six or seven hundred
sticks, put it in One-Eye's hands, and helped that bewildered savage over the
rail. As the foresail went up the mast, a wail of consternation arose from the
canoes lying along the dead-line. And as the anchor broke out and the
Kittiwake's head paid off in the light breeze, old One-Eye, daring the rifles
levelled on him, paddled alongside and made frantic signs of his tribe's
willingness to trade pennies for ten sticks.
"Boy! - a drinking nut," Pankburn called.
"It's Sydney Heads for you," Grief said. "And then what?"
"I'm coming back with you for that two hundred thousand," Pankburn
answered.
"In the meantime I'm going to build an island schooner. Also, I'm going to
call those guardians of mine before the court to show cause why my father's
money should not be turned over to me. Show cause? I'll show them cause why it
should."
He swelled his biceps proudly under the thin sleeve, reached for the two
black stewards, and put them above his head like a pair of dumbbells.
"Come on! Swing out on that fore-boom-tackle!" Carlsen shouted from aft,
where the mainsail was being winged out.
Pankburn dropped the stewards and raced for it, beating a Rapa sailor by
two jumps to the hauling part.
1911
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