A Son Of The Sun

But David Grief was a true son of the sun, and he flourished in all its ways. He merely became browner with the passing of the years, though in the brown was the hint of golden tint that glows in the skin of the Polynesian. Yet his blue eyes retained their blue, his mustache its yellow, and the lines of his face were those which had persisted through the centuries in his English race. English he was in blood, yet those that thought they knew contended he was at least American born. Unlike them, he had not come out to the South Seas seeking hearth and saddle of his own. In fact, he had brought hearth and saddle with him. His advent had been in the Paumotus. He arrived on board a tiny schooner yacht, master and owner, a youth questing romance and adventure along the sun-washed path of the tropics. He also arrived in a hurricane, the giant waves of which deposited him and yacht and all in the thick of a cocoanut grove three hundred yards beyond the surf. Six months later he was rescued by a pearling cutter. But the sun had got into his blood. At Tahiti, instead of taking a steamer home, he bought a schooner, outfitted her with trade-goods and divers, and went for a cruise through the Dangerous Archipelago.

As the golden tint burned into his face it poured molten out of the ends of his fingers. His was the golden touch, but he played the game, not for the gold, but for the game’s sake. It was a man’s game, the rough contacts and fierce give and take of the adventurers of his own blood and of half the bloods of Europe and the rest of the world, and it was a good game; but over and beyond was his love of all the other things that go to make up a South Seas rover’s life – the smell of the reef; the infinite exquisiteness of the shoals of living coral in the mirror-surfaced lagoons; the crashing sunrises of raw colours spread with lawless cunning; the palm-tufted islets set in turquoise deeps; the tonic wine of the trade-winds; the heave and send of the orderly, crested seas; the moving deck beneath his feet, the straining canvas overhead; the flower-garlanded, golden-glowing men and maids of Polynesia, half-children and half-gods; and even the howling savages of Melanesia, head-hunters and man-eaters, half-devil and all beast.

And so, favoured child of the sun, out of munificence of energy and sheer joy of living, he, the man of many millions, forbore on his far way to play the game with Harrison J. Griffiths for a paltry sum. It was his whim, his desire, his expression of self and of the sun-warmth that poured through him. It was fun, a joke, a problem, a bit of play on which life was lightly hazarded for the joy of the playing.

IV

The early morning found the Wonder laying close-hauled along the coast of Guadalcanal She moved lazily through the water under the dying breath of the land breeze. To the east, heavy masses of clouds promised a renewal of the southeast trades, accompanied by sharp puffs and rain squalls. Ahead, laying along the coast on the same course as the Wonder, and being slowly overtaken, was a small ketch. It was not the Willi-Waw, however, and Captain Ward, on the Wonder, putting down his glasses, named it the Kauri.

Grief, just on deck from below, sighed regretfully.

“If it had only been the Willi-Waw” he said.

“You do hate to be beaten,” Denby, the supercargo, remarked sympathetically.

“I certainly do.” Grief paused and laughed with genuine mirth. “It’s my firm conviction that Griffiths is a rogue, and that he treated me quite scurvily yesterday. ‘Sign,’ he says, ‘sign in full, at the bottom, and date it,’ And Jacobsen, the little rat, stood in with him. It was rank piracy, the days of Bully Hayes all over again.”

“If you weren’t my employer, Mr. Grief, I’d like to give you a piece of my mind,” Captain Ward broke in.

“Go on and spit it out,” Grief encouraged.

“Well, then – ” The captain hesitated and cleared his throat. “With all the money you’ve got, only a fool would take the risk you did with those two curs. What do you do it for?”

“Honestly, I don’t know, Captain. I just want to, I suppose. And can you give any better reason for anything you do?”

“You’ll get your bally head shot off some fine day,” Captain Ward growled in answer, as he stepped to the binnacle and took the bearing of a peak which had just thrust its head through the clouds that covered Guadalcanar.

The land breeze strengthened in a last effort, and the Wonder, slipping swiftly through the water, ranged alongside the Kauri and began to go by. Greetings flew back and forth, then David Grief called out:

“Seen anything of the Willi-Waw?”

The captain, slouch-hatted and barelegged, with a rolling twist hitched the faded blue lava-lava tighter around his waist and spat tobacco juice overside.

“Sure,” he answered. “Griffiths lay at Savo last night, taking on pigs and yams and filling his water-tanks. Looked like he was going for a long cruise, but he said no. Why? Did you want to see him?”

“Yes; but if you see him first don’t tell him you’ve seen me.”

The captain nodded and considered, and walked for’ard on his own deck to keep abreast of the faster vessel.

“Say!” he called. “Jacobsen told me they were coming down this afternoon to Gabera. Said they were going to lay there to-night and take on sweet potatoes.”

“Gabera has the only leading lights in the Solomons,” Grief said, when his schooner had drawn well ahead. “Is that right, Captain Ward?”

The captain nodded.

“And the little bight just around the point on this side, it’s a rotten anchorage, isn’t it?”

“No anchorage. All coral patches and shoals, and a bad surf. That’s where the Molly went to pieces three years ago.”

Grief stared straight before him with lustreless eyes for a full minute, as if summoning some vision to his inner sight. Then the corners of his eyes wrinkled and the ends of his yellow mustache lifted in a smile.

“We’ll anchor at Gabera,” he said. “And run in close to the little bight this side. I want you to drop me in a whaleboat as you go by. Also, give me six boys, and serve out rifles. I’ll be back on board before morning.”

The captain’s face took on an expression of suspicion, which swiftly slid into one of reproach.

“Oh, just a little fun, skipper,” Grief protested with the apologetic air of a schoolboy caught in mischief by an elder.

Captain Ward grunted, but Denby was all alertness.

“I’d like to go along, Mr. Grief,” he said.

Grief nodded consent.

“Bring some axes and bush-knives,” he said. “And, oh, by the way, a couple of bright lanterns. See they’ve got oil in them.”

V

An hour before sunset the Wonder tore by the little bight. The wind had freshened, and a lively sea was beginning to make. The shoals toward the beach were already white with the churn of water, while those farther out as yet showed no more sign than of discoloured water. As the schooner went into the wind and backed her jib and staysail the whaleboat was swung out. Into it leaped six breech-clouted Santa Cruz boys, each armed with a rifle. Denby, carrying the lanterns, dropped into the stern-sheets. Grief, following, paused on the rail.

“Pray for a dark night, skipper,” he pleaded.

“You’ll get it,” Captain Ward answered. “There’s no moon anyway, and there won’t be any sky. She’ll be a bit squally, too.”

The forecast sent a radiance into Grief’s face, making more pronounced the golden tint of his sunburn. He leaped down beside the supercargo.

“Cast off!” Captain Ward ordered. “Draw the headsails! Put your wheel over! There! Steady! Take that course!”

The Wonder filled away and ran on around the point for Gabera, while the whaleboat, pulling six oars and steered by Grief, headed for the beach. With superb boatmanship he threaded the narrow, tortuous channel which no craft larger than a whaleboat could negotiate, until the shoals and patches showed seaward and they grounded on the quiet, rippling beach.

The next hour was filled with work. Moving about among the wild cocoanuts and jungle brush, Grief selected the trees.

“Chop this fella tree; chop that fella tree,” he told his blacks. “No chop that other fella,” he said, with a shake of head.

In the end, a wedge-shaped segment of jungle was cleared. Near to the beach remained one long palm. At the apex of the wedge stood another. Darkness was falling as the lanterns were lighted, carried up the two trees, and made fast.

“That outer lantern is too high.” David Grief studied it critically. “Put it down about ten feet, Denby.”

VI

The Willi-Waw was tearing through the water with a bone in her teeth, for the breath of the passing squall was still strong. The blacks were swinging up the big mainsail, which had been lowered on the run when the puff was at its height. Jacobsen, superintending the operation, ordered them to throw the halyards down on deck and stand by, then went for’ard on the lee-bow and joined Griffiths. Both men stared with wide-strained eyes at the blank wall of darkness through which they were flying, their ears tense for the sound of surf on the invisible shore. It was by this sound that they were for the moment steering.

The wind fell lighter, the scud of clouds thinned and broke, and in the dim glimmer of starlight loomed the jungle-clad coast. Ahead, and well on the lee-bow, appeared a jagged rock-point. Both men strained to it.

“Amboy Point,” Griffiths announced. “Plenty of water close up. Take the wheel, Jacobsen, till we set a course. Get a move on!”

Running aft, barefooted and barelegged, the rainwater dripping from his scant clothing, the mate displaced the black at the wheel.

“How’s she heading?” Griffiths called.

“South-a-half-west!”

“Let her come up south-by-west! Got it?”

“Right on it!”

Griffiths considered the changed relation of Amboy Point to the Willi-Waw’s course.

“And a-half-west!” he cried.

“And a-half-west!” came the answer. “Right on it!”

“Steady! That’ll do!”

“Steady she is!” Jacobsen turned the wheel over to the savage. “You steer good fella, savve?” he warned. “No good fella, I knock your damn black head off.”

Again he went for’ard and joined the other, and again the cloud-scud thickened, the star-glimmer vanished, and the wind rose and screamed in another squall.

“Watch that mainsail!” Griffiths yelled in the mate’s ear, at the same time studying the ketch’s behaviour.

Over she pressed, and lee-rail under, while he measured the weight of the wind and quested its easement. The tepid sea-water, with here and there tiny globules of phosphorescence, washed about his ankles and knees. The wind screamed a higher note, and every shroud and stay sharply chorused an answer as the Willi-Waw pressed farther over and down.

“Down mainsail!” Griffiths yelled, springing to the peak-halyards, thrusting away the black who held on, and casting off the turn.

Jacobsen, at the throat-halyards, was performing the like office. The big sail rattled down, and the blacks, with shouts and yells, threw themselves on the battling canvas. The mate, finding one skulking in the darkness, flung his bunched knuckles into the creature’s face and drove him to his work.

The squall held at its high pitch, and under her small canvas the Willi-Waw still foamed along. Again the two men stood for’ard and vainly watched in the horizontal drive of rain.

“We’re all right,” Griffiths said. “This rain won’t last. We can hold this course till we pick up the lights. Anchor in thirteen fathoms. You’d better overhaul forty-five on a night like this. After that get the gaskets on the mainsail. We won’t need it.”

Half an hour afterward his weary eyes were rewarded by a glimpse of two lights.

“There they are, Jacobsen. I’ll take the wheel. Run down the fore-staysail and stand by to let go. Make the niggers jump.”

Aft, the spokes of the wheel in his hands, Griffiths held the course till the two lights came in line, when he abruptly altered and headed directly in for them. He heard the tumble and roar of the surf, but decided it was farther away – as it should be, at Gabera.

He heard the frightened cry of the mate, and was grinding the wheel down with all his might, when the Willi-Waw struck. At the same instant her mainmast crashed over the bow. Five wild minutes followed. All hands held on while the hull upheaved and smashed down on the brittle coral and the warm seas swept over them. Grinding and crunching, the Willi-Waw worked itself clear over the shoal patch and came solidly to rest in the comparatively smooth and shallow channel beyond.

Griffiths sat down on the edge of the cabin, head bowed on chest, in silent wrath and bitterness. Once he lifted his face to glare at the two white lights, one above the other and perfectly in line.

“There they are,” he said. “And this isn’t Gabera. Then what the hell is it?”

Though the surf still roared and across the shoal flung its spray and upper wash over them, the wind died down and the stars came out. Shoreward came the sound of oars.

“What have you had? – an earthquake?” Griffiths called out. “The bottom’s all changed. I’ve anchored here a hundred times in thirteen fathoms. Is that you, Wilson?”

A whaleboat came alongside, and a man climbed over the rail. In the faint light Griffiths found an automatic Colt’s thrust into his face, and, looking up, saw David Grief.

“No, you never anchored here before,” Grief laughed. “Gabera’s just around the point, where I’ll be as soon as I’ve collected that little sum of twelve hundred pounds. We won’t bother for the receipt. I’ve your note here, and I’ll just return it.”

“You did this!” Griffiths cried, springing to his feet in a sudden gust of rage. “You faked those leading lights! You’ve wrecked me, and by – ”

“Steady! Steady!” Grief’s voice was cool and menacing. “I’ll trouble you for that twelve hundred, please.”

To Griffiths, a vast impotence seemed to descend upon him. He was overwhelmed by a profound disgust – disgust for the sunlands and the sun-sickness, for the futility of all his endeavour, for this blue-eyed, golden-tinted, superior man who defeated him on all his ways.

“Jacobsen,” he said, “will you open the cash-box and pay this – this bloodsucker – twelve hundred pounds?”

Chapter Two – THE PROUD GOAT OF ALOYSIUS PANKBURN

I

Quick eye that he had for the promise of adventure, prepared always for the unexpected to leap out at him from behind the nearest cocoanut tree, nevertheless David Grief received no warning when he laid eyes on Aloysius Pankburn. It was on the little steamer Berthe. Leaving his schooner to follow, Grief had taken passage for the short run across from Raiatea to Papeete. When he first saw Aloysius Pankburn, that somewhat fuddled gentleman was drinking a lonely cocktail at the tiny bar between decks next to the barber shop. And when Grief left the barber’s hands half an hour later Aloysius Pankburn was still hanging over the bar still drinking by himself.

Now it is not good for man to drink alone, and Grief threw sharp scrutiny into his pass-ing glance. He saw a well-built young man of thirty, well-featured, well-dressed, and evidently, in the world’s catalogue, a gentleman. But in the faint hint of slovenliness, in the shaking, eager hand that spilled the liquor, and in the nervous, vacillating eyes, Grief read the unmistakable marks of the chronic alcoholic.

After dinner he chanced upon Pankburn again. This time it was on deck, and the young man, clinging to the rail and peering into the distance at the dim forms of a man and woman in two steamer chairs drawn closely together, was crying, drunkenly. Grief noted that the man’s arm was around the woman’s waist. Aloysius Pankburn looked on and cried.

“Nothing to weep about,” Grief said genially.

Pankburn looked at him, and gushed tears of profound self-pity.

“It’s hard,” he sobbed. “Hard. Hard. That man’s my business manager. I employ him. I pay him a good screw. And that’s how he earns it.”

“In that case, why don’t you put a stop to it?” Grief advised.

“I can’t. She’d shut off my whiskey. She’s my trained nurse.”

“Fire her, then, and drink your head off.”

“I can’t. He’s got all my money. If I did, he wouldn’t give me sixpence to buy a drink with.”

This woful possibility brought a fresh wash of tears. Grief was interested. Of all unique situations he could never have imagined such a one as this.

“They were engaged to take care of me,” Pankburn was blubbering, “to keep me away from the drink. And that’s the way they do it, lollygagging all about the ship and letting me drink myself to death. It isn’t right, I tell you. It isn’t right. They were sent along with me for the express purpose of not letting me drink, and they let me drink to swinishness as long as I leave them alone. If I complain they threaten not to let me have another drop. What can a poor devil do? My death will be on their heads, that’s all. Come on down and join me.”

He released his clutch on the rail, and would have fallen had Grief not caught his arm. He seemed to undergo a transformation, to stiffen physically, to thrust his chin forward aggressively, and to glint harshly in his eyes.

“I won’t let them kill me. And they’ll be sorry. I’ve offered them fifty thousand – later on, of course. They laughed. They don’t know. But I know.” He fumbled in his coat pocket and drew forth an object that flashed in the faint light. “They don’t know the meaning of that. But I do.” He looked at Grief with abrupt suspicion. “What do you make out of it, eh? What do you make out of it?”

David Grief caught a swift vision of an alcoholic degenerate putting a very loving young couple to death with a copper spike, for a copper spike was what he held in his hand, an evident old-fashioned ship-fastening.

“My mother thinks I’m up here to get cured of the booze habit. She doesn’t know. I bribed the doctor to prescribe a voyage. When we get to Papeete my manager is going to charter a schooner and away we’ll sail. But they don’t dream. They think it’s the booze. I know. I only know. Good night, sir. I’m going to bed – unless – er – you’ll join me in a night cap. One last drink, you know.”

II

In the week that followed at Papeete Grief caught numerous and bizarre glimpses of Aloysius Pankburn. So did everybody else in the little island capital; for neither the beach nor Lavina’s boarding house had been so scandalized in years. In midday, bareheaded, clad only in swimming trunks, Aloysius Pankburn ran down the main street from Lavina’s to the water front. He put on the gloves with a fireman from the Berthe in a scheduled four-round bout at the Folies Bergères, and was knocked out in the second round. He tried insanely to drown himself in a two-foot pool of water, dived drunkenly and splendidly from fifty feet up in the rigging of the Mariposa lying at the wharf, and chartered the cutter Toerau at more than her purchase price and was only saved by his manager’s refusal financially to ratify the agreement. He bought out the old blind leper at the market, and sold breadfruit, plantains, and sweet potatoes at such cut-rates that the gendarmes were called out to break the rush of bargain-hunting natives. For that matter, three times the gendarmes arrested him for riotous behaviour, and three times his manager ceased from love-making long enough to pay the fines imposed by a needy colonial administration.

Then the Mariposa sailed for San Francisco, and in the bridal suite were the manager and the trained nurse, fresh-married. Before departing, the manager had thoughtfully bestowed eight five-pound banknotes on Aloysius, with the foreseen result that Aloysius awoke several days later to find himself broke and perilously near to delirium tremens. Lavina, famed for her good heart even among the driftage of South Pacific rogues and scamps, nursed him around and never let it filter into his returning intelligence that there was neither manager nor money to pay his board.

It was several evenings after this that David Grief, lounging under the after deck awning of the Kittiwake and idly scanning the meagre columns of the Papeete Avant-Coureur, sat suddenly up and almost rubbed his eyes. It was unbelievable, but there it was. The old South Seas Romance was not dead. He read:

WANTED – To exchange a half interest in buried treasure,

worth five million francs, for transportation for one to an

unknown island in the Pacific and facilities for carrying

away the loot. Ask for FOLLY, at Lavina’s.

Grief looked at his watch. It was early yet, only eight o’clock.

“Mr. Carlsen,” he called in the direction of a glowing pipe. “Get the crew for the whale-boat. I’m going ashore.”

The husky voice of the Norwegian mate was raised for’ard, and half a dozen strapping Rapa Islanders ceased their singing and manned the boat.

“I came to see Folly, Mr. Folly, I imagine,” David Grief told Lavina.

He noted the quick interest in her eyes as she turned her head and flung a command in native across two open rooms to the outstanding kitchen. A few minutes later a barefooted native girl padded in and shook her head.

Lavina’s disappointment was evident.

“You’re stopping aboard the Kittiwake, aren’t you?” she said. “I’ll tell him you called.”

“Then it is a he?” Grief queried.

Lavina nodded.

“I hope you can do something for him, Captain Grief. I’m only a good-natured woman. I don’t know. But he’s a likable man, and he may be telling the truth; I don’t know. You’ll know. You’re not a soft-hearted fool like me. Can’t I mix you a cocktail?”

III

Back on board his schooner and dozing in a deck chair under a three-months-old magazine, David Grief was aroused by a sobbing, slubbering noise from overside. He opened his eyes. From the Chilian cruiser, a quarter of a mile away, came the stroke of eight bells. It was midnight. From overside came a splash and another slubbering noise. To him it seemed half amphibian, half the sounds of a man crying to himself and querulously chanting his sorrows to the general universe.

A jump took David Grief to the low rail. Beneath, centred about the slubbering noise, was an area of agitated phosphorescence. Leaning over, he locked his hand under the armpit of a man, and, with pull and heave and quick-changing grips, he drew on deck the naked form of Aloysius Pankburn.

“I didn’t have a sou-markee,” he complained. “I had to swim it, and I couldn’t find your gangway. It was very miserable. Pardon me. If you have a towel to put about my middle, and a good stiff drink, I’ll be more myself. I’m Mr. Folly, and you’re the Captain Grief, I presume, who called on me when I was out. No, I’m not drunk. Nor am I cold. This isn’t shivering. Lavina allowed me only two drinks to-day. I’m on the edge of the horrors, that’s all, and I was beginning to see things when I couldn’t find the gangway. If you’ll take me below I’ll be very grateful. You are the only one that answered my advertisement.”

He was shaking pitiably in the warm night, and down in the cabin, before he got his towel, Grief saw to it that a half-tumbler of whiskey was in his hand.

“Now fire ahead,” Grief said, when he had got his guest into a shirt and a pair of duck trousers. “What’s this advertisement of yours? I’m listening.”

Pankburn looked at the whiskey bottle, but Grief shook his head.

“All right, Captain, though I tell you on whatever is left of my honour that I am not drunk – not in the least. Also, what I shall tell you is true, and I shall tell it briefly, for it is clear to me that you are a man of affairs and action. Likewise, your chemistry is good. To you alcohol has never been a million maggots gnawing at every cell of you. You’ve never been to hell. I am there now. I am scorching. Now listen.

“My mother is alive. She is English. I was born in Australia. I was educated at York and Yale. I am a master of arts, a doctor of philosophy, and I am no good. Furthermore, I am an alcoholic. I have been an athlete. I used to swan-dive a hundred and ten feet in the clear. I hold several amateur records. I am a fish. I learned the crawl-stroke from the first of the Cavilles. I have done thirty miles in a rough sea. I have another record. I have punished more whiskey than any man of my years. I will steal sixpence from you for the price of a drink. Finally, I will tell you the truth.