Chapter XIII: The Man's Man's Man

The sides of the _Blackbirder_ were lined with sallow, scowling faces, as villainous a crew as ever gathered aboard one disreputable ship since time began.

They took in all the points of the trim little craft that nosed quietly up within speaking distance; the British flag, to which they were by nature antipathetic; the long brown gun forward, with its black mouth pointing plumb for every shifty eye of them; the glancing barrels of the Winchesters, and the steady determination of the men who carried them; the covert menace of the whole silent display. Muttered blasphemies rolled along the line of yellow faces, and the rumble of them was heard aboard the _Torch_.

"What you want?" shouted a burly figure, standing aft behind the deckhouse.

"Your cargo," replied Captain Cathie, patting the breach of his big gun affectionately, and the objurgations aboard the enemy broke out afresh.

"What you mean?"

"You'd better come aboard here and we'll explain."

"You better fetch me."

"Very well," said Cathie, with joy in his face.

He stooped behind his long gun for a moment, trained it carefully, and instantly its angry bellow filled sea and sky, and sent the women below to their knees. They heard a crash, aloft and below, aboard the _Blackbirder_, and the yells of the men as they scattered to avoid the falling spars. The smoke, drifting lazily away, showed the brig's maintopmast nipped neatly at the crosstrees, and hanging with its yards in a fantastic tangle of ropes to the deck.

"That's the first time of asking," shouted Cathie. "Are you coming?" and he bent behind his gun again.

"I kom," and they saw the black-a-vised crew set to launching a boat, with vicious side-glances at their oppressor.

Presently the dirty boat and its dirty crew lay alongside, and the burly one climbed slowly up the ladder they dropped for him.

His small eyes glared viciously out of his bloated cheeks, "like a hunted boar's," said Cathie afterwards.

"Now then! You are pirate?"

"Not at all--we're missionaries," said Cathie.

"Missi----!" and the fat one came within measurable distance of apoplexy.

"You've stolen our people. We want them back. Do you understand?"

But the _Blackbirder's_ English was limited, and the shock of meeting missionaries of so strange a texture had bemused his wits.

Blair begged Stuart to speak to him in Spanish, and the wandering wits came back at sound of it.

"Tell him," said Blair, "that the islanders he has kidnapped are our people, and we intend to take them home again."

And Stuart put it to him so.

"If he makes any resistance we shall overcome it. What does he say?"

"He asks how you're going to take them back."

"We will see to all that presently. First, he will bring aboard here all the arms they have over yonder," said Blair, and as that sank through Stuart into the other's understanding, the little boar-eyes gleamed more viciously than ever, and the fat body rumbled with volcanic fires.

"We will give him half an hour to deliver up the arms. If they are not here then, his other mast will go. He will bring them over himself."

The little eyes glared furiously round, but found nothing but grimmest determination in the faces that hemmed him in. Possibly they did not fail to note all the other points bearing on the question. He shambled to the side with a growl in his throat, and got heavily into his boat, and was pulled across to his ship, and immediately they heard the simmering of a hot discussion tipped with sharp flakes of invective.

"They don't like it," said Captain Cathie.

The minutes passed. Now and again a scowling face turned their way, and shot a venomous white-eyed glance at them, but there were no signs of the arms coming over.

"Five minutes more," shouted Cathie at last, bubbling with excitement, and clapping the breech of his gun. "And, my goodness, I hope you'll run it out! I want that other mast," he added softly.

"Five minutes more," shouted Stuart in Spanish, so that there should be no misunderstanding.

Cathie stood watch in one hand, lanyard in the other, one foot tapping restlessly. He hungered for that other mast, and the lesson its fall would teach the yellow dogs.

At last he closed his watch with a snap, stooped to the gun, and with a roar and a rattling crash, and a blasphemous scatteration below, the foretopmast shared the devastation of the mainmast.

"Now we have them right as a trivet," said Cathie, "and they'll begin to understand where they are."

They understood, and five minutes later the boat shoved off again, bringing the spoils of war, such part of them, at all events, as they chose to surrender--some thirty muskets, as many cutlasses, and half a dozen revolvers.

"Now," said Blair, to the downcast captain of the _Blackbirder_, through Stuart, "you will stop here. We shall tow you back to the islands. When your cargo is discharged, you will be at liberty to go. If you ever return on this errand, you will find us waiting for you. Now, captain," to Cathie, and, at a sign from the captain, one of the white whale-boats dropped to the water, and half a dozen men jumped into her, carrying the coil of a stout hawser, which ran out over the stern of the _Torch_ and was secured amidships.

The _Torch_ herself swung into line ahead of the other, and the big steel gun swung slowly round till her muzzle grinned threateningly round each side of the mainmast.

"Tell those men to get back, Stuart, and say the captain waits with us," and the brig's boat pushed sulkily off. "Now, Stuart, you come with me, and Matti. We will take revolvers, though we shall not need them."

Matti shivered into the boat, and Stuart and Blair followed with four Torches carrying Winchesters, and pulled to the brig and climbed up among the truculent crew, every man of which had his knife at his back and hands that itched to get using it.

Blair called for the mate and told him curtly what he had already told the captain, and added some special instructions for his own benefit.

"First, make fast that hawser!"

They did it to the satisfaction of the Torches, and at a call from Blair the _Torch_ started slowly ahead, the hawser tightened, and every solid thrust of the blades in the blue water cut an upward step in the life of the Dark Islands.

"Now, understand! There will be a hand on that rope night and day. If there is any tampering with it you will hear from us. This mess"--pointing to the dismantled masts--"you will not touch till we reach the islands. Now I am going to inspect your cargo. How often do you feed them?"

"Twice a day."

"Some of us will come across each time and see it done. I hold you responsible. If they suffer, you will suffer. Understand? Now lead the way! You"--to Stuart and the four Torches--"please keep your eyes about you while I go below. Matti, you come with me."

A grating, through which came a most horrible smell, was hauled up, and the three went down into the inferno, and felt sick before their feet quitted the ladder. For the mate was sick at this unexpected turn of fortune, and Blair and Matti came near to physical sickness with the stench.

Blair clung to the side of the ladder and gazed mistily round. There was little light, but the dimness seemed to come not so much from lack of light as from superfluity of nastiness of every possible description and human misery indescribable. The feel of the place was like a hot breath from the pit. It closed silently upon one like the hand of a crawling death. It dimmed the eyes, and choked the throat, and lay like a weight on the heart.

To breathe it seemed death, yet three hundred miserables breathed it and lived, and by degrees his eyes discerned them and never lost the sight.

A great confused tangle of brown limbs and bodies, many entirely naked, a forest of shock heads, a hypnotising multitude of dark eyes all focussed on him, and all pitted with sparks of light from the opened hatch--mostly men, a few women, no children--short panting breaths, sighs, groans, the dull rattle of chains.

"Have they been fed to-day?" gasped Blair, and pointed to his mouth.

The mate nodded.

Blair went two steps up the ladder and called to Stuart.

"Tell them to feed and water these poor things instantly. Now, Matti, ask them in all the tongues you know if there is any headman or chief among them. And say we mean them well."

Matti tried them without success in two or three dialects, but at last hit upon one that evoked responsive movements in some of those nearest the light. He felt his way, and at last got a word in answer, the meaning of which he understood.

Here a couple of men came down the ladder carrying baskets of what looked like dog-biscuits, which they commenced handing round, one to each prisoner, and the latter sprang to the limits of their tethers for them, and snatched and worried them like dogs that had not been fed for a week. Blair looked at the mate, but the mate looked elsewhere.

It took a long time and many renewals to supply them all; but Blair would not move till it was done, nor until every one had had a drink of water. Then the interrupted conversation was resumed.

Yes, there was a chief there, and Blair ordered the mate to release the man and bring him forward. He came without eagerness, a tall, brown, well-built man of middle age, with a gloomy, but not absolutely forbidding face, pinched just now, perhaps with hunger, perhaps with despair. Experience had taught him to expect nothing but evil at the hands of white men.

But even his dull misery could not but perceive a difference between this clean, white-clad white man and those he had become accustomed to, and he gazed at Blair with a note of sullen inquiry.

"You are a chief?" asked Blair, through Matti.

"I am a king," he said, answering Blair, and bestowing no look on Matti, who, he perceived, was only a voice. And there was that in his tone and manner which carried conviction in spite of the misery of his condition.

"We have come to set you free and to take you back to the island."

And when the words beat through Matti's attempt at his dialect and got into his brain, it was as though an electric shock had galvanised him suddenly into new life.

"Free?--the island?" he stammered, and stared, still doubting. "All?" he asked.

"Yes, all," and he turned and told the news to the rest in quick, clipping words, and after a moment's amazed silence a shout went up, and the fetid hole was filled with a deafening buzz of talk.

It was only after anxious consideration of the point that Blair had decided to tell them the good news. He grudged every lost soul there. He would not lose one. There might be some given over to utter despair, and there is no tonic like hope.

"You will come with us," said Blair, to the discrowned king.

The man looked back into the gloom, and then again at Blair, and spoke eagerly.

"He says one of his wives is there," said Matti. "She shall come also."

The man pointed her out, the mate released her, and they climbed to the blessed upper air, all a-tremble with eagerness.

"Now, understand!" said Blair to the mate, through Stuart, so that all could hear him: "when your cargo is discharged, you will be at liberty to go where you will. If you attempt any treachery, we will blow you to pieces. If you ever return to the Dark Islands, you do so at your own peril," and he saw his guests into the boat and followed them.

The woman was young and not uncomely, but subdued and apparently somewhat dazed still at these sudden reverses of fortune. Neither spoke a word as the _Torch_ slowed down for them to come aboard, but the man's eyes roved to and fro in ceaseless questioning, and he seemed to arrive at an intelligent understanding of matters. The long steel gun claimed his attention the moment he reached the deck, and from his instant glance across at the shattered hamper of the brig he evidently associated the two things.

Their only visible clothing was a native mat wrapped round the waist and falling nearly to the feet, and the very first thing to do was to cleanse them of the visible results of their 'tween-decks imprisonment.

Blair led the man down to the men's bathroom, and turned on the taps and filled the bath before his astonished eyes. He showed him also the use of soap, by washing his own hands, and left him to complete his toilet. He could not, however, forbear listening outside to hear how he got on, and was rewarded at first by a long silence, then by several tentative turnings on and off of the wonderful taps. Then a slight splashing suggested an experiment with the soap; and finally grunts of satisfaction and much wallowing told of savage man's enjoyment of the amenities of civilisation, and the return to his natural cleanliness. When he had had time to wash himself several times over, Blair knocked on the door and went in, and found his guest lying full length under water, with only his brown nose showing, and evidently feeling very much better.

He sat up and gurgled some words expressive of his feelings, and was mightily astonished at the sudden disappearance of the water when the plug was pulled up. He wanted to fill the bath again at once to see it run out again, and Blair let him engineer a final sluice for himself.

He was a much pleasanter companion after his wash. His fine brown skin shone under the unusual treatment of a towel, and his hair stuck out from his head like a twirling mop. He was about to assume his dirty mat again, but Blair hauled out some clean towels, tied one round him like a loin-cloth, draped another from his hips as he had worn his mat, and threw another over his shoulders, and the man was dressed as he had never been dressed in his life before. The towels happened to have broad red bands along the edges, and moreover had fringes, and their wearer was as proud of them as any Piccadilly dandy of his newest thing in spring suits.

Somewhat similar doings had been in course in the ladies' quarters, but, thanks to Aunt Jannet Harvey's very determined, but equally mistaken, good intentions, the results were less happy.

Aunt Jannet believed firmly that decency as well as cleanliness were first steps towards godliness, and she was too recent an arrival in the equatorials, and perhaps also too conservative in her own ideas, to understand that decency of attire is after all purely matter of custom. To her, a girl dressed, or undressed, only in a ridi fringe which clung precariously to her hips and fell half-way to her knee, was practically unclothed. She did not know that it was death for a man to touch that scant, precarious garment. Strange anomaly of the cannibal isles--a dangling fringe of smoked coco-nut fibre a more stringent safeguard than the multitudinous garments of civilisation! When Aunt Jannet did learn that fact she thought considerably, and thereafter took a somewhat wider view of things.

Meanwhile, in the mistaken goodness of her heart, she had insisted on arraying the newcomer in garments of her own, the most visible of which was a light print dress, in which the poor creature looked almost as uncomfortable as she felt.

At sight of her transformation the brown man stared hard, and then grinned vigorously, and the girl hotched and wriggled in disgustful discomfort. She came up to the man and fingered his soft towels wistfully. She spoke to him, and he instantly handed her the one he had over his shoulder. She tore at the neck of her dress with evident intention, and Blair begged Jean to take her away and provide her with what towels she wished.

"Well, I never!" began Aunt Jannet remonstratively.

"That is a mistake that has wrought infinite mischief, dear Aunt Jannet," he said. "Our work must begin inside, not outside. Meddle as little as possible with manners and customs or you do more harm than good."

"My goodness me! It's absolutely indecent for a woman to go about with nothing on but a towel. Don't tell me you allow them to eat one another, Kenneth!"

"Well, we break them off that as soon as we can. But in all these matters we have learned that it is highest wisdom to hasten slowly."

"Well, I----"

But here the brown girl came back, all smiles and modest grace, clad in red-fringed towels like the man, and even Aunt Jannet, in her heart, could find no fault with her appearance.

Then Blair called Matti, and, sitting on the deck by the new arrivals, he quietly commenced his approaches towards the conquest of the Dark Islands.

Briefly--in the telling, though very much otherwise in the extracting--this was what they learned. The man's name was Ha'o--which he pronounced Hacho, the ch as in loch--and the woman's Nai or Na-ee.

He was, he asserted, chief of that one of the Dark Islands which had been raided by the brig. A number of the islanders had been enticed on board with soft words and presents and then suddenly made prisoners. The ship had then apparently sailed, but that same night the village was burnt and he and the rest carried off.

It was not easy to make him understand what had induced these other white men to follow and bring them back. If they did really land him on his own island again--of which he was by no means sure--he would be their friend and brother. As for those others--looking venomously at the captain of the brig, who was sitting amidships in gloomy contemplation of the scurviness of fortune--he would ask nothing better than to eat them if the chance offered.

"You eat men, then?" asked Blair, through Matti.

"Of course. Why not? Properly cooked they are excellent eating"--or words to that effect.

And Aunt Jannet Harvey and the other ladies shuddered and wondered, for he did not by any means look the monster his words implied.

Blair tried hard to convey to him the idea that they had come from the other side of the world for the sole purpose of helping him and his people; but that was too much for him--he could not comprehend it.

He got tired of being questioned out of his depth, and strolled about the ship, examining everything attentively. The long brown steel gun, the revolving screw, the engines, and the smoke pouring out of the funnel claimed his chief attention. During the next few days he hung over the stern watching the revolving blades and the bubbling wake by the hour, with absorbed and puzzled face, and every now and then would lick his hand and hold it up to feel the air. There was little wind, for Captain Cathie had purposely run up into the calm belt to lessen the strain of the towage, but such as there was it was dead against them, and the brown man could not understand it. As to the gliding pistons and smooth-running wheels in the engine-room, they were white men's magic of the most virulent description, and Matti himself understood the business too little to be able to convey any clear idea of the connection between them and the never-resting screw astern.

For the rest, both the brown man and the girl found ample grounds for wonder in the farm-yard in the bows--the contemplative cow, the sullen-eyed young bull, the stolid goats, and the rooting piglets and their mother, and the cocks and hens in their coops, and the men's pet cat, which occupied their various bunks in turn, and accepted all their attentions with the utmost complacence and gave nothing in return. But of all the things that set sparks in the girl's wondering eyes, the crowning delight was the piano in the saloon and the little harmonium which was lashed alongside it.

She would sit with her ear pressed tight to the frame and her eyes like saucers as long as any one would play for her; and when her own slim brown finger touched one of the white keys and elicited due response she jumped with delight, and would have practised one-finger exercises of her own composition all day and all night. There were other wonders in reserve, but she had enough for the present, and more than enough.

"She has an ear for music," said Jean to her husband one night. "She was crouching by me during the singing, and I heard her humming the tune quite nicely."

"They are famous singers, some of them," said Blair. "I count a good deal on working up to the citadel through Eargate."

The _Blackbirder_ captain was lodged in an empty cabin, and had his meals there. He had ample time for introspective musing, for none cared to associate with him.

In the middle of the first night Blair jumped up in a sweat of terror. The idea had suddenly occurred to him that the hostage might make a break for liberty or revenge by setting the ship on fire. He went hastily to the spare cabin and found him snoring comfortably. Nevertheless he sat there all night, and after that the man was never left alone, day or night, till they finally got rid of him.

Twice each day some of them, with Matti as interpreter, dropped down to the brig and saw the islanders duly fed and watered, and said a word or two of cheer to them. And day after day the sallow crew scowled across at the quiet ordered life on board the schooner--the pleasant, friendly relations, the morning and evening services on deck--and cursed sparks into its vicious eyes; but ventured no more because of the ever-present Winchesters and the black mouth of Long Tom which gaped hungrily at them whenever they looked that way.

Their weighted progress was slow. It was the evening of the sixth day before the distant peaks of the Dark Islands bit up through the setting sun, and on the morning of the seventh day they were steaming slowly for the entrance to the lagoon.

Ha'o and Nai had refused to lie down all night. All night long they had hung over the bows, peering into the darkness in a fever of anticipation which left them no words. When the flaming east lit up the giant peak they knew so well, they could scarce contain themselves. Cannibals they were and benighted heathen, but this was home, and there was hope in them and for them.

Captain Cathie, with admirable skill, and a couple of his whale-boats, humoured the brig in, stern foremost, since she had no steerage-way on her. He dropped her down the lagoon as close to the white sand spear as he deemed advisable, then bade them drop their anchor and loose the tow-rope, and heaved a sigh of content as his gallant little ship shook herself free of that most undesirable partnership.

He took up a position to seaward of the brig, and Blair, and Evans, and Ha'o, with Matti and the usual guard in attendance, went on board of her to discharge cargo.

It was a thing to remember, one of the high times of life that stand out in the past when other things have faded.

A great shout went up from the chaotic mass of brown men as the white-clad figures came down the ladder and Ha'o shouted the good news to them. He had been across each day with whoever was going, and Blair, watching carefully this corner-stone of his enterprise, had come to think well of him.

A thing to remember, indeed, as the brown figures came tumbling up the ladder in batches. They fairly scrambled over one another in their haste, and, after one wild glance round to make sure, flung themselves headlong into the familiar waters, and made straight for the shore, shouting breathlessly as they went, eager only to set foot on that white beach once more.

Blair had reckoned on carrying them ashore in the boats, but who would wait for boats when the sparkling water called?

That long string of urgently bobbing black heads from brig to shore--first-fruits of victory--_spolia opima_ in very truth--was a sight none of them ever forgot. The Torches laughed aloud with enjoyment. Even the sullen-eyed Blackbirders watched with interest.

Ha'o stood among the white men with wonderful self-control. Instinct drew him to the water with the rest, but he would not. Even these few short days on the higher plane had not been without their effect. He had watched ceaselessly. He had seen much that was beyond him. For the first time in his life, he had come across a force greater than his own, which made for good and not for evil. There were stirrings within him which he did not understand, but the first expression of them made for restraint.

When the stream of brown bodies ceased pouring out of the hatch, and the last batch had leaped overboard with joyful shouts, Blair and the others climbed down into the empty dimness to make sure that all had gone. They found three lying with starting eyes, too weak to move and fearful that they had been forgotten. These they wrapped in abandoned mats and passed up on deck and lowered into one of the whale-boats. Then a flying visit to the _Torch_ for Nai, and they sped to the shore.

It was only when they all stood on the white beach that Ha'o, shaking with excitement barely to be restrained, turned to Blair and, grasping his hand in his own two trembling ones, carried it to his forehead and said some words in a low voice.

Blair glanced at Matti for enlightenment.

"He says he is your man from this day, and will be to you as a brother," said Matti, and the white hand and the brown gripped firmly on the compact. Then Ha'o turned and walked rapidly towards the village, and they went with him.

So Ha'o of Kapaa'a became the Man's man's man. And the first sparks of light for the Dark Islands leaped from the match that set fire to the village thatch ten days before.

So good comes out of evil, and no man may safely say this is good and that is ill. For no man knows, save Him Who knows all things; and His ways are so very different from man's ways that wisdom and experience drive one only to the doing with one's might the thing that is in hand, in the faithful hope that He will round the corners and shape the work to its appointed end.