Chapter VIII: Part 8

The next day Michael was up and gone before daybreak, and the little service in the church proceeded for once without him. The father was vexed at such remissness, and tolled the bell with pious indignation. Was the young man no better than a heathen, thus to scamp God’s morning hour--to attend so grossly to the fleshly needs and let the soul go wanting? Depend upon it, he had not left without something to stay his stomach, though God’s claim on him might wait. The priest turned a cold face to his guest when the latter returned at dusk with the invariable pigeons in his hand. But Michael was too tired to notice these altered looks, nor did he seem concerned when at last his delinquency was pointed out to him in no uncertain words. His church, he answered, with mocking defiance, his church was in the woods, at the foot of a towering banyan, or in some dim recess beside a stream; he knelt when the impulse came to him, like some primitive monk wandering with God in the wilds. The priest received this explanation with a dubious silence; he was not at all satisfied with its truth, and yet scarcely knew what to reply, feeling himself helpless and outwitted. He was almost glad that the pigeons, still lying on the floor, gave him an obvious excuse to leave the room.

“The chief has done well to-day,” he said to Ngalo, his servant.

The boy laughed.

“Excellency,” he said, “the Helper does not shoot these pigeons. He buys them for sixpences from our people.”

“Impossible!” cried the old man. “Thou talkest like a delirious person.”

“Excellency,” said the boy, “saving thy presence, the Helper lies. Behold in this pigeon the truth of what I say. Does the chief use gravel in his gun, like a Samoan, to whom there is no lead?”

“Perhaps he does,” said the priest. “Such a thing had not occurred to me.”

“Perhaps he does _not_,” exclaimed Ngalo, meaningly. “On Tuesday he bought eight birds of my mother’s brother’s son; one was scented and had to be thrown away.”

“Ngalo,” cried the priest, with a sudden change of tone, “is there a woman in this hidden business? Is there gossip in the village?”

Ngalo shook his head.

“He is blameless of such an evil,” he said. “But the village talks continually, and the people ask, ‘What does the Helper in the bush?’”

Father Studby breathed a great sigh of relief.

“He walks about,” he explained, “this way and that, according to the command of the wise doctor in Nukualofa. The peace refreshes him and makes him well. I, too, in my youth, used to wander in the mountains and find consolation.”

Ngalo’s face showed that he had more to tell.

“The Helper does strange things,” he said. “He goes along, even as you say, through the village and the outlying plantations like an uncaring child, with no purpose in what it does. But when he reaches a certain _ifi_-tree on the land we call Lefoa, behold, all is changed. He stops, he looks about, he listens assiduously like a warrior on the outpost. Then he puts his gun in a hidden place, and with it his shot-bottle and his powder-bottle; then he girds up his dress to the knee, and runs into the bush with the swiftness of a dog. When he returns, late in the afternoon, it is with the same quickness until the tree is reached. There he takes breath, composes himself, and with slow steps returns seaward buying what pigeons he can on the road.”

“Well, and what else, Mr. Make-the-News?” demanded the father, as Ngalo hesitated.

“There are those in the village who know nothing,” he went on, “mere worthless heathen of no family, without consideration or land of their own, living meanly like slaves on the bounty of others, who say strenuously, with the persistency of barking dogs, that the Helper is under the spell of Saumaiafe!”

The priest stamped his foot with anger. Was that superstition never to die? Saumaiafe, the fabled witch, who, in the guise of a beautiful woman, lured men to ruin in the bush! Saumaiafe, that intolerable myth with which he had been combating for more than eighteen years! Saumaiafe!

“Thou art a fool!” he cried. “You are all fools. Sometimes I feel as though I had spent my life in vain. I, too, was a fool to ever think you teachable.”

“Your Excellency is right,” said Ngalo. “It is an unendurable village altogether, and ignorant beyond anything before conceived. Indeed, so weak are men’s hearts in this matter of Saumaiafe and the Helper that none now go into the bush, even those who are distressed for bamboo, or for red clay with which to beautify their hair.”

The priest turned away without a word. He was almost inclined to laugh as he went back to the other room, and to tell the lay brother the commotion his actions had excited. But the sight of Michael’s face somehow daunted him; those suspicious, bloodshot eyes suggested dangers that he was at a loss to name. He remembered the hiding of the gun; the strange deceit about the pigeons; he seemed to see the young man kilting up his cassock and plunging furtively into the dark forest. What did it all mean? he asked himself again and again. Mercy of God, what did it mean?

That night he slept but little. He tossed on his hot bed, and whether he lay on this side or on that, the same question dinned in his ears without cessation. He was tortured by thoughts of hidden wickedness in the bush; mysteries of evil in rocky defiles, in caves beside great waterfalls. He rose and went out into the starlight, reproaching himself for his foolishness; and even as he did so, Brother Michael’s even breathing thrilled on his ears like a vindication. When all was said, what was it that he feared for the young man? What could an old priest fear but the one thing--a woman? And what woman, he asked himself, however dissolute or abandoned, would venture alone into those haunted woods? He could trust superstition to keep the wickedest from such a course. Had he indeed become such an old Kanaka, that even he, Father Studby, was to credit the existence of the witch, roving in her naked beauty, a peril to white lay brothers? Perish the thought, so degrading and childish! Assuredly it was not Saumaiafe he had to fear.

He got to bed again, and waited with open eyes for the approach of day. As the cocks began to crow, he heard, with a sudden sinking of the heart, the sound of the lay brother stirring in the next room; heard him dress and go stealthily out, shaking the verandah under his heavy tread.

Mercy of God, what did it all mean?

Morning after morning he asked himself the same question, as the mysterious routine continued with unabated regularity; and the thought of it haunted him persistently throughout the day as he tried to fix his mind on other things. Evening after evening he saw the young man return with his tired face, the pigeons so ambiguously obtained, the gun that had never been fired. They would eat their silent meal together, and then Michael would doze in his chair till bedtime. On Sunday, the only day he remained at home, the lay brother resigned himself to the unavoidable services of religion, going with the father to mass, and assisting, by his presence at least, the cause to which they had both pledged their lives. The few hours of his leisure were spent at a little lock-fast desk; and the nature of this correspondence became the second mystery of his singular and baffling life. Once, looking up from his half-written page, he asked the priest how many feet went to a mile. On another occasion he inquired as to the soundings of the bay, and the most likely point for a steamship pier. Steamship piers, and feet in miles! Miles of what? Whose steamships, and what was there to bring them? Mercy of God, what did it all mean?

In the beginning, when Father Studby had first begun to suspect he knew not what, to worry, to ask himself importunate questions, a way had occurred to him--a way not altogether honourable nor dignified--which could not fail to lead to some elucidation of the mystery. He had put it behind him with decision, as unworthy of himself and his reputation. What! act the spy and follow the young man? See with his own eyes, from the vantage of some thick fern or bush, the nature of that strange tryst? No; let him keep his honour, even if curiosity went unsatisfied--even if that same curiosity were not wholly bad, but inspired by a genuine regard for the young brother’s welfare, for which, as the elder of the two, he was in some degree responsible. It was only right to hold out your hand to a sinking man. But could the lay brother be called a sinking man? Ah, if one could be sure of that, how much might be pardoned!

One morning Father Studby could bear it no longer. As the boards creaked in the next room, he, too, rose and dressed himself, trembling as he did so with a sense of guilt. When the front door at length closed on the lay brother, and his quick step was heard on the path outside, Father Studby found himself on the verandah, looking after him in the dawn. He would have followed; he even took a few steps down the hill. But the folly of such a course was at once apparent. To act the detective, one must one’s self remain undiscovered. Yet how could he hope to elude observation and keep on Brother Michael’s heels all through the open village and the wide _malae_? It was manifestly impossible. In the forest it might be different; yes, in the forest, crouching in the thick undergrowth, it would not be so hard to track a man down.

The next night, which happened to be one of a moon almost full, the father lay down ready dressed for a new adventure. A little after one o’clock, he rose, crossed himself, and cautiously quitted the house, making his way through the sleeping village to the path across the swamp. This he followed, slipping on the sodden tree-trunks that served as bridges, until he attained the farther region of cocoanut, banana, and breadfruit plantations. These were in a choking tangle of weeds and lianas; trees thirty feet in height bent under their weight of parasites; others, still higher, were altogether overwhelmed and lost to view in a wall of green; and in the forks of the giant breadfruits orchids were sprouting like the scabs of some foul disease. Keeping with difficulty on the half-obliterated track, the priest toiled slowly and painfully through this belt of so-called cultivation, from which, indeed, the village drew no considerable portion of its sustenance, until at last he reached the welcome shelter of the forest. In contrast to the zone through which he had just emerged, opened by man to the furious energy of the sun, the forest floor itself, densely shaded from this fecundating fire, was comparatively open and easy to penetrate. It was dark, of course, dark as the inside of a well; and the father stopped and lighted the lantern he carried in his hand. He peered about him, blinded by the glare, and uncertain for the first time as to his road. Yes, he had not been misguided; he could trust the instinct of eighteen years to steer him through these labyrinths. Here, indeed, was the _ifi_-tree of which Ngalo had told him, with its low, spreading foliage that had so often concealed Michael’s gun. At the thought of the lay brother his heart began to beat, and he crossed himself repeatedly.

He paced off seven, eight, nine, ten yards from the trunk of the _ifi_; and his feet at that distance carried him into a thicket of fern and wild bananas. He blew out the lantern, and settled himself in the damp ambush so providentially at hand, drawing the big leaves over his head until he could no longer see the stars. From two o’clock--for such he judged the hour when he first took up his station in the ferns--from two o’clock till five he remained huddled in his green lair, praying at intervals, and counting the interminable minutes to dawn. With the first peep of day his impatience turned no less swiftly into dread. What had tempted him to such madness, such dishonour? What if he should be discovered in this shameful nest, and incontinently revealed to the jeers and laughter of the man he thought to track down? What if the lay brother, turning a little aside, should stumble over his cramped and aching body? Explain? How could he explain? Mercy of God, what a position for an old religious! He underwent spasms of panic; he was of two minds whether or not to rise and run. But the sound of a footstep, of a man’s hoarse breathing, of rustling branches and snapping twigs, suddenly brought the heart to his mouth. The wild animal in him was instantly on the defensive, and he flattened himself to the ground.

He lay like a log, not moving so much as an eyelash. He heard the ring of metal as Michael apparently fumbled with his gun in the lower branches of the _ifi_-tree. The shot-flask fell with a crash, and the brother swore--yes, said “damn” audibly, and picked it up. Then there was a silence; an eternity of suspense; then a faint crackling as of parting boughs. The father peeped out, and saw a black figure disappearing inland; an unmistakable black figure, bent and furtive, speeding mysteriously through the gloom. He was up and following in a second, half doubled together, like the man he pursued, eager as a bloodhound with his nose to the spoor. The way, with few intermissions, ran steadily uphill, up and up, faster and faster, until one’s side seemed to crack and one’s heart to burst. Up and up, with a swing to the right to avoid the splashing waterfalls of the Vaita’i; through groves of _moso’oi_ that stifled the air with sweetness; under towering _maalava_-trees that seemed to pierce the very sky.

Would he never stop?

But the lay brother, without once turning, without once stopping either to rest or to look back, plunged forward with the certainty of a man who knew his way blindfold. They were, now, pursued and pursuer, on the high ridge between two river valleys; on the one hand was the Vailoloa, a tributary of the Vaita’i, on the other the roaring Fuasou, both racing tumultuously to the sea. The father wondered how Michael meant to extricate himself from such a cul-de-sac, unless (and the thought dashed his hopes to the ground) he intended to assail the cloudy slopes of Mount Loamu itself and make a circuit of a dozen miles.

But his question no sooner suggested itself than it was answered. Of a sudden the brother stopped on the edge of the Fuasou ravine, dropped one leg over, then the other, and began to disappear hand over hand by means of a hidden ladder. The priest stood where he was, transfixed with astonishment. To hurry now seemed unwise. If he had come to ladders he was not improbably near the goal itself. Patience! A breath or two, a moment to cast one’s self full length on the ground and wipe the acrid sweat from one’s eyes, and then, having given the lay brother a minute’s start, to descend the precipice in his wake.

Father Studby approached the brink and looked over. Below him, dropping, perhaps, sixteen feet, was a roughly made ladder of bamboo which rested at the bottom on a rocky buttress of the cliff. On the edge of that, again, with its splintered ends appearing through the trampled undergrowth, was a continuing ladder, the second of a series that dropped, one after another, into the deep defile. With guarded steps, and after a prolonged deliberation, the priest let himself slowly down ladder number one; down number two; down number three, which ran so long and straight on the open face of the rock that he faltered, turned dizzy, and had to close his eyes to recover himself; down number four; down number five, at the base of which there descended a zigzag path to the river. Following this unhesitatingly, with the noise of rushing water in his ears, he emerged at last on a basaltic shelf not six feet above the bed of the Fuasou. From this coign of vantage he gazed about in vain for any sight of Michael, until, on creeping to the very edge of the rock, he ventured to look below. There, immediately beneath him, so close, indeed, that he might have touched him with his hand, was the lay brother himself, busy shovelling a bucket full of sand.

“Mercy of God!” exclaimed the priest below his breath; and even as he did so, by that singular telepathy which so often confounds us, Michael lifted his head and looked his pursuer squarely in the face. For an appreciable instant the pair challenged each other’s eyes in silence; the lay brother’s were kindling and fierce, the priest’s all abashed, like those of a girl.

“Come down here,” said Michael, peremptorily. “I have something to tell you.”

The priest obeyed, with the mien of a man descending to his execution.

“You old interloper,” cried Michael, with a mirthless laugh. “So you are here at last, are you? I have seen it working in your silly old head for weeks. I never looked up but I thought to see your bloody boots!”

This unexpected address only served to add to the old man’s confusion. He looked about him helplessly. Such unrestrained language seemed to call for a sharp rebuke. He was shocked and frightened; as much so as a woman insulted on the street; and yet the consciousness of his own position--that of the detected spy--froze the words of correction on his lips.

“Of course, you want to know what I have been doing here,” continued Michael, in his mocking tone. “If you’ll look into that cradle you will see quick enough. Why, man alive, don’t you know what it is?”

Amazed and ashamed, Father Studby touched the dirty sediment with his finger.

“That’s gold!” cried the lay brother.

The priest hastily withdrew his hand and stared at his companion in consternation.

Gold!

The priest’s head went round; his heart thumped in his breast, with that word everything was forgotten--his shame, his anger, his humiliation.

“Oh, Michael!” he broke out incoherently. “Oh, Michael!”

“I am taking out about twenty ounces a day,” said the lay brother. “Some days I have touched forty.”

“Mercy of God!” cried the old man, hoarsely. “Mercy of God, show me how you do it!”

Michael had another cradle ready to hand. It was the first he had made he said, and nothing like so good as the other; but it would do for a day or two until they made a new one--yes, it would do, though a lot of the finer stuff was lost. You did it this way--so--just rocking it like a baby’s cradle; the squares of blanket screened the gold, and you washed them out afterwards in a pan. A place? Oh, anywhere along the stream. It was all rotten with gold.

The priest hurried off, and was soon shaking frantically a hundred yards below. He had not been gone an hour when he came hurrying back to where his companion was still at work.

“Look at that!” he cried, holding out a trembling hand. “Oh, Michael, what is it worth?”

“Three or four pounds, perhaps,” said the lay brother, indulgently.

“Mercy of God!” cried the priest, and he was off again at a run.

A little later he came back again. They were watched, he said; he was certain they were watched. He could hardly speak for agitation. He had heard noises behind him, again, and again, like the laughter of girls in the bush.

But Michael only derided his fears. The bush was a creepy place, he said, when you were all alone in it. He had felt the same way himself when he first came, and was eternally peeping over his shoulder and stopping his work to listen. One got used to it after a while; he supposed it must be some kind of a bird.

All day long they worked together in the stream, stopping only at noon for a bite of bread and a pipe. So engrossing was the occupation that one seemed never to grow tired; the glittering reward was always a fresh incentive to try one’s luck again. Five pounds, four pounds, six pounds, three pounds! One lost all count, and the level of the tobacco-tin in which the golden sand was poured rose and rose in half-inch tides. Father Studby was almost angry when his companion declared it was time to go. He was hurt at such a suggestion; he was disappointed; he almost cried. Michael showed him his watch. Mercy of God, it was past five o’clock! Then he remembered, for the first time, his neglected duties: the morning service, the school, the woman who lay dying in Nofo’s house; the hundred calls, great and small, that kept his day so busy. He wondered at his own unconcern, at his own apathy and selfishness. He felt that his contrition lacked the proper sting; he asked himself whether, indeed, he cared. He was dizzy with the thought of gold, of cradles and rich pockets, of those bright specks that still stuck to his hands. He followed his companion in a sort of dream, silent and triumphant, trying to fasten on himself a remorse that would not come.

“I’ll never forget the first time I got into that valley,” said Michael, on the long road home. “It was the hardest job of my life to follow up that river. I climbed into places that would have scared a sea-faring man; and I was no sooner up one than I would have to risk my life shinning up another, hanging on to lianas and kicking for my life. Tired? Why, I would regularly lie down and gasp--when there was anything big enough to lie on; and the noise of those falls, those that I was on top of, and those that were still to come--my word! it made me sick to hear them. And when I at last got into the place, and sat down by a big pool, and saw the black sand with the shrimps wriggling in it, I simply said to myself, as quiet as that: ‘Here’s gold.’”

When they reached home Michael called loudly for brandy. The priest himself was glad of a little after that day of days; placer-mining was a new experience, even to that veteran of labour, and he felt extraordinarily stiff and tired. He remembered with contrition how often in the past he had grudged his companion the stimulant, and he now blushed for those trivial economies with a hot sense of impatience. Could he not take out in a day what they represented in a twelvemonth? With a new-found sense of freedom, he helped himself again to the bottle, and, for once in his frugal life, did not measure the allowance with his thumb. Then Michael, with an elaborate pantomime of secrecy, beckoned him into the other room, and, after shutting and bolting the door, threw open the top of his trunk. Beneath the rumpled heap of clothes there were a dozen tin cans of all shapes, some with their own original covers, others capped with packing-paper like pots of jam. The lay brother opened them one by one, lovingly, exultingly, his face shining with satisfaction. Each was filled to the brim with coarse gold-dust; each weighed down the hand like an ingot.

“Take one, father,” said Michael. “It is a little enough return for all your kindness.”

The priest trembled and drew back.

“No, no!” he cried.

“As you like,” said Michael, with a tone of affected indifference. “You will be doing as well yourself in a few days.”

“God help me!” exclaimed the priest, and buried his face in his hands.

The lay brother looked down at him strangely and said nothing. He knew something of the hidden conflict at that moment raging in the old man’s breast, and he had too much at stake himself to venture an incautious word. Everything depended now upon the priest, for good or evil; it lay with him to keep the secret inviolate, or to spread it to all the world; to accept the partnership thus tacitly offered, and allow them both to reap a colossal harvest; or, standing coldly on the letter of his vows, to open the door to a rush of thousands. The brother held his breath and waited for that supreme decision on which so much depended; he was afraid to speak, afraid even to move, as he looked down at his companion in a fever of suspense. The intolerable silence weighed upon him like a nightmare. He felt that it was the enemy of all his hopes; that every minute of it increased the hazard of his fortunes; that he was being tried, that he was being condemned.

“Father,” he broke out, “your name need not appear in this; you need do nothing but hold your tongue; you can be my partner without a soul to know it. As God sees me, I will divide with you to the last penny.”

The old man lifted his head.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said.

“It’s just this,” said Michael, regaining a little confidence. “If you spread the news broadcast--and the merest whisper will do that--you will get nothing at all and I will get no more than a beggarly claim. Keep it to ourselves and we shall share tens of thousands of pounds.”

“I am a Marist priest,” said Father Studby. “I am a missionary. I am an old man nearing the end of my days. My vows prevent me from withholding any property from my Order. I should be acting dishonourably in entering into such an enterprise. I have no right to gain money for myself.”

“Who is asking you to keep it for yourself?” demanded Michael. “What prevents you giving your Order every ounce that falls to your share? Do you really think Monseigneur would find fault if you brought him a check for a hundred thousand pounds? And I don’t even ask you to keep silence for ever. In six months, or a year, or whatever it is,--when the proper time comes,--you can make a clean breast of it. Of course, if you choose the other thing, your Order will get nothing, and somehow I don’t think they will be as pleased as you seem to think. Why, man, think what the money would do for the cathedral! They could build the new mission-house to-morrow. And remember for one moment what you could do here!”

“No,” said the father, “you have put the matter in a new light. I should fail in my duty if I let this money go from us. They would be right to reproach me if I let the chance slip. I fear I was thinking more of myself than of them.”

After supper they drew out their chairs on the moonlit verandah, and sat for a while in silence. The priest was conscious, amid the uneasy preoccupation that settled on him like a cloud, that in some manner their relative positions had changed. The masterful young man, by reason of his great discovery, on the strength, perhaps, of his more vigorous and determined will, seemed now to arrogate to himself the right to lead. It appeared natural to Father Studby to acquiesce in this; to subordinate himself to his companion and wait timidly for him first to speak; even to feel a kind of gratitude for the partnership that caused him such qualms. Self-effacing and humble, it came easy to him to sink to a second place and accept unquestioningly the orders of a superior. Besides, what did he know of gold?

“The first thing we must consider,” began Michael, “the first, because it is the most important, is the land. It must all be ours, from the sea to the mountain-tops, from one end of the bay to the other. In a small way I have been already moving in the matter. I have taken options from Maunga, Leapai, and George Tuimaleali’ifano, the three principal chiefs here, for what seems to cover more than the area of the group. I paid them out of hand about twenty dollars each; but the options, to make them good, will call for twenty-eight thousand dollars in Chile money. Oh, it’s all perfectly right and legal,” he broke out, forestalling an objection he saw on his companion’s lips. “I had the forms drawn up in Nukualofa by a lawyer; it cost me three pounds to do it. The only point is how much of the land really belongs to these chiefs, for there are bound to be half a hundred other claimants whose consent will be needed to make the title good; and it will be your part to ferret them out. What you must bear in mind most is that we must nail every inch of the beach. There will be a city here in a month after the news is out; in a year there will be tramways, and newspapers, and brick banks and churches, and wharves with ships discharging. Don’t you see, we must have our fist in all that; we must have the lion’s share; every pound the others bring must pay us toll.”

“The others!” cried the priest. “Mercy of God, let us keep the thing to ourselves!”

“We couldn’t, if we would,” cried the lay brother. “You might as well try and hide the island as to keep them out. When I was a boy I was in the Kattabelong gold rush with my father, and I know what I am talking about. They rose up like waves in the sea--waves and waves of men, bursting in with yells like an invading army. Why, it won’t be any time before we are holding our valley with a line of rifles; you will see all hell loose and a thousand devils landing at a time; you will see the horizon black with steamer smoke, bringing in thousands more; you will see men killed and their bodies rotting in the sun. That’s the first stage of a gold rush--the pioneer stage, the stage of murder and crime, of might for right. That will be the time for us to live through as best we can. Bit by bit there comes a subsidence into a kind of order. There is a rally of the better sort; the inevitable leader rises to the top. You walk out one morning, and you run across Billy This, the terror of the camp, swaying peacefully at the end of a rope. At another turn it is Tommy That, with his toes turned up and a ticket on his breast. The third period is the arrival of an official with a tin office and blank forms. Who owns the land here? Why, we do. Who claims that? Why, we claim it. Who owns the beach from a point beginning at such and such a place, to a point marked B on the new official map? We again! Who owns the mountain lakes they talk already of tapping for the water-supply? We do. Who owns everything in sight? The same old firm, if you please, sir. But I am not saying we can hold the fort single-handed. God never made the two men that could. But this is what we do. We grant titles, concessions, half and quarter interests to men of the right stamp, and make them our partners against the mob. We take the money they bring, and reserve a substantial profit in their future undertakings. As I said before, we must have our fist in every pocket.”

Michael paused and slowly filled a second pipe. The father remained silent, his head resting on his trembling hand. He was staring into vacancy, seeing through his half-shut eyes a myriad of changing pictures.

“Michael,” he said, “have you ever thought how it will be with our people?”

“Oh, the Kanakas!” said the lay brother.

“Yes, the Samoans,” said Father Studby. “What is to become of them, Michael?”

“They will go,” said the young man, coolly, “where the inferior race always goes in a gold rush. They will go to the devil.”

“Oh, Michael,” exclaimed the priest, “I cannot bear to think of them!”

“I am sure I am sorry, too,” said the lay brother. “But there is no use blinking our eyes to facts, or feeling miserable about what can’t be helped. The men must learn to work like other people, and I look to you, with your influence here, to line them up on the right side. Fifty or sixty of them would be worth everything to us at the start. As for the nigger women, if they are young and pretty, I dare say a use can be found for them, too. I am sorry, but what can you do? You can’t put back the clock, old fellow.”

The priest groaned.

“I wish you had never found the gold!” he cried out passionately.

“Well, it is too late now,” said Michael.

* * * * *

The next day the old man was up at the first peep of dawn. He had not slept all night, but had lain with open eyes, in a fever of horror and remorse. He walked down to the village and along the sandy beach, and sat miserably for an hour on the bottom of an upturned canoe. One by one, he saw the beehive houses awaken; he saw the _polas_ rise, disclosing dark interiors and smoking lamps; he heard the _pāté_, that most primitive of human signals, rousing the sluggards to another day, its insistent tapping the prelude to the morning prayer which rose here and there as each household assembled its members. Grave old chiefs appeared at the eaves, yawned, gazed at the sun, and exchanged ceremonious greetings; children trooped out sleepily to play; half-grown girls tripped away for water, or sat on logs or strips of matting, in twos and threes, staring out to sea. An imperious old chief began to blow a conch-shell bigger than his head. Bu, bu, bu! it sounded, rich and mellow, with faint reëchoings on the woody hills. The young men assembled about him, laughing and shouting, and taking up the note of the conch in a lusty chorus as they called out the names of those still to come. The father remembered that they were to launch the new _alia_, the huge double canoe, which belonged in common to all Lauli’i.

He looked about him mournfully; he felt himself a traitor through and through; he dropped his eyes as every one saluted him and the little children ran up to kiss his hands. He was about to sweep this all away, this life of simplicity, peace, and beauty; he was going to enslave these stalwart men; he was going to give these women to degradation. Under the scorching breath of what was called civilisation they would wither and die. God help them! On the ground where those houses now stood there would rise the brick banks and churches of which Michael had spoken; offices, stock exchanges, theatres, and roaring bars; dance-halls full of shameless women, and dens where men would be drugged and robbed. And what was he to gain for it all? What was the price for so much sin and misery? Wealth for his Order! The biggest account in that brick bank, blocks of bonds and shares, sheafs of mortgages! Good God, how had he dared set his hand to such an infamy! And if, by way of penance, he were to build a church, the great church of which he had dreamed, with lofty windows of stained glass, and an organ that would shake the very ground, and bells tempered with hundredweights of silver, who, indeed, would there be left to worship in it? What had gold-seekers to do with Christ, with God, with the Blessed Virgin? There might appear, perhaps, a few brown faces, changed and heartbroken, a few shrinking figures in the rags of the disinherited, who would appeal to him for comfort in their extremity. Ah, how could he look at them, these that he had wronged?

Mercy of God, let the accursed gold lie undug!

In an agony of self-denunciation, he walked hither and thither, without looking, without caring where he went, treading the phantom streets of that city of his dreams. He talked aloud and gesticulated to himself; he knelt at the foot of a palm and prayed; he was overwhelmed by his own powerlessness in the face of that impending calamity. He could see no help, he could find no solace. And yet, all the while he felt, with an intense conviction that belied the supplicating words on his lips, that it lay with him, and him alone, to save his people. Thus writhing in the coil of his perplexities, despairing and half mad at the unavertible ruin he knew no way to avoid, he suddenly found himself at his own door, confronting the man who had brought them all to such a pass.

“My word, father!” cried Michael, “you don’t look fit for another day up there. Why, if you could see your face in the glass it would give you the shakes; you ought to be in bed.”

He would have passed on, but the priest caught him by the arm.

“Michael,” he broke out, “Michael, stop and listen to me. I have something important to tell you--something that must be said, however little you may like to hear it. I--I find I cannot permit this to go any further.”

The lay brother stopped short.

“You cannot permit what?” he demanded.

“This digging of gold,” cried the priest; “this crime we have in mind against these people, this crime against ourselves. Do you count our vows for nothing, our holy vocation, the fact that God has set us apart to guard the flocks he has confided to us? Fall on your knees, miserable boy, and beg His pardon for your impiety--here, even as I have done; down, down with you!” The old priest’s voice rose to a scream; he wound his skinny arms round his companion, and calling on the saints for help, tried to force him to the earth.

The lay brother grew suddenly pale, and, with a violent movement, shook himself free.

“You old fool!” he exclaimed. “Keep your dirty hands off me, I tell you. Leave me alone.”

“I forbid you to take another step,” cried the priest. “In the name of God I forbid you.”

“See here,” said Michael, somewhat recovering himself, “I don’t want to quarrel with you. I would rather cut off my right hand than quarrel with you. I need you; and if you only had the sense to see it, you would know that you need me. It would be a rotten business if we ruined each other.”

“Why can’t you take the gold you have, and go?” exclaimed the father. “Leave the island and content yourself that you have got a competence. It is more already than you could have gained by a lifetime of honest work.”

“I mean to stay just where I am,” returned the lay brother, “regardless of whether you like it or don’t like it; I mean to stand by all my rights, with you if I can, without you if I must. You can do me lots of harm, and skim no end of cream off my milk; though I don’t think you have much to gain by doing it, or that the niggers you are so fond of will be greatly benefited. You have every reason to stand in with me, both for your sake and theirs; and if the money cuts no figure with you, you can surely see the sense of having some say in the subsequent developments. That’s all I have time for now, though if you are more in your right mind by evening I won’t mind talking it over with you again.”

With that last word Michael passed on, with an air of assurance implying that all would come right. The old priest remained standing in the path, sullenly looking after him; and he remained long in that attitude, even after the brother’s black figure had dwindled and disappeared into the distance. He felt utterly baffled, utterly conquered; he wondered whether he had any more resistance in him; he asked himself if God had forsaken him.

What was there now left for him to do, helpless and despairing as he was, but to wait with what patience he might for the concluding tragedy? After all, his own soul was clean; except for the one day, when, in the exultation of the discovery, in the madness that had temporarily possessed him, he had soiled his hands with the accursed thing. He remembered, with self-disdain, how he had accepted the partnership held out to him; how he had been dazzled, cajoled, swept altogether off his feet by the importunity of the devil. But that was all done with now. He would have none of the blood-money; if the knell had sounded for his people, he at least would not profit by their ruin, he at least would not transmute their agony into gold. The others could do that; Michael and his white savages; the hosts that were to come. Had the young man no conscience, no compassion? Was he simply a wall of selfishness, against which one might beat in vain? Oh, the hypocrite, the months he had lived a lie! Oh, the remorseless devil and his gold! How could God endure such things? A man like that ought to be struck down by thunderbolts; people ought to kill him like a mad dog.

The thought made him tremble. If Michael were dead, who would ever know about the gold? Had it not lain there all these years, latently evil in the earth, no one dreaming of its existence? Why should it not continue to lie for ever, powerless for all mischief, or until such a time, perhaps, when men would no longer count it a thing of price; when it would be relegated to museums for the curious to stare at, side by side with the wampum of Indians, cowry-shells, and the white beards that pass for money in the Marquesas. Ah, were it not for Michael!

His hands shook and he began to pant for breath. Were it not better that one should suffer than the many? one rather than a thousand? one rather than a whole race, with countless generations yet unborn? He looked down on the roofs of the village, a sight endeared to him by the recollections of so many years; he saw, in the brilliant sunshine, amid the houses that had sheltered them in life, the mossy tombs he knew so well. There, under the shadow, lay Soalu, his first friend; there, the black-browed Puluaoao, the heathen, the libertine, who had first thwarted and then had loved him; there, the earth that covered Lala’ai, in whose bright eyes he had looked once and never dared to look again, whose memory was still as sweet to him as on the day she died; there lay To, the silver-tongued; Silei, the poet; Lapongi, the _muaau_, with a dozen bullets through his headless corpse; Faamuina, Tupua, Sisimaile--how many there were! He had loved those honest hearts now mouldering in the grave; to some he had given messages to carry beyond the unknown river to those dark comrades who had already gone. He loved their children, now men and women, who had been held out to him by dying arms, and whom he had led crying from the house of bereavement to comfort as best he could. For nigh twenty years he had been the ruler and lawgiver of the bay, the trusted adviser of great chiefs, the faithful priest, the ever-welcome friend. Should he desert his people now?

He went into the cook-house, where Ngalo was sitting on the steps playing hymns on his mouth-organ.

“Ngalo,” he said, “I want your rifle and some cartridges.”

The boy looked up at his master’s face with astonishment,--the ways of whites were past all understanding,--and it was not until he was asked a second time that he rose and sought his gun.

The priest tried to say something by way of explanation, but the words would not come. He could do nothing but take the gun in silence, and charge the magazine with an unsteady hand, while the boy’s eyes grew bigger and bigger.

“Doubtless your Excellency has seen a wild cow in the bush?” Ngalo at length inquired.

The father nodded and turned to go.

“Blessed be the hunting!” cried the boy after him from the door, before resuming the strains of “There’s a land that is fairer than day.”

“Blessed be the home-stayers,” returned the priest, with conventional politeness.

* * * * *

At last he was at the place--at the foot of the second ladder, on the narrow ledge that overlooked the third. He scarcely knew why he had been led to choose this spot, for the top would surely have done as well. But the ladder there was shorter, and a desperate man might let himself drop below, or rush up like lightning before one could pull a second trigger. The third ladder was immensely long; Michael himself had once said that it was sixty feet or more; in the middle of it a man was helpless. If he fell it would be to smash to pieces on the rocks beneath; if he elected to climb, it would be in the face of a dozen bullets.

He threw himself on the ground, and sat cross-legged, with the rifle resting in his lap. He was haunted by a dread that the lay brother might still outwit him; that he might burst on him from behind with a mocking laugh; or dart up unexpectedly from the very edge of the cliff. He wondered how Michael would look with a bullet through his face. He remembered such a wound in the Talavao war, when he had helped to bury the killed; and the thought of it made him shudder. He tried to pray, but the words froze on his lips. What had a murderer to do with prayer? But he was not yet a murderer--not yet. There was still time to draw back; there was still time to save his soul from everlasting hell. How dared he hesitate when all eternity was at stake? He was shocked at himself, at his own resolution, at his own courage and steadfastness. He meant to kill the lay brother, even if the skies were to fall. He was there to make a sublime sacrifice for the sake of those he loved. Let hell do its worst. He would say between the torments: “I saved them! I saved them!” His only dread was that his hand might tremble on the trigger; that at the supreme moment he might flinch and fail; that he might throw his weapon from him in uncontrollable horror.

Hark! what was that? Mercy of God, what was that?

He peeped stealthily over the edge.

Michael was standing at the foot of the ladder.

The priest felt a sudden sinking in the region of the stomach. Something seemed to say to him: “But that’s flesh and blood; that’s a _man_!” He would have given worlds to have dispossessed himself of the rifle; lies and explanations crowded to his lips; his teeth chattered in his head. Then, as he cowered impotently to the ground, the ladder shook with the weight of Michael’s feet on the lowest rung.

He tried to pull himself together; but under the stress of that overwhelming agitation the mechanical part of him seemed to stop. He had to tell himself to breathe; his heart suffocated within his breast. He gasped like a drowning man, drawing in the air with great, tremulous sighs as his choking throat relaxed. Suddenly he ceased altogether to be himself; he became a phantom in a dream; a twitching, crazy creature whom he saw through a sort of mist, dizzily centred in a whirl of forest and sky.

He looked over and saw that Michael was more than half-way up. The lay brother’s whole body spoke of dejection and fatigue, of a long day’s work not yet ended, and it was evident that the heavy can slung from his neck was for once more of a burden than a satisfaction. He raised his weary eyes, and with a kind of a shock encountered those of Father Studby peering down at him from above. He cried out inarticulately, and began to redouble his exertions, smiling and panting as he did so.

Still as in a dream, the priest leaned boldly over the precipice, and dropped the point of his rifle until its farther sight was dancing across the lay brother’s face, which, in swift gradations, underwent the whole gamut of dismay, astonishment, and utter stupefaction. For an instant Michael faltered and hung back; he even slunk down a step, speechless and as white as death. Then, of a sudden, he broke out into shrill peals of laughter, followed by a torrent of gabble, brisk, friendly, and tremblingly insincere, such as one might address to a madman from whom it is dangerous to run. He had struck a new place, he cried. My word! there was no end to it--pockets upon pockets only waiting to be washed out. It was at the fifth waterfall, not far from the dam by the banyan-tree, and he had worked there all day with extraordinary success. The other place was good enough, to be sure, with its average of three pounds and more, but this at the fifth waterfall was the real McKay. The father must positively come down and see it at once; positively you could see the nuggets shining in every spadeful; no matter if it were late, the father must come. He had better leave his gun on the top, for who was there to touch it?

Father Studby never turned from his position, nor made the least pretence of answering the breathless patter with which the brother tried to shield himself. Like a rock he waited, while the miserable man below him, sweating with fear, moved slowly into point-blank range. Talk as he might, with a volubility that grew increasingly anxious and incoherent, Michael realised at last that his time had come. He stopped; he raised his hand convulsively; he cried out in a broken voice: “Oh, for God’s sake, don’t kill me!”

Even as he did so, the father pulled the trigger.

Then he turned, reclimbed the ladders, and went home.

* * * * *

That night the priest went outside the reef in his canoe, and emptied Michael’s store of gold-dust into the sea, scattering it like seed on the ocean floor at a point where the tide ran swiftest. On his return, with a cunning that seemed to him the inspiration of the devil, he got out the lay brother’s spare hat and some of the clothes that were in his chest, and left them, to tell their own tale, on the sandy beach. At dawn he made his way back to the valley, still sustained, in spite of all his fatigue, by a consuming fire of activity. He felt that the sands of his own life were running out; that at any moment he might be struck down himself by an unseen hand; that those strange, benumbing premonitions in his brain bade him imperiously to close the chapter of his crime. The horror of dying with his purpose unfulfilled spurred him on to desperate exertions. He stumbled again and again on the path; he had recurring fits of giddiness, when the sun seemed darkened to his eyes, when for a space he half forgot his dreadful errand, and wondered to find himself in the bush. He expected, when he reached the brink of the cliff and began to descend the long, shaky ladders, to feel some recrudescence of the emotions of the day before. But, to his own surprise, he discovered in himself a callousness that set all such qualms at defiance; he had exhausted, in the course of those last forty hours, all his capacity for such paralysing susceptibilities; like some soldier after the battle, he was sated with the horrors through which he had passed, and had become altogether deadened to those about him. Even when he stood on the very place from which Michael had made his last appeal, and, looking in the air above, more than half expected to see the protruding muzzle of another rifle, he felt, indeed, no answering thrill or perturbation. The burden of his own fatigue seemed of greater moment than this reliving of a tragedy; and the thought of how much there was for him still to do moved him infinitely more.