Chapter V: Part 5

Oh, that first meeting! It exceeded his wildest expectations, his most sanguine dream! Wesley Cook was so cordial, so frankly anxious to be friends, so overflowing with pent-up confidences, that the priest almost wept as he unbosomed himself of the scruples that had kept him back. With innocent craft, he left nothing undone to establish his footing, and his bland and beaming smile hid a thousand schemes for entangling Cook in a web of obligation. Could he send some roses to madam, his beautiful wife? It might distract her from the thought of her terrible loss. He had so many roses--to give a few would be such a pleasure, such an honour. Ah, madam would be pleased with them, were she fond of flowers. She, too, must come and see his garden, his poor garden, where he grudged not the labour, as it seemed to bring him close to God. Could he not provide her with some special seeds sent him all the way from Ceylon--acclimated seeds from the famous gardens of the lay brothers at Point de Galle? Some guava jelly of his own making? Some smoked pigeons that he ventured to say were delicious? Would Cook accept some cherries in brandy that the captain of the _Wild Cat_ had presented to him years ago--that headstrong naval captain who had come to bombard Fangaloa, and ended by giving prizes to the school-children?

Father Zosimus did not overstay his welcome. On the contrary, he had to tear himself away almost by force, so insistent was Cook to keep him. But he knew how much depended on that first visit; he would not jeopardise the precious friendship by remaining too long; and he took early leave, exulting like a child in the rosy vistas that opened before him. This proved to be the first of many visits, and the beginning of an acquaintance that ripened into the closest intimacy. In the day each had his duties to perform, his quiet routine of tasks to fulfil. Father Zosimus sawed stone for the unfinished church he had been ten years building with the perseverance of an ant, or dug in the garden hard by the chapel whose tinkling bell called him periodically to devotions. Tutumanaia had his school, his Young Men’s Institute, his medical practice, and the thousand and one labours imposed upon him by his position and the multitude of his flock. One hour daily he devoted to the intricacies of the language, another to the translation of the “Peep o’ Day” and “Glimpses of the Holy Land” into the Samoan tongue. But at night, when all the village lay quiet on its mats, and nothing broke the stillness save the drone of the surf and the rustle of flying-foxes among the trees, then it was that Father Zosimus would seek the mission verandah and the society of the friend that had become so dear to him.

Side by side, with their canvas chairs touching, the strange pair would talk far into the night. The world passed in review before them, that great world of which they both knew so little; and from their village on the shores of an uncharted sea they weighed and examined, criticised and condemned it. Or perhaps from such lofty themes their talk would drift into the homelier channel of local gossip, or stray into the labyrinths of Samoan politics. Or Origen, Athanasius, George of Cappadocia, would be drawn from their distant past to point an argument or illustrate a deep dissertation on the primitive church. And from these, again, perhaps to Steinberger’s new poll-tax and the fighting in Pango Pango.

On one subject they never spoke--the great barrier reef of dogma that lay between them. Once only was it in any way alluded to--once after a memorable night when Wesley had opened his heart to the old priest. In saying farewell the latter had raised his hands, and was deeply chagrined when his companion leaped back with a look of consternation.

“Oh, my son,” said Zosimus, “the blessing of an old and not unworthy man cannot harm thee. Do we not each serve God according to our lights?”

But if Father Zosimus had succeeded in winning the young minister’s confidence and friendship, with Mrs. Cook he had not fared so well. In the bottom of his heart he felt that the woman’s ill will was the rock on which the precious friendship might founder, and he accordingly left no stone unturned to ingratiate himself in her favour. But the lonely, wilful, moody woman, with her health impaired by her recent confinement, and her spirit warped by disappointment and the consciousness of dimming beauty, was in no state of mind to receive his advances. Unhappy herself, she was in the tigerish humour when one must rend, if one can, the happiness of others. She had nothing in common with the frowsy old priest who wore blue jeans under his snuffy cassock and smelled of garden mould. Moreover, her pride was wounded by her tacit exclusion from the nightly company on the porch. Her presence brought constraint and what seemed to her disordered nerves a scarcely veiled resentment. Though she yawned in her husband’s face when they were alone together, and did nothing to seek his confidence, she detested his intimacy with the old priest, and the thought of it rankled perpetually within her. At first she had ignored Father Zosimus’s very existence, repelling his overtures with an indifference quite unaffected, and treating him with the frank rudeness that springs from unconcern. But as time passed, and every fibre of her being revolted at the narrowness and hopelessness of her imprisoned life; as her spirit beat against the bars and her heart seemed to burst within her breast; she began to perceive in the priest the means of striking at her husband. Not that she did not love Wesley, after a fashion; if things had so fallen out, she could have felt the most poignant jealousy; but she resented the easy, contented nature that blossomed in that hot hole where they lived, among those greasy, fawning savages with whom their lot was so inexorably cast. His prattle about the school, the progress of the “Peep o’ Day,” his zeal for unearthing legends and old Samoan songs, his whole innocent enjoyment in his daily tasks and duties, all fanned the flame of her revolt. If he, too, had risen against the dreary confinement of their life; if he, too, had faced each succeeding day with ineffable disgust, and had lain weary and heartsick in her arms at night; she would have comforted him, encouraged him, strengthened him for the task he had so rashly undertaken. What she could not bear, what she could not forgive or condone, was his mild acceptance of his fate; his zest in the pitiful drudgery of his every-day existence; the petty nature that could thus expand in the close air of a prison. With a malignity that was crazed in its intensity, the outcome of hysteria and the first gnawings of disease, she sought to shatter the placidity which had grown as intolerable to her as the Samoan sun at noon. In Father Zosimus she perceived the dagger with which she could stab her husband through and through; and in the maturing of her plot she enjoyed the nearest approach to happiness that had ever come her way in Fangaloa.

One evening, when Father Zosimus arrived as usual, he was met on the verandah by Mrs. Cook, and informed that the minister had been detained in the village by some trifling errand. He felt a tone of menace in her voice, and foreboded no good from her high colour and quivering lips. He would have excused himself had a lie come easily to his lips, but he was not quick in such things, and took the offered seat with a sinking heart. He searched nervously here and there for some topic of conversation that might be interesting and yet free from the slightest possibility of offence, his ear, meanwhile, alert for the sound of the minister’s footsteps. But Mrs. Cook was too adroit for the old man, and, to his inexpressible chagrin, he soon found himself stumbling into an argument, and the target for humiliating and derisive questions. He now thought only of escape, for his hands were trembling, and he felt his cheeks flushing with indignation. Every word he said seemed only to land him deeper in the mire. When, at last, Mrs. Cook began to taunt him with a recent scandal in Upolu involving the good name of a nun, Father Zosimus cried out inarticulately, and flung himself past her into the darkness. Even as he did so, Wesley Cook came swinging up the path, and instinctively stepped aside to allow the flying figure to pass. He looked back at it irresolutely, and then continued on his way with a premonition of evil to come. His wife received him with vehement caresses, clinging to him in an hysterical frenzy. Between her choking sobs she overflowed with foolish, disjointed, and often incoherent accusations against the old priest. “That horrible old Jesuit!” she cried; “that sly, slinking, wicked creature; never, never must he be permitted to cross the threshold again.” Her cheeks flamed as she continued her tirade; as she described the shame, the humiliation she had secretly undergone; as she affected, with passionated outbursts of indignation, to keep back things that were too black even for utterance. All the time she searched Wesley’s eyes for an answering fire, and could read nothing but incredulity and dismay. Then her wrath turned full upon him, and with a hundred quotations from his own lips she denounced his intimacy with a Jesuit, and bade him choose between the priest and her.

She threatened to seek old Tuisunga’s protection were he to persist in this unworthy friendship, and drew in no uncertain colours the effect of the letter she would write to the missionary authorities at Malua. Wesley was frightened to the core, and quaked under the lash of her denunciation. He saw himself disgraced; dismissed from the Society; turned out into the world, that most forlorn and helpless of human beings, the discarded missionary. Abjectly he begged for mercy, simulated an indignation against Father Zosimus he could in no wise feel, and was in due course forgiven on promising to break for ever with the old priest.

He passed a troubled night; he felt he had made a mean capitulation, and, try as he would, he was unable to gloss the matter to his conscience. He was stung by the conviction of his cowardice and disloyalty, and yet his common sense told him that he was powerless in his wife’s hands. He could never outlive the scandal of her desertion, or explain away those letters which would write him down a pervert. In the morning Wesley timidly expostulated with his wife, quoting all the texts he could remember that bore on charity and forgiveness. This was a course little calculated to allay Mrs. Cook’s wrath. She burst out upon him with a fury that completely crushed his last effort at intercession. She stood over him as he wrote the letter in which, with smooth and nicely balanced sentences, interspersed with religious commonplaces and trite expressions of regret, he raised a wall of words between himself and the old man he had called his friend. He knew, he said, that Father Zosimus could have had no intention to offend, but Mrs. Cook had taken the matter of overnight in such a way that he felt unable to resume an intimacy which had been very precious to him. No apologies or explanations could avail, and he begged that none be offered; but he trusted, he need not say how earnestly, that in some future time (D. V.) the dark clouds would roll away, and with them all memories of this unhappy misunderstanding.

The letter was brought to Father Zosimus in the garden, where he was digging furiously to drive away the devils that beset him. He tore it open with his grimy hands, and read it with a feeling of despair. The few kindly allusions brought tears to his eyes, and his first resentment against Tutumanaia passed away as he re-read them; but against Mrs. Cook, the author of his humiliation, his whole nature rose in arms. Disciplined though he was by seven and forty years of abnegation, the old Adam in him lay still fiery and untamed. He was consumed with bitterness towards the woman who had so cruelly wronged him. What had he to hope “in some future time (D. V.),” old and broken man that he was? In the fierceness of his indignation he called down the vengeance of God upon her until contrition overpowered him, and he threw himself on his knees.

“Oh, Zosimus,” he said, “so old and still so foolish!”

After such a blow it was hard to pick up the threads of life once more, and interest himself in the recurring tasks which rounded out each day. But in Father Zosimus there was the stuff of which martyrs are made. Sore of heart though he was, and spent of body, his unremitting energy and indomitable faith drove him to work and pray as he had never worked or prayed before. His lacerated feelings found an outlet in dazzling garden-beds, trellises of bamboo, and in the stone wall he had so often planned and as often given up, which was to inclose the seaward side of his little plantation. And in these tranquil and unexciting occupations, which kept the hands busy while the mind was free to rove, a certain scheme unfolded itself which found increasing favour in his eyes; the means, in fact, by which he might score a triumph over Mrs. Cook, and restore himself once again in her good graces. Not that he had forgiven her for the part she had taken against him; his anger still smouldered beneath the blanket of Christian charity with which he had sought to smother it; but were he to gain again his footing in that household on the hill; were he to renew the intimacy that was the very salt of his life; he must needs pay toll to the woman who held the key of his happiness. As he dug, or weeded, or carried stones to his wall, or climbed the ladder beside the shining trellis-work, the old priest was never far from a sheet of paper and a pencil. Sometimes it was a hammer that kept these things in place, sometimes it was the well-worn shovel-hat that guarded them from the puffs of the trade or chance cat’s-paws from the mountains, while Zosimus, his head economically wrapped in banana-leaves, seized many an occasion during the course of his labours to scribble another word on the anchored sheet, or erase something already written. It was a list of such delicacies as the limited markets of Apia afforded, for which the old man was intending to lay out the savings of a year.

It must not be supposed that the Rev. Wesley Cook was having a particularly pleasant time of it during the days that followed the breaking off with Father Zosimus. For half a week, indeed, his wife exerted herself to supply the old man’s place, and had never before shown herself so agreeable or so helpful. She interested herself in Wesley’s legends, listened patiently to the story of Sopo’s misdoings, of the brilliant possibilities that lay in Popo would he only apply himself in earnest, or lamented with her husband the bad influences which were undermining the character of a gentleman named O; she wrote to his dictation a little essay on the “King-names of Samoa,” which Cook intended sending to the Polynesian Society of New Zealand; and, in fact, proved herself a zealous, clever, and indefatigable comrade. All thought of Father Zosimus would soon have slipped from Wesley’s memory had this new-found companionship been destined to endure; but it was nothing more than a flash in the pan, due half to remorse, half to policy, a means to gain time for the breach to widen irrevocably between her husband and the priest.

The sour, capricious woman could not long brook the task she had set herself to perform; her spirit soon flagged in the dull round which made up her husband’s life, and her new part in it grew daily more intolerable. She slowly lapsed again into the dark humour which was fast becoming her second nature, and took no further trouble to conciliate her husband. Cook was slow to realise the change, but when at last it dawned upon him that she listened with unconcealed indifference to the tale of the day’s doings, and made no further pretence of caring either for his work in Fangaloa or for the literary labours which were his only relaxation, he, too, grew gloomy and dispirited. The essay languished; the “Peep o’ Day” stood still; and he spent solitary hours in his study in a kind of stupor. A thousand times his heart turned towards his old friend, and he longed to throw himself at his feet and say, “Father, comfort me! I am weak of spirit and sore distressed.” But loyalty to the overwrought and nigh crazy woman he called his wife, as well as the timidity which was constitutional in the man, forbade an open reconciliation, and he shrank from the thoughts of a clandestine one. So he went his lonely way, bearing his cross as best he might.

At last the time grew near for the execution of the plan which had cost Father Zosimus so much trouble and calculation, not to speak of many dollars from his scanty hoard.

On Christmas morn, as the cannon at Faleapuni pealed along the shore and roused the villages with its joyful reverberations, Father Zosimus hastened to transform his dwelling into a bower of ferns and flowers. With Filipo to assist him, and _’afa_ enough to have built a chief’s house, the pair worked unceasingly until there remained not an inch without its flower nor a post unentwined with brilliant creepers and fragrant _moso’oi_. He drew a breath of satisfaction when it was all finished to his liking, and while Filipo swept out the litter he sat down and wrote the following letter:

FANGALOA, December 25, 186-.

MY DEAR CHILDREN: On this blessed morning no Christian can harbour
any unkindness in his heart, nor cast up another’s shortcomings
against him. I am an old and a failing man; the day of my release is
close at hand, and you both must be generous to me as one so soon to
stand before his God. And if I have unwittingly offended you,--as I
know I have done,--I pray you to forgive me for the sake of Him who
was born to-day. I have ventured to prepare a little feast in your
honour, with which I hope we may celebrate, in innocent gaiety, the
renewal of our friendship. At twelve o’clock I shall expect you both.

I remain, my dear children, with heartfelt wishes for your good
health and continued prosperity,

Your old friend,
ZOSIMUS, S. J.

He read the note several times to himself before putting it into an envelope and addressing it to Mr. and Mrs. Cook. Filipo was at hand, garlanded with red _singano_ and elegantly garbed in white, prepared to make a good appearance before the young ladies of the mission. He trotted off with the note carefully wrapped in a banana-leaf, that it might be delivered in all its virgin purity. Father Zosimus lit a pipe and impatiently set himself to await his messenger’s return.

“_Se’i ave le tusi lea ia Misi_,” said Filipo to the young lady that met him at the door. “_Ou te fa’atali i’inei mo le tali._” (“Give this letter to Misi. I will wait here for the answer.”) Now, in Samoa, the word “Misi” is used to designate and address Protestant missionaries of either sex, and the maid carried the letter, not to Wesley Cook in his study, but to Mrs. Cook, who was listlessly lolling in the sitting-room. She tore it open, read it with attention, and putting it hastily in her pocket, bade the girl send Filipo away. “Tell him Misi says there is no answer,” she said.

The old catechist skipped down the hill, and repeated to his master the message that had been given him.

Father Zosimus was painfully overcome.

“Filipo,” he said, “did you see the minister with your very own eyes?”

“_Ioe_,” answered the catechist, cheerfully; “he was writing in his room, and I saw him through the window, looking very sad, and eating his pen like a cow at a breadfruit-tree.” Filipo mimicked the action on his finger.

Father Zosimus sat for a long time in a kind of dream. A glass of wine served to rouse and strengthen him, and the unaccustomed stimulant put him in some sort of trim to carry on the duties of the day. But a recurring dizziness and a sinking at the heart soon drove him to take an enforced rest. He told Filipo he did not care to eat, bidding him put away the wine, and call Iosefo and his family to the feast that had been made ready for such different guests.

With the passing of Christmas Father Zosimus began to work harder than ever in his garden; early and late he could be seen in the midst of its blooming flower-beds, digging, weeding, or transplanting with passionate intensity. A loutish fellow from the westward, a heavy-featured son of Wallis Island, had been engaged to divide the burden of these tasks, and for a wage infinitesimally small toiled and sweated under the father’s eye. To guard this creature from the prattle of the passers-by, and to check his tendency to gaze dreamily into the sun; to stifle his inclination to drink, to smoke, to chatter, to explain how much better they did things in Wallis Island; to keep his fat face, in fact, on the weeds in front of him, became, indeed, Father Zosimus’s constant study. Day by day, he stood sentinel over his Uvean, applied the man’s clumsy force to profitable ends, and kept his own unconquerable heart from breaking.

It was not every day he could pursue the occupation he loved best, and watch his plans take shape with slow but appreciable success. January falls in the depth of the wet season; furious rains and long stretches of boisterous weather often interrupted the Uvean’s labours, driving both him and his taskmaster to the enforced idleness of the house--the former to sleep on the floor or to smoke interminable _suluis_ with Filipo: the priest to read his breviary by dim lamplight as the deluge pounded on the roof. It was during one of these black days, when all the world was awash outside, and a wild westerly wind was tearing through the trees, bombarding the village with crashing boughs and cocoanuts, that the priest’s ancient barometer sank to 29°, and gave a quivering promise of worse to follow. He was looking at the mercury, and setting the gauge, when Filipo appeared in the passage, his face bright with news.

“The partner of Tutumanaia is known to your Highness?” he began, with a question that might well have appeared superfluous.

Father Zosimus turned instantly.

“God is high-chief angry with her rock-like heart,” went on Filipo, with the calm intonation of one vindicated. “She was presumptuous and beautiful like an angel; now she is pig-faced and torn of devils; and her man, oh, he weeps like an _aitu_ in the wilderness.”

“Whence didst thou get this _tala_?” asked the priest, mindful of past mare’s nests on his servant’s part.

“The _tala_ is a true one, Zosimus,” he said. “Even now the pastor of Faleapuni is praying with a loud voice in the room of the sick, tussling with the devil, while the family shrieks and is distracted. The hand of God lies heavy upon her, and they say she will die; her face scorches the touch like a hot lamp, and she talks constantly the words of devils.”

Zosimus made a gesture of annoyance; at any other time he would have reproved Filipo for retailing such heathenish fables, and reopened a discussion that had continued between them for upward of thirty years; but his solicitude for Wesley Cook monopolized every thought, and he allowed his servant’s words to pass unchallenged.

“But her sickness?” he demanded. “How first did it come upon her?”

“It was thus,” returned Filipo: “thy grieving heart was known of God, and when he looked down at that costly feast to which neither the minister nor his wife would deign to come--”

“Stop!” cried the priest. “This is the talk of an untattooed boy. Have I not told thee a thousand times that sickness has invariably a cause?”

“The maids say that last week she had a long talk with her husband,” said Filipo, “and together they quarrelled until she talked loud and fierce, like a German, and he cried and cried, and threw himself on the mats. Then she went out of the house, and to her there was neither umbrella nor coat, though it rained; and she walked, uselessly, all the way to Faleapuni, so burned her heart with anger; and when she returned she was trembling with the cold so that her teeth went thus. Then she went to bed, and vomited terribly, and every time she breathed, it hurt her chest so that she said, ‘Ugh! ugh!’ like a man sorely wounded on the field. Then the minister came to her and tried to talk and bedarling her; but she mocked at him, and said her heart was in the White Country. After that she began to talk the devil-stuttering which is not understandable of man.”

Father Zosimus’s jaw fell, and he looked about him like a man on the brink of some great resolve.

“She was never the same after the day of the feast,” said Filipo.

The priest put on his yellow oilskin, and placing a bottle of brandy in one pocket, he grasped the bunched umbrella that was his inseparable companion. Thus prepared to face the elements and carry succour to the sick, he made his way into the open and ascended the hill towards the mission-house. His face tingled under the lash of the wind and rain as he struggled on, dodging the nuts that occasionally shot across his path like cannon-balls; and when at last he reached his goal in safety, he was surprised to see the curtains pulled down within, and to find no one to answer his repeated knocks.

He was emboldened to turn the knob and enter, which he did hesitatingly, not knowing what reception awaited him. At the end of the hall a half-open door let out a flood of lamplight, betraying one room, at least, in which he might expect to find some member of the household. On the bed beside the wall Mrs. Cook lay in disordered bedclothes, her glassy eyes upturned in delirium, her face yellow and pinched almost beyond recognition, one thin arm on the pillow beneath her head, the other thrown limply across the sheet. Not far from her, in shabby dressing-gown and slippers, Wesley himself was asleep in a canvas chair, sunk in the deep oblivion that follows an all-night watch. On the floor two native girls slumbered in boluses of matting, their heads side by side on a bamboo pillow. The priest stole softly to the bed and looked down on Mrs. Cook’s face; but there was no understanding in the bright, troubled glance that met his own, no coherence in the whispered words she repeated to herself. He was angered to think of his own ignorance and helplessness as he stood the brandy on the littered table beside the copy of “Simple Remedies for the Home,” and studied the woman with renewed anxiety. In truth, she looked grievously ill. Sixty miles of wild water and mountainous seas separated them from Apia and the only doctor in the group; he shivered as he caught the wail of the wind without, and saw in mind the breakers that were thundering against their iron coast.

He fell on his knees and prayed, and then went out into the air again, his mind made up to a desperate measure. He now took another path, one that led him across the village to Tuisunga’s stately house. It was nearly filled with chiefs and speaking-men, ranged round in a great circle, and the high-pitched, measured periods of an orator could be heard above the wind and the pelting rain. On his approach there burst out a chorus of “_Maliu mai, susu mai, ali’i Zosimo_”; and he bent under the eaves and made his way, half crouching, to a place by Tuisunga’s side. The eyes of all the party turned on him with surprise, and there was a little burst of expectation, broken only by the embittered hawking of the interrupted orator.

“Your Majesty Tuisunga, chiefs, and speaking-men of Fangaloa,” began Zosimus, “be not angry with me for disturbing this meeting. I have just come from the house of mourning, where God’s hand lies heavy upon your pastor’s wife, so that she is like to die. It is my thought that we take a boat and go with all expedition for the German doctor in Apia.”

“Chief Zosimus,” answered Tuisunga, “the gentlemen you see before you have been discussing this very matter. We are agreed that if the lady is to live, we must seek help at once from the wise white man in Apia, though the storm is heavy upon us, and the risk more than bullets in the fighting line. But what boat can live in such a gale, save one that is strong indeed, and well wrought? Our man-of-war that pulls forty oars is with Forster to be mended; my own whaler is too old and rotten for so bold a _malanga_; the others we possess are small and useless.”

“There is Ngau’s boat,” said the priest, with a flash of his eyes towards a sullen-looking old chief. “It is new, and strong like a ship of two masts.”

Ngau’s withered face hardened. A titter ran round the assembled chiefs.

“That is the knot,” said Tuisunga; “it is not the will of Ngau to give his boat, lest it be cast away.”

“Not to save the life of a dying woman?” demanded Father Zosimus.

“Ngau is accustomed to the white man’s way,” said Tuisunga. “He is mean, and his heart is like a stone.”

All eyes turned to Ngau, who stared back, defiant and unabashed.

“If he has a white man’s heart, we will treat him to the white man’s law,” cried Zosimus. “We will take his boat by force.”

“But it is Ngau’s boat,” said Tuisunga.

“It is Ngau’s boat,” echoed the chiefs.

“And thou wilt let the woman die?” cried Father Zosimus.

“It is Ngau’s boat,” said Tuisunga.

“What dost thou want for the boat?” demanded the priest.

“Five dollars and a tin of biscuit,” replied Ngau, promptly; “and if it be wrecked, one hundred and twelve dollars, a water-bottle, and a coil of rope as thick as a man’s thumb.”

“I will take it on myself,” said Father Zosimus. “I am poor; I belong to a faith that thou deridest; yet my heart is not weak and fearful like thine. I will answer for thy boat, Chief Ngau, before all these gentlemen as witnesses.”

“_O le tino tupe lava_ [hard money]” inquired Ngau, “to be put in my hand before the young men touch my boat?”

“I have not so much,” cried the priest. “I have not money in my house like drinking-nuts. It comes this month, and that a little at a time. But I tell thee truly, I will pay thee every _seni_.”

The owner of the boat shook his head.

“I want one hundred and twelve dollars,” he said, “a water-bottle, and a coil of rope as thick as my thumb.”

“Why dost thou call thyself chief of this village, Tuisunga?” demanded the priest. “The only chief I see here is Ngau. He speaks: we obey. It matters not what I want, or what thou wishest, or whether the pastor’s wife lies dying. It is his Majesty Ngau who is King of Fangaloa. Thy power is no stronger than that of an untattooed boy.”

“But it is Ngau’s boat,” said Tuisunga, looking very black.

“Zosimus,” said Ngau, “they tell me thou hast costly things in thy church--cups of silver, two silver candlesticks, each heavy as a gun, and a silver cross on which there is the image of Jesus. Bring these to me, together with five dollars of hard money and the musical box that sounds so sweetly of an evening, and I will hold them for the price of my boat. If it be cast, thou shalt pay me, from time to time, one hundred and twelve dollars, a water-bottle, and a coil of rope as thick as a man’s thumb, and when the contract is finished I will give thee back the precious things. But if no harm befall the boat, I shall return them at once, and the price of it will be five dollars and a tin of biscuit.”

“Thou shalt have them,” cried Father Zosimus; “and if thou hadst said, ‘Zosimus, take an axe and strike off thy right hand,’ that also would I have done. A life is more to me than dollars in a bag, Chief Ngau. Of thee, Tuisunga, one only is the question I desire to ask: When I bring back my precious things according to the will of Ngau, how may I be sure, indeed, that thou wilt not claim another price for the crew?”

The chief hung his head. “We are not all like Ngau,” he returned.

In half an hour the priest was back, with Filipo at his heels, the arms of both filled with well-wrapped packages. Father Zosimus laid his burden on the floor, and began to pluck away the _siapo_ that enfolded it.

“Stop!” cried Tuisunga.

The priest desisted with a look of angry wonder, as though some fresh imposition were to be laid upon him.

“Zosimus,” said Tuisunga, “since thou left us, these gentlemen and myself have been looking down into our hearts. They are black and pig-like, and we feel ashamed before thee. It would be a mock and an everlasting disgrace to Fangaloa wert thou to sacrifice thy holy things to the meanness of the pig-face Ngau. We have taken counsel together in thine absence, and this is our decision: The boat shall be taken from Ngau, and not one _seni_ shall be paid him, nor shall a water-bottle be given, nor a coil of rope; and if his boat be cast away, well, it is God’s will. Furthermore, Ngau’s house shall be burned and his plantation destroyed for a punishment, and thou shalt have him (if thou shouldst so high-chief will) to make of him a Catholic; for Ngau has been expelled from the Protestant religion, and his communion ticket has been taken from him as one unworthy.”

Father Zosimus said nothing, but his eyes gleamed like coals of fire as he hurriedly put his treasures in order for their return; in a trice Filipo was scudding away with them down the hill, to the mirth of all the chiefs, some of whom shouted after him derisively to make haste.

“When are we to start?” asked the priest. “If it be thy high-chief will, the sooner the better.”

“But thou canst not go,” said Tuisunga. “Thou art old and unfit.”

“No man is too old to serve God,” returned the priest.

There rose a murmur of dissent from the assembled chiefs. The old man would be a dead weight in the boat; by carrying a priest they would infallibly bring down the anger of God upon them all; even the whites who cared for naught but money dreaded to sail with a _faifeau_.

“This is foolish talk,” said Tuisunga. “Do we not need Zosimus to talk for us in Apia? Do we not know the ways of whites, and their disdain and pride? Who will speak to the German doctor? Everywhere we shall be disregarded and mocked at. We will say that the wife of Tutumanaia is dying, and behold, they will answer with contumely. ‘There is no such minister,’ for we know not his name in the foreign stutter.”

“Let us start,” cried Father Zosimus. “We have no time to waste.”

On the rocky beach they found the boat had already been drawn from the shed and made ready by the young men. Ngau’s house, which stood close by the landing, was packed with his relatives and family, who looked out from beneath the eaves with lowering faces. The sea was white as far as the eye could reach, and was bursting furiously against the coast and into the half-moon of the bay, while overhead, and against the obliterated sky-line, the wild clouds drove stormily to leeward. The young men looked troubled, and old Tuisunga himself was lost in gloom as he studied the breakers that seemed about to engulf them. Father Zosimus alone was calm and unconcerned in the busy tumult of their making ready; for was not God beside him, with the blessed saints? Bidding Filipo tell the minister of their errand, he took his seat without a tremor when the young men lined themselves beside the gunwales, and began to drive the boat slowly into the water.

There was a yell as she floated off. The young men sprang to their paddles, while Tuisunga seized the steering-oar in his sinewy hands. They rode dry over the first wave, then dug into the next bow foremost, and rose half swamped. The third was a huge comber, green as bottle-glass, steep as a park wall, which shot up before them and raced shoreward with a smoking crest. There was a convulsive scurry among the crew; a roar from the crowded beach; as Tuisunga, standing full upright in the stern, and swaying with every jerk of the paddles, headed the boat into the boiling avalanche. The whaler rose like a cork, darted her nose high in air, and for one awful moment seemed to stand on end. When Father Zosimus opened his eyes, she was speeding seaward on something like an even keel, sixteen eager paddles driving her past the point where the breakers sprang. But working out of the bight, they lost the shelter it gave them, and began to feel, for the first time, the unrestrained fury of the gale. There was a frightful sea running; the boat took in water at every turn; and though the wind was favourable, they could not take advantage of it at once. A rag of sail was raised at last, and a straight course laid for Apia, while half the crew rested and the other half baled. But no boat could run before such a sea as followed them. They had one narrow escape, then another by a hair’s-breadth; and as they tried to turn, a great black wave suddenly caught and smothered them beneath mountains of water. The crew rose laughing and shouting to the surface, but one grey head was missing. Father Zosimus had received his martyr’s crown.

FRENCHY’S LAST JOB

FRENCHY’S LAST JOB

My health at college having shown signs of giving way, Uncle George had been kind enough to advance the means for my passage to Brisbane, Australia, and back, in order to carry out the doctor’s recommendation for a long sea-voyage. I scarcely think the good man intended me to go steerage in a cargo-boat, which I did to make my money last; and I imagine he would have been anything but pleased if he could have seen me on the eve of starting from Brisbane itself for the South Sea Islands with twelve tons of assorted merchandise. Indeed, I was not a little surprised at myself, and at times in the long night watches I blubbered like a baby at my own venturesomeness. But with me, though my people at home did not know it, college had been a failure. I sometimes wondered whether I was unusually dull, or my companions at that inhospitable northern university were above the normal intelligence; but whatever the cause, I know only that I was unable to keep the pace that was set me to follow.

And here I was, with my heart in my mouth, starting on a career of my own choosing, the lessee of a trading station on an island called Tapatuea! More I knew not, beyond the fact that I was to receive a moiety of any profits I might earn, and had bound myself to stay where I was put for the space of three years. Considering my age and inexperience, this was a most liberal arrangement, and I have never ceased wondering since how my employers, Messrs. John Cæsar Bibo & Co., were ever dragooned into adding me to their forces. I say “dragooned” advisedly, for it was due entirely to my good friend Henry Mears, the shipping broker of Lonsdale Place, that I happened to be engaged, in spite of the firm’s most strenuous protest. Mears had taken to me from the day I first wandered into his office by an accident; and from that time down to the sailing hour of the _Belle Mahone_ there was nothing he would not do to serve me. I am not sure that he was financially interested in the firm of John Cæsar Bibo & Co., but he always acted as though his was the controlling voice in its affairs, and he was the only man I ever knew who dared stand up to Old Bee, as we called him. This last-named, the directing spirit of a business that spread its net over half the islands of the Pacific, was a grim, taciturn individual of an indeterminable age,--it was variously reckoned from seventy to a hundred and ten,--who made periodical descents into Mears’s office, and sat closeted there for hours. His presence always inspired constraint, and the sight of his ancient, sallow cheek was enough to thin the ranks of the broker’s clients--shipmasters and supercargoes for the most part, not all of them sober, and none, apparently, able to look Old Bee in the eye.

I shall never forget my introduction to the great man.

“This is a nice boy, Mr. Bibo, sir,” said Mears, indicating me with a cast of his eye.

“Oh!” said Old Bee.

“I want him to have that Tapatuea store,” said Mears.

“You mean the easterly one, where Bob killed the Chinaman?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ll see him in hell first,” said Old Bee.

I thought this ended the matter for good, and said as much to Mears when John Cæsar had departed. But my friend was far from being cast down.

“Oh, that’s all right,” he said. “I count it as good as settled.”

This was more than I could say, and I had no cause to change my mind on my next meeting with Old Bee.

“I’m putting twelve tons of stuff aboard for the Tapatuea store,” said Mears, “and I’ve told Young Hopeful, here, that you’ll keep a berth for him.”

“The devil!” said Old Bee, and went straight on with the business he had in hand.

The next day the broker signed my contract by virtue of some power of attorney he possessed for Bibo & Co.

“If he backs out now, you can sue him for damages,” he said cheerfully.

I was in a tremble when I next met my employer. It was near our sailing time, and he was in a violent hurry. He threw down a paper on the desk and told Mears it was the list of things he had put by for the last.

“Send some one along for them,” he said, “some one that knows how to keep his mouth shut. I’ve clean forgot all that business of the King of Pingalap’s: the breech-loading cannon I promised him from Hudson’s, and those damned guinea-fowls, and that cylinder for his musical box!”

“Here’s one of your own men,” said Mears. “You know young Bence?”

“Good God, that child!” cried the old man. “Didn’t I tell you I wouldn’t have him?”

“Pity you hadn’t spoken before,” said the broker, with surprise. “I only signed his contract yesterday.”

Old Bee regarded me sourly.

“I don’t understand the joke,” he said.

“Oh, come, come. He’s twenty-two if he’s a day,” said Mears, adding four years to my age; “and as to being young, I dare say he’ll get over it.”

“What’s he done, that you’re so keen to get him off?” said Old Bee, still eyeing me with strong disfavour. “However, as you have made it your business to push him down my throat, I suppose I’ve got to bolt him.”

“He’d sue you like a shot if you didn’t,” said Mears. “With that contract in his pocket he’s regularly got you in his power.”

This view of the situation made even Old Bee smile, and caused Mears to laugh outright. For me it was scarcely so entertaining; never in my life had I felt so small or insignificant, though I plucked up courage when the great man handed me his list and bade the broker count me out sixty sovereigns. This showed that in some small measure I must have won his good opinion, a conviction that was still further strengthened by his departure, when, in the excitement and flurry of the moment, he even shook me by the hand.

A few days after this conversation I found myself at sea, a regularly enrolled trader of the firm’s, and one of the after-guard of the bark _Belle Mahone_, Captain Mins. We were bound, according to the timehonoured formula, “for the island of Guam or any other port the master may so direct.” I presume there are ships that actually do go to Guam,--if, indeed, there be such a place at all,--but it has never been my fate to come across one. Our Guam was like the rest, a polite fiction to cover up our track and leave a veil of mystery over our voyage. Besides John Cæsar Bibo, with whom I have already made you acquainted, there were three others in our little company astern. Captain Mins was a short, bullnecked man of fifty, with abrupt manners and a singularly deliberate way of speech, due perhaps to some impediment of the tongue. This lent to his utterance a gravity almost judicial, and gave an added force to the contradiction which was his only conversational counter. Jean Bonnichon, or “Frenchy,” as we called him, was one of the firm’s traders returning to the Islands after a brief holiday. He, like Mins, was short and thick-set, but with this ended all resemblance between them. Bonnichon’s story was that he had come of a wealthy family in Normandy; and it was indubitable (from the papers he had in his possession) that he had served as an officer of horse-artillery in the French army. What he had done to leave it no one precisely knew, nor was our curiosity satisfied by the conflicting explanations he himself was at pains to give. As a soldier of fortune in the Old World, with the Turks, the Bulgarians, and finally with the Arabs of Sus, he had sunk lower and lower, until he had come at last to Australia, there to sink lower still.

Six years of colonial life, followed by seven on the island of Apaiang, had transformed Frenchy into one of those strange creatures without a country. Under the heel of adversity the Frenchman had been completely stamped out of him; only some fragments of the army officer remained; the bulging chest, the loud, peremptory voice, the instant obedience to any one he counted his superior. He annoyed Old Bee excessively by leaping to his feet whenever our employer addressed him, a military habit so ingrained that he was quite unable to break himself of it. Intended for deference, its effect on John Cæsar (the most fidgety and preoccupied of patriarchs) was to drive him into one of his sudden tempers, when woe betide the man who dared to first address him. Adam Babcock, a humble, silent creature, completed the number of our mess. He was the mate of the ship, and took his meals alone after we had quitted the table, a forlorn arrangement that is usual in small vessels. He was so completely null in our life that I have some difficulty in recollecting him at all. He had seen misfortunes, I remember, and had certainly come down very much in the world, for he was the only person aft who treated me with the least consideration. On one occasion he even called me “sir,” and gave me a present of some shells.

With Frenchy I was soon on terms of shipboard acquaintance, but for the others I might have been invisible, for all they ever noticed me. Old Bee, for the matter of that, seldom spoke to any one, and the sight of his bilious cheek would have daunted, I believe, the most incorrigible bore in London. We saw little of him save at meal-times, for he was perpetually busy in his cabin, adding up figures, or stamping on his copying-book like a dancing dervish. I am at a loss to say what his labours were all about; they were, and always have been, to me the cause of unceasing amazement. I was not sorry, however, that Old Bee kept so much to himself, for I feared him like the plague, and never felt comfortable within the range of his bloodshot eyes. It fell to Frenchy and the captain to keep the ball of conversation rolling, which they did by disputing with each other on every topic that came up. Were the captain, with some warmth, to make a statement, it was just as certain to be met by Frenchy’s great horse-laugh and shrill, jeering contradiction. They could agree on nothing, whether it was the origin of the Russo-Turkish war or the way the natives cook devil-fish. No provocation was too unimportant to set them at each other’s throats, no slight too trivial to be ignored.

Once, to my extreme embarrassment, they differed on the subject of myself; the Frenchman saying that I was the type of young ne’er-do-well under which the colony of Queensland was sinking; while the captain just as vehemently persisted (for the time being only) that it was such as I who had made the British Empire! The complimentary view of Captain Mins’s made very little practical difference in his treatment of me, which from the beginning had been marked by coldness and dislike. In fact, I could not help perceiving, for all their wrangling and apparent disagreement, that the pair were fast friends. It was I, not Frenchy, who was the outsider on that ship. Indeed, I count some of those lonely days on the _Belle Mahone_ as the very bitterest part of my life, and I wished myself at home a thousand times.

My only friend on board was Lum, the Chinese cook, whose circumstances were so akin to mine that we were drawn together by a common instinct. He, too, was condemned to solitude, having little in common with our crew of Rotumah Islanders, who shunned him like a leper; while I, as the reader knows, held a scarcely better position among the after-guard. When his work was done, Lum and I used to smoke cigarettes together under the lee of a boat, or, if it rained, within the stuffy confines of his cabin next the galley. He was a mine of worldly wisdom, for there was nothing he had not done or had not tried to do, from piracy to acting on the stage; and he would unfold the tale of his experiences with such drollery and artlessness that his society was to me an endless entertainment. Poor Lum! there was little of the seamy side of life he had not seen, scarcely a treachery he had not endured, in the years he had followed the sea.

Our first port was to be Lascom Island, an immense atoll which had remained uninhabited until Bibo & Co. took possession of it in the eighties. Their intention had been to extend its few cocoanut-palms into one vast grove, and for this purpose they maintained a force of half a dozen indentured labourers from Guadalcanar, who were superintended by a white man named Stocker. It was for the purpose of carrying this Stocker supplies and inspecting his year’s work that we were here to make our first call.