by Talbot Mundy
“Bill Hill’s thirsty,” said Bagg judicially. “He expected brandy and it has not come; so he’s restless.”
“Sir, he is worse! He calls this Council meeting expressly to depose you, sir. He has threatened all the members, and he holds their promises — all except mine; he tells me I am secretary and must write your deposition in the minutes, or he will have my head off! Sir, he pointed out the post on which he will have my head spiked!”
“Better do what he says, then,” smiled Bagg, still eating and not letting Luther know by any outward sign that he felt disturbed. “Go to the meeting, Luther, and keep the minutes: bring them to me afterward. You’d better remind ’em that nothing’s legal without my signature.”
“But, sir, if the Council votes as Bill Hill wishes — and how dare it do otherwise? — he will not only succeed in deposing you, he will have you killed!”
“Not while the police are mine!” said Bagg. “Besides, you don’t understand, Luther; the Council can’t depose me. This is a Protectorate, not a Colony. This isn’t British territory. It’s protected by Great Britain. The islanders govern themselves under British protection, in accordance with rules mutually agreed on. That’s the theory of the thing; and the fact is, Great Britain would back me up in any sort of an argument.”
“I only hope it is true, sir. I know Bill Hill does not believe it — and he will act as he believes!”
“Well, run and summon the meeting, Luther. Keep the minutes and report to me. Then, at least, we’ll know what the Chief intends.”
Far more nervously than he had mounted them, the half-breed missionary descended the steps and hurried down Bagg’s stamped coral road in the direction of the four-square Council House some two miles away.
“Boy!” called Bagg, the moment the missionary was out of hearing.
“Sah?”
“Find the sergeant of police and tell him to bring all his men. I want them to drill in front of the flag this morning.”
“Breakfus’ things, sah — take um away?”
“Find the sergeant of police and deliver my message first.”
The native went off at a run and disappeared down a track that led, among plantains and breadfruit and bamboos, to a native village. Bagg picked up his glass and walked to the Thumbmark parapet again, stopping this time to take a long look at the flag.
The spray was beginning to sing over the rock, and when the big sou’westers blow the Thumbmark is a very bursting place of all the big waves in the world, but, as yet, a man could stand on the ridge and be fairly dry; so Bagg stood there and stared at the sky line. Maybe his forearms trembled as he held the glass; but, again, it may have been the wind blowing up his sleeves.
“Looks like it to me!” he said after a while, wiping the object lenses carefully. “It’s coming end on and it’s thin, so it’s hard to tell; but — it looks like it to me.”
As a means of passing time before he looked again, he began to watch the birds, which were growing weary of work against a gaining storm or else too gorged to care any more. One after another — presently in fives, tens, twenties — they let themselves be blown down the wind between the islands to shelter in the lee of Greater Gabriel. So an hour passed, and then Bagg yielded to impatience and looked again at the southwest.
“Two masts and two funnels!” he said cheerfully. “Now for Bill Hill! If this doesn’t tame him — But it will — it will!”
He jumped from the rock and walked back leisurely to his bungalow, to sit on the top step and turn his glass on the Council House, where the greatest crowd was gathering that he had ever seen together on the island.
“They’re all there!” he chuckled. “They’ll none of ’em see what’s coming!”
The flag snapped in the wind like a whip-crack; and that reminded him! For the first time, he realized that his order to the police had not been obeyed, for nobody was drilling on the stamped dark earth behind the flag mound.
“Boy!” he shouted. “Boy!”
But none answered, and no one came.
“Boy!” he thundered half a dozen times. Then he frowned and lit his pipe. He had shown a bold front to Luther, the half-breed; but he could guess, even better than Luther, how near the native Chief was to getting the upper hand. His pipe went out and he did not relight it. He leaned back against the veranda pole; and his shoulders began to look very tired — more in keeping with the gray hair.
“I rather counted on the police and that one boy,” he admitted to himself. “Seems I was wrong! Lord, but it takes time to teach a man how little he is and how little he matters! Think of it — after eighteen years!”
He looked up at the flag which the police had been taught to salute at dawn and dusk.
“But for the flag I could almost wish no help were coming! I shall look small — shan’t I? — without one friend after eighteen years, except perhaps Luther! He’s not a native; he’ll stand by me for his own sake. He’ll have to! Yes, the flag wins — law and order wins — help, here in the nick of time; but I lose! I’ll apply for a transfer; they’ll have to grant it after eighteen years — eighteen years and not a friend on all the islands! If the police and that one boy had stood I’d have been satisfied. I expect I’ve been too mild. They’re used to whips and scorpions. They need a stronger hand over ’em. Well, I did my best. I suppose that’s why help’s at hand.”
There was a feeling creeping over him — a lonely feeling — which had to be battled with, for manhood’s sake; so he took up his glass again and began to watch the crowd near the Council House. He saw the fat Bill Hill get into a hammock for the procession. He could see some of his white-skinned constables shepherding the crowd, and Luther walking timidly beside Bill Hill, with the minute book under his arm.
“I must remember to give Luther a good word:” he reminded himself; and as he spoke the procession started.
It was a motley throng — dark skins, cotton suits, shells, feathers — unusually silent but coming swiftly; for the natives can move like smoke blown before the wind. As they drew nearer Bagg thought some of them looked guilty, and he was glad of that. He noticed that his policemen skulked behind.
“It’s something if they even feel ashamed!” he thought.
He relighted his pipe now and made himself comfortable on the top step; for, whatever the outcome, he meant that Bill Hill should be met with dignity. He was rather glad that he had found himself a failure.
“I might have died thinking I had really won,” he argued. “I’d have gone out proud. I suppose the Lord, who made the wide world, wouldn’t laugh at a man; but — my word, I’m glad I knew in time!”
The procession advanced more slowly as it neared him; but it had to approach at last, and from every side his little garden was invaded. Four stalwarts dropped the hammock pole and Bill Hill rolled out, sweating like a pig; the fat brute looked like a Roman senator of the Decline and Fall, with a wreath of flowers awry on his oily hair and his fat legs showing under a baggy white chemise.
“You’re deposed!” he said in perfectly good English, pointing at Bagg with a fat forefinger. Bagg smoked on, apparently unperturbed, watched in breathless silence by as many of the crowd as could get near enough. “You’re no good!” said Bill Hill. “It’s a lie about your ships! This isn’t a Protectorate! You’re deposed!”
“By whom?” asked Bagg, quite calmly. He wanted to gain seconds. There was a far-away look in his eye that the Chief mistook for terror; so he dared to draw a long stride nearer.
“You’re deposed by your Council — our talkers! I was king before you came, and I ran things right. Now I’m king again — your Council says so! It’s written in the book. You sign it!”
It seemed to tickle the savage’s fancy that Bagg should be made to sign the minutes of his own deposition.
“Take him the book!” he ordered. “Take him the book and show him where to sign.”
So Luther, very frightened but not daring to disobey, brought the minute book to Bagg on the top
step.
“Show me the entry, Luther,” said Bagg, for he did not want the half-breed to look seaward for a moment yet.
“Give him a pen — put it in his hand and make him write!” yelled Bill Hill, turning to explain to the crowd, in their own tongue, what was happening. And as he turned his jaw fell. He seemed suddenly changed to stone. The whole crowd followed his gaze seaward. Bagg smiled.
A cruiser, with two funnels and two masts, and decks all cleared for action, steamed almost casually close inshore!
“I told you a ship would come!” said Bagg.
It occurred to him, then, that it might be well to dip his flag by way of salute, and he started for the pole to do it; but almost the instant he moved the cruiser spoke. From her ensign halyard she broke out the red, white and black of the German Navy, and from a forward port casemate a six-inch gun let rip.
A shell struck the mound on which the British flag was raised, and burst; a second shell burst at the very foot of the pole; a third hit the pole and brought the flag down; and a fourth whined through Bagg’s bungalow, bursting in the garden at the rear. Then the cruiser ceased firing for there was nothing more in particular to aim at — the crowd, including Bill Hill and the police, had vanished into thin air.
“Now that’s awfully good shooting!” Bagg said stupidly.
There was nothing else to say. His job and his flag and his point of view had all been shot away from under him and he had not even heard a rumor of any war. For a minute he stood and watched the natives, whom he could see now, running down the road for the distant village as though their thatched huts would protect them against gunfire; and it was his sense of humor that brought him to himself. He caught sight of Bill Hill, deserted by the hammock men, waddling down the road as fast as fat legs could be made to move him, shaking impotently angry fists at all the world. Bagg laughed aloud. “There won’t be any brandy on the cruiser either,” he reflected.
For a minute after that he watched the cruiser, understanding well why her captain did not drop anchor opposite the Thumbmark in such a gale, though he would have dared to do it himself, since he knew the waters.
“He’ll anchor in the roadstead,” he reflected, for his wits were working again. “Now — what ought I to do first?”
The cruiser’s masts went out of sight behind the longshore palms and Bagg’s eyes wandered. They lit on the flag, lying tangled in its halyard under half of the pole. He walked to it, unbent it, and rolled it up carefully. So much was obvious.
“What next?” he wondered, looking through his glass in the vague hope of seeing Luther somewhere.
“No; I’ve got to see this through alone. Well, Luther, you were my friend as long as you dared be. I wonder whether I can do any better than you? Seems to me I’ve got to bolt too. Difference is, you knew where to run to and I don’t. Oh, I know! The papers!”
Rather ashamed of not having thought of that before, he ran to the bungalow and brought out the steel dispatch box that held his official papers, diary and money. Then he filled his pocket with tobacco.
“Is there anything else that matters?” he wondered, stroking his gray beard. “No; nothing else — I can get food anywhere — unless the natives give me up. If they do that I’m done — but I’m not done yet! If the sail and mast are not in the whaleboat, I am, though.”
He formed the daring plan of sailing the whaleboat single-handed across to Opposite Point on Lesser Gabriel.
“They won’t know yet on the other islands that my authority has been challenged by Bill Hill. Perhaps I can get a following of some sort. At least, I can try. If only I had one man to help me! Imagine — not one man to stand by after eighteen years! I didn’t think a fellow could fail so badly as all that!”
With the steel box in one hand he followed the path to his left front, and climbed down steps cut roughly in the coral to the cove below. He was feeling lonelier than ever in his life; but he had barely reached the bottom when eight men rose, like the dead from their graves, to greet him, shaking wet sand from their copper-colored bodies. They so startled him that he nearly dropped the box.
“Why are you here?” he asked. “What do you want?”
A big man — bull-necked and ugly, showing sharp eyeteeth when he grinned — answered him:
“Waiting all along you come!”
Bagg remembered then his orders of the night before that the whaleboat crew should be ready in the morning; he gave that order most nights whether he meant to use the boat or not, since it kept the crew out of mischief. He had no doubt that Bill Hill knew of the order and had taken advantage of it to cut off his retreat by water; his heart fell into his boots. Another man spoke and Bagg felt his fear confirmed.
“Bill Hill—”
But the big man interrupted, waving toward the beached boat with a sinewy, shiny arm.
“Bill Hill no good! Bill Hill one damn — Sam Bagg plenty good! Sea, him big! Come on!”
He snatched the steel box from Bagg’s hand and tossed it into the boat, helping Bagg in after it over the stern. Two men took their places on the bow seat and the rest shoved; in a minute they were up to their necks; in another second they were scrambling in over the sides and the boat’s nose was headed straight for the cove’s mouth and savage water. They all began rowing, taking their time from the bull-necked man at stroke; and, before Bagg knew it, he was standing in the stern, the rolled flag between his knees, steering instinctively.
“Give way, all!” he shouted suddenly. “All to- gether! Swing to it now!”
Eight sets of copper-colored shoulders, alive and lumpy under satin skin, swung evenly to a tune of squealing thwarts and grunting rowlocks. The whaleboat leaped for the narrow entrance and staggered drunkenly as the full force of the gale took her on the starboard shoulder.
“Pull!” roared Bagg, himself by now. “Pull! — Ho! Pull! — Ho! — Pull! — Ho!”
Because they knew him and were used to him they labored at the oars, when an ordinary native crew would have quit and jumped; so that after a while Bagg got the staggering boat stern-on to the sea, and they were able to race along with no more effort than was needed to keep just ahead of the following wave. Bagg still stood up, wearing across the channel as he saw his chance, and wondering why he had not thought of his boat’s crew first of all.
“I might at least have offered them a chance!” he argued; he was not in a mood to spare himself if he could only see where he was wrong.
They were rowing more or less in the wake of the cruiser, and Bagg saw her drop anchor opposite Bill Hill’s palisade five miles down the strait. He saw a cloud of steam, and judged it must come from her whistle, though the gale prevented him from hearing.
“That’ll fetch ’em!” he admitted. “If they keep whistling and don’t shoot they’ll have every native on the island round them in less than an hour! So much the worse for me, I suppose — the Germans’ll demand me and the war canoes’ll come after me. What’s it all about, I wonder?”
More or less diagonally, and by cautious, small degrees, he wore across the strait to Opposite Point, and there was less than a foot of water in the boat in proof of his coxswainship when he ran in under the promontory’s lee. The crew beached the boat and dragged it high out of the water, while Bagg hurried to climb the overhanging rock. There, on the top of it, he sat watching through his glass, and watched, in turn, by the crew below; they did not ask him any questions — he had always told them things if they waited long enough.
“So, eight stood by me!” he was saying to himself. Eight — after eighteen years! That’s eight better than none; makes me feel more like a man.”
That the cruiser should take on water first and that the natives should answer the whistle and bring the water were things only to be expected; all the ships that call do that. The sweet-water wells on Greater Gabriel, combined with the roadstead, which is sheltered from the prevalent sou’westers, would be ample excuse for seizure of the group by any vagrant navy. Bagg watched the
war canoes sneak out, loaded with a cask apiece, and saw the casks hauled up by the cruiser’s derricks, to be emptied and sent back for more. He saw fruit go on board, too, and some pigs and fish. All that was easy to understand.
It was obvious why no steamer had come with his mail for seven weeks. It was obvious there must be war; and he supposed the British fleet had somehow failed to get command of the seas and keep it. But he could not guess what the war was about, or what the Germans wanted with this tiny group of islands so early in the game as this must be.
“They can’t have been fighting much more than a month,” he argued. “Has it got to this already?”
What ought he to do? Should he bury the flag, he wondered — or hoist it somewhere, out of sight of the cruiser? Either course seemed foolish; yet he supposed there was a right course to take.
“I wonder what one of those men one reads about in history would do?” he thought. “I mean one of those chaps who seem to be born to meet emergencies. This is an emergency, all right. Why don’t I fit it? I suppose it’s because I haven’t fitted from the first. If I had handled my job right the natives would all have stood by me — or nearly all; and if I’d been that kind of man I’d have known what to do now. I expect that’s it. Well, I did my best anyway,” he added, beginning to turn against the lash of his own self-criticism. “Eight stood by me. I won eight!”
He grew tired of watching the cruiser and began to search the island through his glass; so he saw a landing party march toward his bungalow, their white uniforms visible from miles away. He saw them presently surround the little building, and laughed; for he supposed they were shouting to him to come out. He saw men enter it and drag his few possessions into the open. Then he swore aloud, for he saw a man go to windward and set fire to the dry thatch.