Hell's Hatches

by Lewis R. Freeman

  CHAPTER VIII

  I LEAVE THE ISLAND

  Rolling out of bed at the end of twelve straight hours of sleep, I foundthe Trades blowing fresh and strong again, and the air--after thesoddenness of the past week--almost bracing. A plunge from the reef anda piping hot breakfast of fried clams and duck eggs--my first solid foodin over thirty-six hours--bucked me up astonishingly. For almost thefirst time since I came to the island, I was out before ten o'clock--andwell in hand, too. I had to be.... There was much that it was up to meto learn--and perhaps to act upon.

  That which I most desired to get some line upon was what Allen had beendriving at in drugging Bell, or even, possibly, trying to poison him.What was _kor-klee_? (of which Rona appeared to be so terrified), andhow did it act? were questions which I wanted especially to find theanswers to. Was it a drug with a delayed action, following a preliminarystupefaction of comparative mildness? If so--no, there was nothing thatcould be done for Bell in that case; but, as a friend of his, I might dowhat I could to square the account later on. There was no lack ofconfidence _that_ morning. The reaction (which had eluded me completelythe day before) was strong upon me, and I felt quite equal to anysituation that might arise. I still blushed with shame at the thought ofthe contemptible figure I had cut from dawn to darkness of the dayprevious, but I was ready to make such atonement as was humanlypossible. It was merely one of my "high" moods coming three or fourhours ahead of time. I could have slung my colours with telling effectthat morning, if there had been a chance for me to get at canvas.

  From one and another at Jackson's I gathered a fairly connected accountof what had happened during the hours I was away on the leeward side ofthe island. The salient incidents of this I have already set down. Noneof them knew much of anything about _kor-klee_, but all agreed that DocWyndham would be sure to be an authority upon it. I dropped the subjectfor the moment, as I did not care to be pressed for an explanation ofwhy I sought the information. The next day I slipped quietly over andhad a long-distance interview with the learned Wyndham.

  The Doc had buried the _Cora's_ recruiting agent the night the schoonersailed, doing everything except the digging of the grave with his ownhands. He had then returned home and shut himself in for his ten days ofsolitary quarantine. Solitary is hardly the word, though. Wyndham wasfar from being alone. Unlike Bell, he was a "spree drinker" rather thana speedy tippler. It was his habit (as he put it himself) to accumulatearidity during five or six months of the most rigorous teetotalism, andthen blow up the dam and make the desert blossom like the rose under thestimulus of a generous flood. The breaking up of the Monsoon and theculmination of Doc Wyndham's biennial sprees were bracketed together inthe Islands' list of seasonal disturbances.

  The desert was hardly due for its wetting at this time, but Wyndham,shaken by his unsuccessful fight to save the Agent's life, was loath toface the ordeal of the confinement ahead of him without company. So (ashe explained after he had halted me a dozen paces from his door with arevolver flourished from the window) he called in the only dead sureplague-immune he knew--his old friend John Barleycorn--and raised thefloodgates. The last thing he had impressed upon his brain beforeputting Barleycorn in charge was that he must rigidly confine his desertreclamation project to his own wastes. On no account was he to leave hisown house, and, on no account, was anyone to be allowed to enter it."Strict quarantine's the word," he had repeated to himself many timesbefore he started drinking, and "Strict quarantine's the word" was thegreeting--and the warning--I heard when I stepped into the shadow of thebig breadfruit tree in front of his door.

  Solemn as an owl, Wyndham had been catching purple shrimps (or somethingof the kind) with a butterfly net and putting them under his microscopefor examination. The big brass instrument was set upon a table pulled upto the window, while the shrimps were being harvested from the boskydepths of a patch of elephant-eared taro just outside. It was hisfavourite hunting and fishing preserve, that taro patch, the Doc hadconfided to me once, and the rarity and variety of the specimenscaptured there were rather remarkable. I don't remember many of them,but a sea-cow and a sabre-tooth tiger were among the commonest he hadmade slides of. Everything went under the microscope, of course. Hiscaptures were small in size during the first few days, starting withmere animalculae, but bulked steadily bigger as the desert blossomed toa jungle. It required a microscope with a great latitude of adjustmentto handle such a wide range of subjects--but his was a most excellentinstrument ... most excellent. Thus the Doc.

  Pretending to ignore my approach completely, Wyndham continued squintingthrough the eye-piece of his microscope until I crunched over thedead-line he had established. Then he flourished the revolver, barkedout his quarantine formula, and asked what I wanted. "When I repliedthat I had come to inquire respecting the effects of a drug called_kor-klee_, his manner changed instantly. By some queer psychologicalprocess quite beyond me to fathom, he started at once speaking French,or rather what he thought was French. It was a weird jargon he hadpicked up in the Marquesas, where he had spent a year in research workwhen he first came to the Islands, and where (it was said) only hispassion for collecting pearls--other people's--had prevented his winningto international fame for his all-but-successful efforts to isolate thebacteria responsible for the dread _fe-fe_ or _elephantiasis_.

  "_Kor-klee--mais oui, mon ami. Je comprend him fella kor-klee too much.Parfaitement. C'est la liqueur essential de la ficus--ficus--nom d'unchien--ficus what-dyucalum. C'est la aphrodisique le plus exquite, leplus fort, en tout le monde. Prenez vous comme ca--whouf!_"--and he madea great pretence of inhaling the contents of his shrimp net to show howthe drug was administered for that particular purpose.

  "_Encore--quand--quand eat'm like kai-kai!_" he floundered on learnedly;"_quand eat'm kor-klee il fait--mak'm mort--dead--tres vite_."

  Here he interrupted himself to ask for which purpose it was I intendedto use the stuff.

  "Neither," I denied stoutly. "I was merely asking out of curiosity."

  "_Parle that talkee a la marines_," he scoffed. "_Le meme chose talkeeparle_ 'Slant' Allen. _Je voudrais connoce ou--ou in hell you fellacatch'm kor-klee._ I'd like to get my fist on some of the bloomingelixir myself," he trailed off into English.

  Save for that one lapse, Wyndham, in spite of my reiterated appealsthat he speak straight English, rattled on in his impossibleFranco-_beche-de-mer_ from first to last. That which I have tried torender does it scant justice. Most of it was quite unintelligible. Atthe end of a rather trying half-hour (though it would have been amusingenough had I been less anxious for information that might throw light onthe mystery I had set myself to unravel), about all that I had been ableto gather was that _kor-klee_ was the name given in the Dutch Indies toseveral preparations made from the latex of the wild fig of New Guinea.A crude infusion of it was employed by the Papuans in stupefying fish intheir rivers. More elaborated extracts were distilled for their narcoticand other properties. One of these, vapourized and inhaled, was muchprized by the Rajahs of Malaysia as a quickener of the languid pulse, arestorer of youth. Another--the most powerful extract of all--was adeadly poison--very neat and incisive in its action.

  I also understood Wyndham to say that the use of the drug in any formacted as a great exciter of the cravings for alcohol and narcotics onthe part of those addicted to these habits. "If that's the case," I saidto myself as I turned home, "God pity poor old Bell's teetotalresolutions! It would have been hard enough without anything further inthe way of a 'thust aggravata.' I'm afraid he'll be having to exchangeroles with 'Slant' after all--to let the latter be the 'soba Mate of adrunken Skippa.'" Now that I had a chance to think about it, I didn'thave any great faith in Bell's ability to refrain from drink for anylength of time--certainly for not more than a day or two at the outside.He'd probably see the thing through, I admitted, but not as a "sobaSkippa."

  Turning over all I had picked up at the end of a couple of days, I feltthat I could
come pretty near to reconstructing in my mind those scenesof the drama of which there had been no witnesses save the actorsthemselves. Allen's infatuation for the girl had undoubtedly got thebetter of him the instant the turn of events suggested a plan whichpromised to give him undisputed possession of her. To this end he hadplotted to get Bell off on a voyage from which there was no more than anegligible chance of his ever returning, while he himself remainedbehind to enjoy the spoils.

  Considering that Allen's plan was evolved upon little more than amoment's notice, there could be no question that it was laid withconsummate cleverness and carried out without a hitch--save, of course,for that final fatal slip-up which undid all the rest. To make sure ofBell and disarm his suspicions, Allen had assured the American that hehimself would also go on the _Cora_. That he had tried to poison Bell, Ihad my doubts. I had not learned enough of how the drug acted to make myspeculations on that point of much use. At any rate, with Bellunconscious on the schooner, it had clearly been the Australian's planto return to the beach and remain there until she sailed, at the turn ofthe tide. That the _Cora_ should get under way at that time had alreadybeen arranged between the unsuspecting Ranga and himself. The pretencethat he had missed the schooner while engaged in getting his own andBell's kits together would save his face with his friends on the beach.This latter consideration, it appears, was something the rascal neverlost sight of. In the improbable event that Bell ever returned--but thatbridge need not be crossed until it was in sight.

  Allen's cropper at the last jump was directly due to his cool assumption(natural enough, considering his success with South Sea ladiesgenerally) that the girl, once Bell was out of the way, would fall intohis lap like a ripe mango. That, and his long-curbed passion for her,led him to rush in search of Rona the moment he landed from his firstvisit to the schooner, and, missing her then, to return before the_Cora_ had got her anchor up. The consequences of his finding her in onthis latter occasion I had seen something of myself. How that slip of agirl got the drop on the most notorious bad man in the Islands I couldonly conjecture. Probably, with Allen, it was the old story--prudencegoing out of one door as passion entered at the other. I didn't reckonthat Rona had ever read the story of Delilah; yet I felt prettyconfident that the point of that little Joloano _kris_ had found its wayto the pulse of "Slant's" jugular some time after the girl's arm hadgone round his neck in what he thought--for a second or two atleast--was a warm embrace. Rona's uncanny faculty for getting away witheverything she went after--from having her peacock shawl dry-cleaned toboarding a schooner which was all of "two jumps" beyond her reach--hadgreatly impressed me. And well it might have....

  Even allowing that Allen had not tried to poison Bell outright, the factremained that he had played the worst kind of a low-down trick on theAmerican in treacherously attempting to railroad the latter out of theway and deprive the girl of his protection. That much was plain, and itwas dead against the shifty Australian. In "Slant's" favour was the gamemanner in which he had stood the gaff at the last, when Bell left theway wide open for him to return ashore without even going over the sideof the plague-infested schooner. He had not hesitated an instant instaking his life in what he had very fairly characterized as the shortend of a hundred-to-one shot. There must be redeeming qualities in a manwho could do that, no matter how shot through with infamy his pastrecord had been. It occurred to me as just possible that Bell'smagnanimity had struck a responsive chord in Allen's sense ofsportsmanship--that the latter was going to play whatever remained ofthat grim game on the square. If the _Cora_ was lost, or if Allen andBell and the girl all died of the plague (one or both of whichcontingencies seemed practically inevitable), the whole slate would bewiped clean anyhow. If not--if the _Cora_ won through with any of thosethree surviving--some hint of what had transpired on the voyage wouldcertainly be obtainable at Townsville, or whatever port the schoonersucceeded in making. In any event, I told myself, it was up to me to geton to Australia at the earliest possible moment.

  The fact that my Exhibition would be sure to have opened in Sydney bythe time I reached Australia, really had nothing to do with my decision.In spite of the bluff I had tried to put over on Bell, I had had nointention of leaving Kai for a number of months to come. Nor, even afterI began getting ready to go, did I attempt to ignore the fact that theremight be duties for me to carry out in Townsville, the performance ofwhich would be more likely than not to interfere seriously with myfreedom of action for a good deal longer than the art world of Sydneywould be inclined to pay homage to my marines.

  No, my coming show had nothing to do with my resolve to hurry south,although, naturally, I fully intended to take it in if things shaped soas to make it possible. Since my daubs had been making good with theconnoisseurs of Kai--men who knew at first hand the things I was tryingto paint,--I had little fear that the more sophisticated critics ofcivilization would not fall for them. I hadn't any worry on that score.I knew I had been doing good work. But--well, an artist who isn'tinterested in the way his work will react on his fellow-beings islacking in a very important stimulus to success.

  Kai manifested its usual sympathetic interest in my preparations fordeparture, but, with characteristic delicacy, asked no questions. Welloff the steamer routes, and with only the most infrequent comings andgoings of pearling and trading craft, the problem of reaching Australiawith any dispatch seemed, at first, a hopeless one. For a while itlooked like the best I could do would be to accept "Slim" Patton'skindly offer to run me over in his pearling sloop to Thursday Island,where I could count on getting a south-bound China-Australia linerinside of a fortnight. As Patton was known to be in bad for severallittle things at Thursday Island, his offer did more credit to his heartthan to his head, and I was a good deal relieved when Jackson figuredout a plan that promised to make it possible for me to reach my goal byanother route. After thumbing a greasy sheet of Burns, Phillip sailingsfor the best part of an afternoon, the old outlaw suddenly announced hehad found reason to believe that, with luck, a cutter getting away fromKai that night could intercept the Solomon-Australia packet at Samarai,off the easternmost tip of New Guinea. To be sure that the thing wasdone properly, he would take one of his own cutters and sail herhimself. As my impedimenta consisted of little beyond a few changes ofdrills and ducks, my painting kit, and a case of absinthe, and asJackson used neither paint nor absinthe and wore a flowered _sulu_ inplace of ducks and drills, we had little difficulty in getting away onschedule.

  Jackson's carefully tabulated calculations--you can do that kind ofthing in those latitudes when the southeast Trades are blowing steadyand you know your boat--were only wrong by an hour. That is to say, wewould have missed the _Utupua_ by something like that had we pushedright in to Samarai. Old "Jack," however, sighting a bituminous smeartrailing off above the tufted tops of the coco palms that line the innerpassage, promptly shook out all his reefs, hauled up four or fivepoints, and headed away on a course calculated to converge with that ofthe outgoing steamer a couple of miles to seaward. It was only after anabrupt greening of the tourmaline depths of the passage we had beenthreading suggested a sudden shoaling that it occurred to him to unrolland study his chart.

  "Five 'undred fathom--three 'undred fifty fathom," he read laboriouslyas his tarry forefinger cruised along the tiny rows of dots and figuresindicating soundings. "Three 'undred fathom--two 'undred fiftyfathom--_one_ bloody fathom! By Gawd, W'itney, we're 'igh an' dryalready! This bally chart says they's only one fathom uv water on thiskerblasted coral patch, an' the cutter draws two feet mor'n that."

  But he never luffed her, never altered her course a fraction of a point."More she 'eels the less she draws," he muttered philosophically,sitting down on the weather rail of the cockpit and starting to whittleat the end of a stick of tobacco with his clasp-knife. "Save a lot ofwig-waggin' if we do pile up," he continued presently, rolling theshaved-off blackjack between his palms. "Ol' 'Choppy' Tancred never giv'the go-by to even a nigger dugout he could len' a han' to." Then helighted hi
s pipe, whoofed two or three whirling jets of blue smoke toleeward as he brought it to a proper draw, and settled comfortably backin puffing contentment. Ten minutes later he unrolled the chart again,produced a greasy stub of pencil from the band of his _koui_-leaf hat,and wrote with great care the letters "P.D." across the dotted expansewhere curving lines of figure "1s," like the graphic representation oftelegraph lines on a bird's-eye map, indicated six feet of water wherethe eight-feet-draught cutter had just crossed without a bump.

  "As I figger it," Jackson observed drily, rolling up the chart andtossing it down the companionway as a thing whose usefulness wasended,--"as I figger it, a bloke's only manifestin' proper conserv'tismw'en 'e marks as 'Position Doubtful' a reef that ain't tangibl' enuf tostop 'im w'en 'e 'its it." Then, presently, between puffs, as hestretched himself and sidled along to take the wheel as the cutter beganto close the slowing steamer: "Wonder 'oo the bally cove'll be 'oo bumpsa mis-charted reef w'en 'e thinks 'e's got four 'undred fathom uv brine'tween his keel an' the bottom uv the Pacific." The notorious inaccuracyof the South Sea charts is a continual source of amusement orwrath--according to whether a misplaced shoal or passage has speltcomedy or tragedy to him--for the man who sails their reef-beset waters.

  It was Captain Tancred himself who came tumbling down from the_Utupua's_ bridge to greet me as I clambered up the Jacob's ladderthrown over from the forecastle head. Hearing of him often before, thiswas the first time I ever set eyes on one of the best-loved charactersin the South Pacific. He was a red-faced, blue-eyed, sandy-haired Scot,with a heart as big as his fist, and as soft as his voice was rough.Square himself as his own broad shoulders, and strictly law-abidingpersonally, he was credited with an amiable weakness for befriendingevery man who had run afoul of the statutes. I had heard them yarn bythe hour at Kai of the way he had smuggled this one out of Australia,and that one into New Guinea; of how he had all but bumped South Headwhile standing-off-and-on in a "Southerly Buster" one night, on the offchance of picking up a jail-breaker, whose only claim upon Tancred hadbeen that the latter had once before performed a similar service for thereprobate when he had forced his way out of the jug in Suva. Several ofthe push at Jackson's claimed actually to owe their lives to the bluffold Scot; many of them their liberty. "Choppy" Tancred--so called fromhis sun-washed red-brown mutton-chop side whiskers--was the nearestthing to a patron saint Kai ever had--that is, until the Rev. HoratioLoveworth hove up on their skyline some years later and converted thelot of them (just about) with the knuckles of his brawny fists.

  The last thing Jackson had said, as he steadied the ladder for me toswarm up the _Utupua's_ side, was to the effect that I ought to considermyself dead lucky to be stacking up with "Choppy" Tancred; "or,leastways," he qualified, "you would be if you was in any kind uv a mess'e could fish you out uv."

  "Don't give up hope, Jack," I chaffed back, clawing round a projectingventilator; "I may land in a mess yet."

  "Then don't be forgettin' ther'll allus be a refooge for the errin' onthe banks an' brays uv Kai Lagoon," he sang back, taking in themainsheet as the cutter came up to the wind; "an' that 'Choppy'Tancred'll be the cove to give you a first leg-up on the way backthere."

  Except for his very evident disappointment over the fact that Idisclaimed any need of his help in getting ashore in Australia, CaptainTancred seemed not in the least put out over being stopped and boardedso high-handedly. He had carried many queer birds in his time, so that aman eccentric enough to take a case of drinkables with him on the_return_ trip from the Islands didn't worry him as much as it might havesome others. He was also kindly charitable about my "exclusiveness" ofevenings (when all normal beings expand and grow sociable at sea), andeven good-naturedly tolerant of my weakness for having breakfast in mycabin. I made it up to him to the best of my ability in my "quickened"hours of the afternoon, and we became good friends.... Really goodfriends. I felt that I could count upon him in a pinch.

  The grounding of the company's Port Moresby steamer somewhere along theBarrier Reef was responsible for the fact that the _Utupua_, thisvoyage, had been ordered to pick up freight at both Cooktown and Cairns,instead of proceeding direct to Townsville on her regular schedule. Thisset her back two days, and brought us into the offing at Townsvilletwenty-four hours after--instead of twenty-four hours before--asun-blistered, foul-smelling labour-recruiting schooner, with a deadCaptain and a score or more of dying niggers, was brought to anchor offthe Quarantine Station by the Mate, who, immediately the hook was letgo, collapsed on the deck and went to sleep. The empty hulk of the _CoraAndrews_, swinging lazily to the turning tide, was one of the firstthings to catch my eye as the _Utupua_ steamed in and tied up to herbuoy.