The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales Part 3

I was floating on a lake of the bluest water I ever set eyes on, and as calm as a pond except by the entrance where the spent waves, after tumbling over the bar, spread themselves in long ripples, widening and widening until the edge of them melted and they were gone. The banks of the lake rose sheer from its edge, or so steeply that I saw no way of climbing them--walls you might call them, a good hundred feet high, and widening gradually towards the top, but in a circle as regular as ever you could draw with a pair of compa.s.ses. Any fool could see what had happened--that here was the crater of a dead volcano, one side of which had been broken into by the sea; but the beauty of it, sir, coming on top of my weakness, fairly made me cry. For the walls at the top were fringed with palms and jungle trees, and hung with creepers like curtains that trailed over the face of the cliff and down among the ferns by the sh.o.r.e. I leaned over the boat and stared into the water.

It was clear, clear--you've no notion how clear; but no bottom could I see. It seemed to sink right through and into the sea on the other side of the world!

"Well, all this was mighty pretty, but it didn't tell me where to find a meal; so I baled out the boat and paddled along the eastern edge of the lake searching the cliffs for a path, and after an hour or so I hit on what looked to me like a foot-track, zig-zagging up through the creepers and across the face of the rock. I determined to try it, made the boat fast to a clump of fern, slung O'Hara's cornet on to my side-belt and began to climb.

"I saw no marks of footsteps; but the track was a path all right, though a teazer. A dozen times I had to crawl on hands and knees under the creepers--creepers with stems as thick as my two wrists--and once, about two-thirds of the way up, I was forced to push sideways through a crevice dripping with water, and so steep under foot that I slid twice and caked myself with mud. I very nearly gave out here; but it was do or die, and after ten minutes more of scratching, pus.h.i.+ng, and scrambling, I reached the top and sat down to mop my face and recover.

"I daresay it was another ten minutes before I fetched breath enough and looked about me; and as I turned my head, there, close behind me, lay another crater with another lake smiling below, all blue and peaceful as the one I had left! I gazed from one to the other. This new crater had no opening on the sea; its sides were steeper, though not quite so tall; and either my eyes played me a trick or its water stood at a higher level. I stood there, comparing the two, when suddenly against the skyline, and not two hundred yards away, I caught sight of a man.

"He was walking towards me around the edge of the crater, and halting every now and then to stare down at my boat. He might be a friend, or he might be a foe; but anyway it was not for me, in my condition, to choose which, so I waited for him to come up. And first I saw that he carried a spear, and wore a pair of wide dirty-white trousers and a short coat embroidered with gold; and next that he was a true Malay, pretty well on in years, with a greyish beard falling over his chest.

He had no s.h.i.+rt, but a scarlet sash wrapped about his waist and holding a _kris_ and two long pistols handsomely inlaid with gold. In spite of his weapons he seemed a benevolent old boy.

"He pointed towards my boat and tried me with a few questions, first in his own language, then in Spanish, of which I knew very little beyond the sound. But I spread out my hands towards the sea, by way of explaining our voyage, and then pointed to my mouth. If he understood he seemed in no hurry. He tapped O'Hara's cornet gingerly with two fingers. I unstrung it and made s.h.i.+ft to play 'Home, Sweet Home.'

This delighted him; he nodded, rubbed his hands, and stepped a few paces from me, then turned and began fingering his spear in a way I did not like at all. 'It's a matter of taste, sir,' said I, or words to that effect, dropping the cornet like a hot potato; but he pointed towards it, and then over a ridge inland, and I gathered I must pick it up and follow him--which I did, and pretty quick.

"From the top of this ridge we faced across a small plain bounded on the north with a tier of hills, most of which seemed by their shape to be volcanoes, and out of action--for the sky lay quite blue and clear above them. The way down into this plain led through jungle; but the plain itself had been cleared of all but small clumps dotted here and there, which gave it, you might say, the look of an English park; and about half-way across, in a clear stretch of lalang gra.s.s, stood a village of white huts huddling round a larger and much taller house.

"The old man led me straight towards this, and, coming closer, I saw that the large house had a rough glacis about it and a round wall pierced with loopholes. A number of goats were feeding here and a few small cattle; also the ground about the village had been cleared and planted with fruit-trees,--mangoes, bananas, limes, and oranges,--but as yet I saw no inhabitants. The old Malay, who had kept ahead of me all the way, walking at a fair pace, here halted and once more signed to me to blow on the cornet. I obeyed, of course, this time with 'The British Grenadiers.' I declare to you it was like starting a swarm of bees.

You wouldn't believe the troops that came pouring out of those few huts--the women in loose trousers pretty much like the men's, but with arms bare and loose _sarongs_ flung over their right shoulders, the children with no more clothes than a pocket-handkerchief apiece.

I can't tell you what first informed me of my guide's rank among them-- whether the salaams they offered him, or the richness of his dress-- he was the only one with gold lace and the only one who carried pistols--or the air with which he paraded me through the crowd, waving the people back to right and left, and clearing a way to a narrow door in the wall around the great house. A man armed with a long fowling-piece saluted him at the entry; and once inside he pointed from the house to his own breast, as much as to say, 'I am the Chief, and this is mine.' I saluted him humbly.

"A verandah ran around the four sides of the house, with a trench between it and the fortified wall. A plank bridge led across the trench to the verandah steps, where my master--or, to call him by his right name, Hadji Hamid--halted again and clapped his hands. A couple of young Malay women, dressed like those I had pa.s.sed in the street, ran out in answer, and were ordered to bring me food. While it was preparing I rested on a low chair, blinking at the sunlight on the fortified wall. It had been pierced, on the side of the house, for eleven guns, but six of the embrasures were empty, and of the five pieces standing no two were alike in size, age, or manufacture, and the best seemed to be a nine-pounder, strapped to its carriage with rope.

Hadji Hamid saw what I was looking at, and chuckled to himself solemnly.

All through the meal--which began with a mess of rice and chopped fowl and ended with bananas--he sat beside me, chewing betel, touching this thing and that, naming it in his language and making me repeat the words after him. He smiled at every mistake, but never lost his patience; indeed it was clear that my quickness delighted him, and I did my best, wondering all the while what he meant to do with me.

"Well, to be short, sir, he intended to keep me. I believe he would have done it for the sake of the cornet; but before I had finished eating, up stepped a sentry escorting a man with my bombardon under his arm. I had left it, as you know, in the boat, and had heard no order given; but the boat I never saw again, and here was my bombardon.

Hadji Hamid took it in both hands, felt it all over, patted it, and ended by turning it over to me and calling in dumb show for a tune.

I tell you, my performance was a success. At the first blast he leaned back suddenly in his chair; at the second he turned a kind of purple under his yellow skin; but at the third he caught hold of his stomach and began to roll in his seat and laugh. You never saw a man laugh like it. He made scarcely any sound; he was too near apoplexy to speak; but the tears ran down his face, and one minute his hand would be up waving feebly to me to stop, the next he'd be signalling to go on again.

I wanted poor O'Hara; he used to give himself airs and swear at my playing, but among these people he and his cornet would have had to stand down.

"They gave me a bed that night in a corner of the verandah, and next morning my master came himself to wake me, and took me down to the village bathing-pool, just below the fortifications. It hurt my modesty to find the whole mob of inhabitants gathered there and waiting, and it didn't set me at ease, exactly, to notice that each man carried his spear. For one nasty moment I pictured a duck-hunt, with me playing duck. But there was no cause for alarm. At a signal from Hamid, who stripped and led the way, in we tumbled together--men, women, and children--the men first laying their spears on the bank beside their clothes. Six remained on sh.o.r.e to keep guard, and were relieved after five minutes by another six from the pool. There was a good deal of splas.h.i.+ng and horse-play, but nothing you could call immodest, though my fair skin came in for an amount of attention I had to get used to.

"My breakfast was served to me alone, and soon after I was summoned to attend my master in one of the state rooms of the house. I found him on a shaded platform, seated opposite an old native as well-dressed and venerable-looking as himself, but stouter. The pair lolled on cus.h.i.+ons at either end of the platform, smoking and smoothing their grey beards.

I understood that the visitor was a personage and (somehow) that he had been sent for expressly to hear and be astonished by my performance.

"The two instruments were brought in upon cus.h.i.+ons, and I began to play.

The visitor--who had less sense of humour than Hamid--did not laugh at all. Instead, he took the mouthpiece of his _tchibouk_ slowly from his lips and held it at a little distance, while his mouth and eyes opened wider and wider. Hamid eyed him keenly, with a kind of triumph under his lids; and the triumph grew as the old man's stare lit up with a jealousy there was no mistaking.

"This, too, pa.s.sed as I wound up with a flourish and stood at attention, waiting for orders. The visitor put out his hand, but as I offered him the bombardon he waved it aside impatiently and pointed to the cornet.

I pa.s.sed it up to him; he patted and examined it for a while, laid it on his knee, and the two men began talking in low voices.

"I could see that compliments were pa.s.sing; but you'll guess I wasn't prepared for what followed. Hamid stood up suddenly and whispered to one of his six guards stationed below the platform. The man went out, and returned in five minutes followed by a girl. Now that the island girls were beautiful I had already discovered that morning, and this one was no exception--a small thing about five feet, with glossy black hair and the tiniest feet and hands. She seemed to me to walk nervously, as if brought up for punishment; and a thought took me--and I shall be glad of it when I come to die--that if they meant to ill-use her I might do worse than a.s.sault that venerable pair with my bombardon and end my adventures with credit.

"My eyes were so taken up with the girl that for a full minute I paid no attention to my master. She had come to a halt under the platform, a couple of paces from me, with her eyes cast down upon the floor; and he on the platform was speaking. By and by he stopped, and glancing up I saw that he was motioning me to leave the room. Well, they had made no show as yet of ill-treating her; so I flung her one more look and obeyed, feeling pretty mean. I went out into the verandah, walked the length of it and turned--and there stood the girl right before me!

Her little feet had followed me so softly that I had heard nothing; and now, as I stared at her, she crept close with a sort of sidelong motion, and knelt at my feet, at the same moment drawing her _sarong_ over her head to hide it. Then the truth came upon me--I was married!

"Aoodya was her name. What else can I tell you about her, to describe her? She was a child, and all life came as play to her, yet she understood love to the tips of her little madder-brown fingers.

She was my teacher, too, and I sat at her feet day after day and learned while she drilled the island-language into me; learned by the hour while she untwisted her hair and rubbed it with grated cocoanut, and broke off her toilet to point to this thing and that and tell me its name, laughing at my mistakes or flipping bits of betel at me by way of reward. I had no wife at home to vex my conscience at all. All day we played about Hamid's verandah like two children, and Hamid watched us with a sort of twinkle in his eye, seemingly well content. It was plain he had taken a fancy to me, and I thought, as time pa.s.sed, he grew friendlier.

"I blessed the old fellow, too. Had he not given me Aoodya? I puzzled my head over this favour, until Aoodya explained. 'You see,' she said, 'it was done to oblige the Hadji Ha.s.san.' This was the old man who had listened to my performance on the bombardon. He lived in a stockaded house on the far side of the island, the chieftancy of which he and Hamid shared between them and without dispute.

"'How should it oblige Ha.s.san?' I asked.

"'Because Ha.s.san could not see or hear my lord and lover without longing to possess such a man for his very own. As who could?' And here she blew me a kiss.

"'Thank you, jewel of my heart,' said I; 'but yet I don't see.

Was it me he wanted, or the bombardon?'

"'I fancy he thought of you together; but of course he did not ask for the big thing--that would have been greedy. He would be content with the little one, the what-you-call cornet; and--don't you see?'

"'No doubt it's stupid of me, my dear,' said I, 'but I'll be shot if I do.'

"She was sitting with a lapful of panda.n.u.s leaves, blue and green, weaving a mat of them while we talked, and had just picked out a beater from the tools scattered round her--a flat piece of board with a bevilled edge, and shaped away to a handle. 'Stupid!' she says to me, just like so, and at the same time raps me over the hand smartly.

'He thought--if peradventure there came to us a little one--'

"'_With_ a what-you-call cornet?'--I clapped my hand to my mouth over a guffaw; and, with that, She--who had started laughing too--came to a stop, with her eyes fastened on the back of it. I saw them stiffen, and the pretty round pupils draw in and shrink to narrow slits like a cat's, and her arm went back slowly behind her, and her bosom leaned nearer and nearer. I thought she was going to spring at me, and as my silly laugh died out I turned my hand and held it palm outward, to fend her off.

On the back of it was a drop of blood where the bevelled edge of the beater had by accident broken the skin.

"Somehow this movement of mine seemed to fetch her to bearings.

Her hand came slowly forward again, hesitated, seemed to hover for a moment at her throat, then went swiftly down to her bosom between bodice and flesh, and came up again tugging after it what looked to me a piece of coa.r.s.e thread. She tossed it into my lap as I still sat there cross-legged, and with that sprang up and raced away from me, down to the verandah. There was no chance of catching her, and I was (to tell the truth) a bit too much taken aback to try. I picked up the string.

On it was threaded a silk purse no bigger than a s.h.i.+lling; and from this I shook into my palm a small stone like an opal. I turned it over once or twice, put it back in the purse, and stowed string, purse, and all in my breeches' pocket.

"I strolled down the verandah to our quarters in search of Aoodya, but the room was empty; and after that I'm afraid I smoked and sulked for the rest of the day, until nightfall. After playing the Hadji Hamid through his meal I went out to our favourite seat on the edge of the dry ditch, when she came to me out of nowhere across the withered gra.s.s of the compound.

"'Have you the charm, O beloved?' she whispered.

"'Oh, it's a charm, is it?' said I, partly sulky yet.

"'Yes, and you must never lose it--never part with it--never, above all, give it back to me. Promise me that, beloved; and I, who have wept much, am happy again.'

"So I promised, and she snuggled close to me, and all was as before.

No more was said between us, and by next morning she seemed to have clean forgotten the affair. But I thought of it at times, and it puzzled me.

"Now, as I said, my master had taken a fancy to me quite apart from the bombardon, and a token of it was his constantly taking me out as companion on his walks. You may think it odd that he never troubled about my being an unbeliever--for of course he held by the Prophet, and so did all the islanders, Aoodya included. But in fact, though his people called themselves Mahommedans, each man treated his religion much as he chose, and Hamid talked to me as freely as if I had been his son.

"In this way I learned a deal of the island and its customs, and of the terms by which Hamid and Ha.s.san between them shared its rule. But that any others laid claim to it I had no idea, until one day as we were walking on the coast, and not far from the crater where he had found me first, my master asked suddenly, 'Was I happy?'

"'Quite happy,' I answered.

"'You would not leave us if you could?' he went on, and began to laugh quiet-like, behind his beard. 'Oho! Love, love! I that am old have been merry in my day.' We walked for another mile, maybe, without speaking, and came to the edge of a valley. 'Look down yonder,' said he.

"Below us, and in the mouth of the valley, which grew broad and shallow as it neared the sea, I saw a hill topped by a round wall and compound.

There might have been half a dozen houses within the compound, all thatched, and above them stood up a flag painted in red and yellow stripes, and so stiff in the breeze that with half an eye you could tell it was no bunting but a sheet of tin.

"Hullo!' said I. 'Spaniards?'

"'Puf!' Hamid grinned at the flag and spat. 'A Captain Marquinez inhabits there, with four Manila men and their wives. He is a sensible fellow, and does no harm, and if it pleases him to hoist that toy on a bamboo, he is welcome.'

"'They claim the island, then?'