By Reef and Palm Part 6

The Inner Nature came out. "Are they? My wife's lips seem to give you a very great deal of concern. She has not said anything to me. And I have an idea----" the look in Enderby's face shamed into silence the slander he was about to utter. Then he added coolly--"But as for going with you after a turtle, thanks, I won't. I've found a nest here, and have had a good square feed. If the cursed man-o'-war hawks and b.o.o.bies hadn't been here before me I'd have got the whole lot." Then he tore the skin off another egg with his teeth.

With a curious guttural voice Enderby asked--"How many eggs were left?"

"Thirty or so--perhaps forty."

"And you have eaten all but those?"--pointing with savage contempt to five of the round, white b.a.l.l.s; "give me those for your wife."

"My dear man, Louise has too much Island blood in her not to be able to do better than I--or you--in a case like ours. And as you have kindly const.i.tuted yourself her providore, you had better go and look for a nest yourself."

"You dog!"--and the sharp-edged coral stone crashed into his brain.

When Enderby returned, he found Mrs Langton sitting up on the creeper-covered mound that over-looked the beach where he had left Langton.

"Come away from here," he said, "into the shade. I have found a few turtle-eggs."

They walked back a little and sat down. But for the wild riot in his brain, Enderby would have noted that every vestige of colour had left her face.

"You must be hungry," he thought he was saying to her, and he placed the white objects in her lap.

She turned them slowly over and over in her hands, and then dropped them with a shudder. Some were flecked with red.

"For G.o.d's sake," the man cried, "tell me what you know!"

"I saw it all," she answered.

"I swear to you, Mrs Lan----" (the name stuck in his throat) "I never meant it. As G.o.d is my witness, I swear it. If we ever escape from here I will give myself up to justice as a murderer."

The woman, with hands spread over her face, shook her head from side to side and sobbed. Then she spoke. "I thought I loved him, once....

Yet it was for me ... and you saved my life over and over again in the boat. All sinners are forgiven we are told.... Why should not you be? ... and it was for me you did it. And I won't let you give yourself up to justice or any one. I'll say he died in the boat." And then the laughter of hysterics.

When, some months later, the JOSEPHINE, whaler, of New London, picked them up on her way to j.a.pan, VIA the Carolines and Pelews, the captain satisfactorily answered the query made by Enderby if he could marry them. He "rayther thought he could. A man who was used ter ketchin' and killin'whales, the powerfullest creature of Almighty Gawd's creation, was ekal to marryin' a pair of unfortunit human beans in sich a pre-carus situation as theirs."

And, by the irony of fate, the Enderbys (that isn't their name) are now living in a group of islands where there's quite a trade done in turtle, and whenever a s.h.i.+p's captain comes to dine with them they never have the local dish--turtle eggs--for dinner. "We see them so often," Enderby explains, "and my wife is quite tired of them."

LONG CHARLEY'S GOOD LITTLE WIFE

There was the island, only ten miles away, and there it had been for a whole week. Sometimes we had got near enough to see Long Charley's house and the figures of natives walking on the yellow beach; and then the westerly current would set us away to leeward again. But that night a squall came up, and in half an hour we were running down to the land.

When the lights on the beach showed up we hove-to until daylight, and then found the surf too heavy to let us land.

We got in close to the reef, and could see that the trader's copra-house was full, for there were also hundreds of bags outside, awaiting our boats. It was clearly worth staying for. The trader, a tall, thin, pyjama-clad man, came down to the water's edge, waved his long arm, and then turned back and sat down on a bag of copra. We went about and pa.s.sed the village again, and once more the long man came to the water's edge, waved his arm, and retired to his seat.

In the afternoon we saw a native and Charley together among the bags; then the native left him, and, as it was now low tide, the kanaka was able to walk to the edge of the reef, where he signalled to us. Seeing that he meant to swim off, the skipper went in as close as possible, and backed his foreyard. Watching his chance for a lull in the yet fierce breakers, the native slid over the reef and swam out to us as only a Line Islander or a Tokelau man can swim.

"How's Charley?" we asked, when the dark man reached the deck.

"Who? Charley? Oh, he fine, plenty copra. Tapa my bowels are filled with the sea--for one dollar! Here ARIKI VAKA (captain) and you TUHI TUHI (supercargo)," said the native, removing from his perforated and pendulous ear-lobe a little roll of leaf, "take this letter from the mean man that giveth but a dollar for facing such a GALU (surf). Hast plenty tobacco on board, friends of my heart? Apa, the surf! Not a canoe crew could the white man get to face it. Is it good twist tobacco, friends, or the flat cakes? Know that I am a man of Nanomea, not one of these dog-eating people here, and a strong swimmer, else the letter had not come."

The supercargo took the note. It was rolled up in many thicknesses of banana-leaf, which had kept it dry--

"DEAR FRIENDS,--I have Been waiting for you for near 5 months. I am Chock full of Cobberah and Shark Fins one Ton. I am near Starved Out, No Biscit, no Beef, no flour, not Enything to Eat. for G.o.d's Saik send me a case of Gin ash.o.r.e if you Don't mean to Hang on till the sea goes Down or I shall Starve. Not a Woman comes Near me because I am Run out of Traid, so please try also to Send a Peece of Good print, as there are some fine Women here from Nukunau, and I think I can get one for a wife if I am smart. If you Can't take my Cobberah, and mean to Go away, send the Squair face [Square face--Hollands gin], for G.o.d's saik, and something for the Woman,--Your obliged Friend, CHARLES."

We parcelled a bottle of gin round with a small coir line, and sent it ash.o.r.e by the Nanomea man. Charley and a number of natives came to the edge of the reef to lend a hand in landing the bearer of the treasure.

Then they all waded back to the beach, headed by the white man in the dirty pyjamas and sodden-looking FALA hat. Reaching his house, he turned his following away, and shut the door.

"I bet a dollar that fellow wouldn't swap billets with the angel Gabriel at this partikler moment," said our profane mate thoughtfully.

We started weighing and s.h.i.+pping the copra next day. After finis.h.i.+ng up, the solemn Charley invited the skipper and supercargo to remain ash.o.r.e till morning. His great trouble, he told us, was that he had not yet secured a wife, "a reg'lar wife, y'know." He had, unluckily, "lost the run" of the last Mrs Charley during his absence at another island of the group, and negotiations with various local young women had been broken off owing to his having run out of trade. In the South Seas, as in the civilised world generally, to get the girl of your heart is usually a mere matter of trade. There were, he told us with a melancholy look, "some fine Nukunau girls here on a visit, but the one I want don't seem to care much about stayin', unless all this new trade fetches her."

"Who is she?" enquired the skipper.

"Tibakwa's daughter."

"Let's have a look at her," said the skipper, a man of kind impulses, who felt sorry at the intermittency of the Long One's connubial relations. The tall, scraggy trader shambled to the door and bawled out: "Tibakwa, Tibakwa, Tibakwa, O!" three times.

The people, singing in the big MONIEP or town-house, stopped their monotonous droning, and the name of Tibakwa, was yelled vociferously through-out the village in true Gilbert Group style. In the Gilberts, if a native in one corner of a house speaks to another in the opposite, he bawls loud enough to be heard a mile off.

Tibakwa (The Shark) was a short, squat fellow, with his broad back and chest scored and seamed with an intricate and inartistic network of cicatrices made by sharks' teeth swords. His hair, straight, coa.r.s.e, and jet-black, was cut away square from just above his eyebrows to the top of his ears, leaving his fierce countenance in a sort of frame.

Each ear-lobe bore a load--one had two or three sticks of tobacco, twined in and about the distended circle of flesh, and the other a clasp-knife and wooden pipe. Stripped to the waist he showed his muscular outlines to perfection, and he sat down unasked in the bold, self-confident, half-defiant manner natural to the Line Islander.

"Where's Tirau?" asked the trader.

"Here," said the man of wounds, pointing outside, and he called out in a voice like the bellow of a bull--"TIRAU O, NAKO MAI! (Come here!)"

Tirau came in timidly, clothed only in an AIRIRI or girdle, and slunk into a far corner.

The melancholy trader and the father pulled her out, and she dumped herself down in the middle of the room with a muttered "E PUAK ACARON; KACARON; TE MALAN! (Bad white man)."

"Fine girl, Charley," said the skipper, digging him in the ribs. "Ought to suit you, eh! Make a good little wife."