Malia murmured in his ear, “Barney, isn’t it funny, when you came here, half drowned and hanging to a piece of driftwood, I thought you were a funny old man, but now you don’t seem old at all, and—” She shivered delightedly. McCabe was fully twenty-six.
But Malia’s visit made McCabe’s resentment rise again; bit by bit, the new planter was robbing him of the friends he had found. Nito, the chief, had turned against McCabe when Sam Parrish with trinkets and trade tobacco and medicine demonstrated the advantages of civilization and proved the worthlessness of tramps.
Then McCabe got a brilliant idea. He sat there, looking at the lovely girl who now lay stretched out on the white sand, her fingers laced behind her head. She was smiling, and saying, “I don’t hate you, do I?”
He caught her hand, drew her up beside him. “Look here—we’re going to the island, just you and me.”
He referred to a nameless atoll some sixty or eighty miles away; the little green ring in the ocean had not enough soil to support a permanent population, though in times of food shortage, the natives of Pakalafa sailed their long canoes to the atoll to get taro and bananas.
“Oh, won’t that be wonderful!”
With that moon, and that girl, McCabe had to agree. Going native was easier than it had ever seemed; and more pleasantly than going home and telling his grim father how a hot number in Papeete had gotten him drunk and then picked his roll. Disappearing with Malia—getting away from Pakalafa, where trading boats, which would soon arrive, would leave with Sam Parrish’s gossip about a beachcombing bum.
Then Malia cried out and broke from his arms. Half a dozen natives emerged from the foliage. Petelo, the chief’s brother, led them. They were proud of their shirts and hats and canvas pants, and full of borrowed authority.
“What the hell you want!” McCabe stumbled to his feet. “Get out of here!”
Malia bounded toward the beach, her skirt all a-flurry. One of Petelo’s companions took after the girl. The big fellow caught her arm and spun her about. Then McCabe got into action. He sidestepped, eluded the handful of huskies who had moved toward him, and overtook Malia’s captor, who for all his size, had his hands full.
Malia was kicking and screeching and squealing. Her hair streamed, her red calico dress was in shreds that trailed to her waist. In the moonlight, it became charmingly plain that she wore coconut oil from head to foot. McCabe got all that at a glance, just as he closed in.
Sock! He was as big and heavy as any of the six-foot natives. His solid fist knocked the fellow stiff. But that was wasted effort. The others landed on him, and caught Malia before she could improve on her chance of escape. Numbers and gin handicapped McCabe.
His former friends were kicking and choking him senseless. They dragged him to the village, and half conscious, he saw Malia was also a captive. Bruised and peeled down almost to her gleaming skin, she had given it up as a bad job. Then McCabe’s captors bound him hand and foot with coconut fiber cords, and flung him into a hut.
Somebody, it seemed, objected to his plans for Malia.
* * * *
The following day, Petelo brought McCabe before the chief. Malia was there, unhurt except for a few scratches, and unbound. As long as her lover was a captive, they reasoned that she needed no bonds.
Nito had become a figurehead of a chief. Parrish, the planter, was plainly in charge. He rose from his chair on the verandah of his palm thatched bungalow, a temporary building which was to serve until he had the natives erect a coral block house.
“Untie him!”
McCabe could scarcely believe that this stern, long nosed man was the same person whose easy amiability had won the native heart. Parrish was tall enough, but he seemed frail among the powerful islanders. For a moment he fingered the little coral image which Malia’s captors had taken from her.
“I found this amusing, McCabe,” the trader said. “But Petelo thought you were practicing a witch doctor trick. Planning to burn the image, or drive nails through it, or the like. That worried him, and I couldn’t convince him that damages to the image wouldn’t hurt me a bit.”
“I’m an American citizen,” McCabe growled. “I’ll have the commissioner take your hide. What the hell is the idea of setting these fellows against me? They were my friends before you came here, you blue nosed heel! You ought to get a job as a missionary!”
Parrish chuckled. “I think your not having a distiller’s permit would also interest the commissioner. Giving hard liquor to the natives is forbidden, you know.”
“Nuts! I’ve never heard of a trader who didn’t get them pig drunk so he could rook them.”
“They seem pretty well contented with my way of doing things.” Parrish gestured toward the heaps of newly cut coral. “They’re going to build me a permanent house, a trading post.”
Through the mosquito netting that screened the front door, McCabe got a good look at the trader’s daughter. Her blonde hair found all the light in that shaded room; and while she wore a good deal more than the native girls, her print dress could not conceal her array of smooth lines. Lydia Parrish was not as hefty as Malia, but she was all woman, shapely for all her slenderness—as McCabe recollected from one good glimpse of the blonde newcomer swimming in the lagoon.
McCabe reddened when her glance met his, and his eyes dropped. He was barefooted, unshaven, and without more than a scrap of shirt. Bruises on his tanned skin showed how he had been mauled. Worse than that, this first eye-to-eye look told him she was sorry for a white man on the beach.
“Why can’t we,” her father was saying, “try to get along? I did warn them against your gin, but I didn’t tell them to tie you up.”
“Be damned to you!” McCabe thrust the natives aside. “Touch me again, and I’m breaking some heads!”
Nobody tried to stop him.
* * * *
He spent the day sitting in the shade near his shack, and moodily stared at the green lagoon, and out at the blue expanse of ocean. For all Parrish’s fair approach, McCabe could not meet him half way. He did not want white people about him. They might not know the details, but they would soon enough, and they already had guessed he was a chump who had found refuge from folly. He would not feel right until his father finally concluded that a shark or a hurricane had settled the missing son.
Until then, McCabe wanted to evade all inquiry.
He had to steal a canoe, and take Malia with him to the distant atoll. And now her continued absence sharpened his resentment against Parrish and the fickle villagers. They had frightened her, or she would have come back.
A second day, and a third; no sign of Malia. So McCabe took the initiative. He wiped the warm gin from his lips, and grinned. “I’ll show this moral influence, I’ll show him what it’s like when someone really is giving the boys gin!” He put a number of calabashes and coconut shells, all filled with freshly distilled liquor, into a net of coconut fiber, and set out into the jungle. He clambered up rocky paths, plunged through pandanus thickets whose thorns raked and scratched him; but finally he reached the native village from the landward side. This approach was not as conspicuous as the easy way would be, along the beach and past the trader’s house.
Malia’s father, gray haired Nikusa, was the man to see.
He found Nikusa at the men’s clubhouse, well behind the village. There no woman was ever allowed. Some of the younger men eyed McCabe suspiciously, but Nikusa and his gray haired friends greeted him amiably.
McCabe’s watch had survived his long swim when he went over the rail of the boat that would have taken him home. He handed this to Nikusa and said, “This is for you.”
The old man beamed. “You could have the girl anyway. I did not send them to keep you from going to the atoll. She’s raising such a fuss that I wish you two would get away from the island.”
“What’s keeping her?”
Nik
usa answered, “Nito and Petelo. They like Parrish.”
McCabe took a calabash of gin from his net. “Look here, Nikusa! You men all elected him chief when his father died. Malia told me that. Now Nito makes you do things you don’t want to do.”
“Aué! That is true.” The easy going natives frowned, then sighed and shrugged. “Still, a chief once elected is a chief, even if he does wrong.”
That was just what McCabe had waited for. He took a deep drink, and passed the calabash to Nikusa, saying, “I make this myself. It’s good, and never mind what the long faced fellow says.”
Nikusa took a long pull. Tears were in his eyes, but he stuttered, “F-f-f-fine!”
One of the other elders demanded a shot. Then a second and a third. Nikusa was now rubbing his stomach; his eyes gleamed, and he said, “Powerful medicine, no devil doctor makes stuff like this.”
The calabash circulated. Presently McCabe said, “Now that we know Nito isn’t a chief, that he’s just a flunkey to a trader, working the life out of all you people, I’ll tell you what to do about it.”
“We could kill him,” someone suggested.
McCabe did not want that. “No. Just quit work. You’re crazy, working all day, picking and splitting coconuts. What for? He gave you presents, he has bought your souls. Next thing you know, he’ll have a missionary here, and a school. To make slaves of you. To make money for him, for the trading boat captain.”
Nikusa and the elders, now glowing with gin, began to see how their chief had sold his people into slavery, how he was putting on airs. “Aué!” they muttered. “He does no work, he gets all the presents. It was not that way in the old days, when a chief shared with his men, all alike.”
At this point, McCabe headed back over the hills. Once the natives stopped work, began drinking and muttering, and became surly, Parrish would get off the island quickly enough. The natives had welcomed him, else he would have left on the very trading boat that had brought him; if they rebelled against routine work, Parrish could only do as he would have done had he gotten a repulse at the start.
McCabe quit drinking. He found a chunk of volcanic glass and used it as a razor. This shave was a painful business, but the next time high nosed Lydia Parrish saw him, she would not display so much pity.
The next day, Nikusa came for more gin. The devil-doctor, who had been sulking in the heart of the island, for he felt that the new regime had made him lose prestige, came with Nikusa.
“Once you win the young fellows,” McCabe said, “show them the gadgets they get aren’t worth the work they do, the trader is finished.”
“Aué!” the witch doctor said. “I knew you were a smart man, and the trader’s friends will be sorry they beat you.”
McCabe looked at his bruised fists. “Some are sorry already. But listen, Nikusa. Don’t get rough, don’t damage anything, and for God’s sake, don’t hurt Parrish or his daughter, or you’ll get marines dumped on the island.”
“What is a marine?”
“Worse than a trader, worse than a missionary. So take it easy.”
* * * *
The revolt some days later—for it took time to undermine the loyalty that Parrish had built up—caught McCabe quite off guard. He had expected loafing, sabotage, until Parrish’s persistence crumbled; but the shouting from the village, nearly a mile away, told him that the lid had blown off. Flames reached as high as the palm grove which girdled the settlement.
McCabe broke out in a sudden sweat. He rose, wiped his forehead, then seated himself again. “They won’t hurt him,” he said. “They’re just a little lit, that’s all.” But he felt as if red ants were crawling all over him. He heard the howling, the click of rattles, the fearsome booming of bullroarers; he had not been in the islands very long, but he knew that hell was popping for fair. And for the first time in his life, McCabe was mortally afraid, with a sickening fear quite other than that of going home to face his angry father.
A white girl, even though she was high hat and superior, was in the midst of that riot. The idiots had gone crazy, crazy drunk on the gin McCabe had expected would make them sodden and lazy and sottishly agreeable to anything but work.
He snatched the rusty pipe and sprinted down the beach. His heart was in his throat before he had covered a hundred yards, and red spots danced before his eyes. He was ready to drop before he had put a quarter of a mile behind him.
McCabe stumbled along, for his legs were numb from that first exhausting sprint. Time and again, he fell, cutting his hands on the coral that cropped out of the beach. His bare feet were bleeding, but he did not feel those slashes.
The copra shed was ablaze. Parrish’s house was not afire, but a ring of howling natives surrounded it. The devil doctor and Nikusa’s hardshells had brought their masks and plumed headgear out of hiding.
Parrish was on the verandah, fully dressed, including his hat. His daughter was at his heels. He turned, gestured, and she went back into the house; but McCabe’s first glimpse told him that Lydia had her share of courage. It seemed to run in the family.
As McCabe staggered toward the howling group of natives, Parrish raised one hand. Boldness and dignity won him a moment’s silence.
“Go your way. Nito has come to my house. I will not turn him out. When you are sober, you will know this is wrong.”
They were out to finish their deposed chief. Some, still sober, blocked those who threatened Parrish with fish spears and clubs. McCabe broke through the line and yelled, “Go back! When Nito has to hide from his people, he is no chief. You’ve won.”
Silence followed, but the circle closed in on the sides and rear. The rebels hesitated to lay hands on a white man or his house. Then from inside came a native’s yell. That must be Nito; and the sounds from the rear indicated the crowd was trying to break through the laced wicker to which the wall thatching was found. Smoke rose; fire spears made arcs of flame, and landed on the roof. The rebels reasoned that the taboo which protected the planter’s house against breaking and entering would fall on the burning spears, not on those who threw them. Their witch doctor had not overcome their scruples.
At the sound of Nito’s voice, Parrish turned to go into the house.
“Cut it out!” McCabe yelled. “They’ll spear you, sure!”
His sudden move and cry checked Parrish. When the trader saw who had arrived, he said, “Keep out of this. Your gin has done more damage than you can repair.”
He turned back toward the door. Lydia came running to meet him. “They’ve set the roof on fire!”
Then Nito broke from hiding, and met the missionary well inside the doorway. He groveled at Parrish’s feet. Lydia caught McCabe’s arm and demanded, “Can you talk some sense into them? They’ll kill Nito.”
Her cheeks were white, and he could feel her nails sink into his forearm. But she did not seem afraid, in spite of the choking smoke that forced her out of the house.”
“Too late,” McCabe said. “This is a native feud. You’re safe. Your father is.”
Parrish got his ankles away from Nito’s grasp. “This man came to me for protection. I cannot turn him out.”
McCabe jerked Nito to his feet. “Get up, you big ape! I’ll club a few, and you run for the beach and get a canoe!”
Nito, trembling and sweating, was a sorry chief he stumbled toward the door, but McCabe caught his shoulder. “Wait a second! Not yet.” His strength was returning, and he hefted the rusty pipe. “Parrish! You get clear. I’ll get Nito through, somehow.”
But it was not the fire that forced the issue. A handful of the boldest rebels charged in through the door.
McCabe’s pipe knocked a spear man to his knees. But Parrish was turning to interpose, and some of the bone tipped lances reached him instead of Nito. The chief broke clear in the confusion and blinding smoke, and bolted for a window. McCabe parried a club and splintered one of th
e fishing tridents. The thatch was roaring overhead. The natives, believing their work done, bowled him over as they ran for the door.
Lydia was knocked into a corner by the rush. McCabe recovered and cried, “Give me a hand!”
The blonde girl scrambled to her knees and caught her father’s feet. They stumbled to the verandah, just ahead of the flames. When the natives saw the wounded man’s white face, and the blood splashed on his shirt, they recoiled, and offered no opposition. They had not noticed Nito’s dash for freedom, and when the roof collapsed, they did not doubt that he was finished. There was no one to check his flight from Pakalafa.
“They’re scared silly,” McCabe explained as he and Lydia laid Parrish on the beach. “Afraid of a taboo. Or a battleship to punish—”
“I’m not interested in reasons,” she said, thin lipped.
She knelt there, swaying a little. McCabe examined her father’s wounds. “There’s a chance—they didn’t run him through—”
* * * *
The first aid supplies were burned. All that could save Parrish was gin to sterilize his wounds, and perhaps herbs gathered by some loyal native.
McCabe had scarcely voiced this hope when Lydia cried, “They’re taking to their boats! Stop them! We need their help. We might get to Papeete.”
McCabe yelled as he ran, but no one heeded him. The leaders were already crossing the reef. Facing Lydia was worse than returning to the states and his father’s wrath.
By torchlight, he used his pen knife to extract several barbed spear heads. Parrish was half conscious, in spite of the pain. He said through his teeth, “Go ahead! I can stand it.”
Lydia was looking the other way. McCabe wiped the sweat from his forehead and said, “This one is the worst. Better take a slug of gin. I need one myself.”
The planter’s gray lips twisted in what he intended for a smile.
E. Hoffmann Price's Exotic Adventures Page 19