Rídan The Devil And Other Stories

Only one word did he say as he turned away, and that was ‘Farewell,’ and Milli answered ‘Farewell, Narü;’ but when he had gone some distance she followed him and sobbed softly to herself.

And soon, as Narü walked, his body swayed to and fro and his feet struck the roots of the trees that grew out through the soil along the path. Then Milli, running swiftly up, caught him as he fell, and laid his head upon her knees. His eyes were closed and his skin dead to her touch.

Presently the bushes near by parted, and two women came out, and lifting Narü between them, they carried the young man to a shady place and laid him down.

And then Milli wept as she bent her face over that of the man she loved, but the two older women bade her cease.

Once more the girl looked at Narü, and then, stepping out into the path, ran swiftly towards the village.

The five canoes were now sailing quickly over the smooth lagoon, with the streamers from their mat sails floating in the wind, and on the stages that ran from their sides to the outriggers were grouped parties of singers and dancers, with painted bodies and faces dyed scarlet with the juice of the mati berry, who sang and danced, and shouted, and made a brave show for the people who awaited their coming on the shore.

On the great stage of the first canoe, which was painted black, was seated Laea, surrounded by her women attendants, who joined in the wild singing whenever the name of their mistress formed the singers’ theme.

Then suddenly, as each steersman let fall from his hand his great steering paddle, which was secured by a rope to the side, the canoes ran up into the wind, the huge mat sails were lowered, the stone anchors dropped overboard, and the music and dancing ceased.

And then a strange thing happened, and Laea, who was of a proud and haughty disposition, as became her lineage, grew pale with anger; for suddenly the great crowd of people which had assembled on the beach seemed to sway to and fro, and then separate and form into two bodies; and she saw that the women and children had gathered apart from the men and stood in a compact mass on the brow of the beach, and the men, in strange, ominous quiet, spear and club in hand, had ranged, without a sound, in battle array before her escort.

There was silence awhile, and then Tanéo, the foster brother of Narü, clothed in his armour of cinnet fibre, and grasping a short stabbing spear in his hand, stepped out of the ranks.

‘Get thee back again to Tahiti, O men of Paré,’ he said quietly, striking his spear into the sand. ‘This marriage is not to our minds.’

Then Laea, as she looked at the amazed and angered faces of her people as they heard Tanéo’s insulting words, dashed aside her attendants, and leaping from the canoe into the shallow water, walked to the shore, and stood face to face with him.

‘Who art thou, fellow, to stand before the daughter of Tetoro the King, with a spear in thy rude hand, and thy mouth filled with saucy words?’

‘I am Tanéo, the foster brother of the man thou seekest to marry. And because that a warning hath come to us against this marriage do I stand here, spear in hand.’

Laea laughed scornfully.

‘I seek thy brother in marriage? Thou fool! Would I, the daughter of my father, seek any man for husband? Hath not this Narü pestered me so with his presents and his love-offerings that, for very weariness, and to please my father, I turned my face from the Englishman who buildeth ships for him, and said “Aye” to this Narü—who is but a little man13—when he besought me to be wife to him. Ah! the Englishman, who is both a clever and strong man, is more to my liking.’

‘Get thee back, then, to thy Englishman, and leave to me my lover,’ cried a woman’s voice, and Milli the Slave, thrusting aside the armed men who sought to stay her, sprang out upon the sand, and clenching her hands tightly, gazed fiercely at the king’s daughter.

‘Thy lover!’ and Laea looked contemptuously at the small, slender figure of the slave girl, and then her cheek darkened with rage as she turned to her followers. ‘See how this dog of a Narü hath insulted me! Have I come all this way to be fooled for the sake of such a miserable creature as this?’ and she pointed scornfully to Milli and then spat on the ground. ‘Where is this fellow? Let him come near to me so that I may tell him to his face that I have ever despised him as one beneath me. Where is he, I ask thee, girl?’ And she seized the slave girl by her wrist.

The savage fury of her voice, her blazing eyes, and noble, commanding presence, excited alike both her own people and the clustering throng of armed men that stood watching on the beach, for these latter, by some common impulse moved nearer, and at the same time every man in the five canoes sprang out, and, dashing through the water, ranged themselves beside their mistress.

‘Back!’ cried Tanéo, warningly; ‘back, ye men of Paré, back, ere it be too late, and thou, Laea, harm not the girl, for see, O foolish woman! we here are as ten to one, and ‘twill be a bloody day for thee and thy people if but a spear be raised.’

And then, facing round, he cried, ‘And back, O men of Tetuaroa. Why draw ye so near? Must blood run because of the vain and bitter words of a silly woman?’

Then, with an angry gesture, Laea released her hold of the slave girl’s slender wrist, and she, too, held up a warning hand to her warriors.

‘True, Tanéo,’ she said mockingly; ‘thy people are as ten to one of mine, as thou sayest, and for this alone dost thou dare insult me. Oh, thou coward, Tanéo!’

A swift gleam of anger shone in Tanéo’s eyes, and his hand grasped his spear tightly. Then he looked steadily at the king’s daughter, and answered.

‘Nay, no coward am I, Laea. And see, if but a little blood will appease thee, take this spear and slay me. It is better for one to die than many.’ Stretching out his hand, he gave her his spear.

She waved it back sneeringly.

‘Thy words are brave, Tanéo; but only because that behind them lieth no danger. Only a coward could talk as—’

He sprang back.

‘Ho, men of Paré! Listen! So that but one or two men may die, and many live, let this quarrel lie between me and any one of ye that will battle with me here, spear to spear, on this beach. Is it not better so than that Tetoro the King should weep for so many of his people?’

A tall, grey-headed old warrior leapt out from the ranks of those that stood behind Laea.

‘Thou and I, Tanéo, shall fight till one of us be slain.’

Suddenly Milli the Slave sprang between them with outstretched arms.

‘Peace, peace! Drop thou thy spear, Tanéo, and thou thine, old man. There is no need for blood but mine—for Narü is dead.’

Then, kneeling on the sand she said, ‘Draw near to me and listen.’

Quickly the opposing parties formed a circle around her; before her stood the haughty and angry Laea; behind her, and standing side by side, Tanéo and the grey-haired Tahitian warrior.

‘I am Milli, the bond-woman of Mahua, the father of Narü. And Narü loved me; but because of thee, O Laea, he turned from me, and my heart became cold. For who would give food to my child when it was born—the child of a slave whose lover was a chief and who had cast her off? And then there came a vision to me in the night, and I saw the things of which I have told ye, O men of Tetuaroa. And I knew that the black cloud of my vision was sent to warn the people of this land against the marriage, and the hunger and the bitter days of poverty that would come of it. And so, because thou art a great woman, O Laea, and I but a poor slave, did I meet Narü but a little while since and give him to drink; and when he drank of that which I gave him he died, for it was poisoned.’

A low murmur, half anger, half pity, broke from the assembled people.

‘Thou fool!’ said Laea, pityingly; and then she turned to Tanéo.

‘And so thy brother hath died by the hand of a slave? Let us part in peace. Farewell!’

And then, as the men of Paré returned in silence to their canoes, Tanéo and his people closed in upon the kneeling figure of the slave girl, who bent her head as a man stepped before her with a club.

When the five canoes had sailed away a little distance from the beach, Laea saw the men of Tetuaroa open out their ranks, and, looking in the midst, she saw, lying face downwards on the sand, the body of Milli the Slave.

DENISON GETS A BERTH ASHORE

After many years as supercargo, ‘blackbirder‘14 and trader in the South Seas, Tom Denison one day found himself in Sydney with less than ten shillings in his pocket, and with a strong fraternal yearning to visit his brother, who was a bank manager in North Queensland and a very good-natured man. So he sent a telegram, ‘Tired of the sea. Can you find me a billet ashore?’ An answer soon came, ‘Yes, if you can manage poultry farm and keep books. If so, will wire passage money and expenses.’

Denison pondered over the situation. He had seen a lot of poultry in his time—in coops on board the Indiana and the Palestine; and one Captain ‘Bully’ Hayes, with whom he had once sailed as supercargo, had told him a lot of things about game fowls, to which birds the genial ‘Bully’ had a great leaning—but was not sure that he was good at books. In fact, the owners of the Palestine had said that his system of book-keeping had driven the senior partner to drink, and they always sent a ‘Manual of Book-keeping’ on board every time the ship sailed from Sydney. At the same time Denison was touched by the allusion to passage money and expenses, and felt that making entries about the birth of clutches of chickens and ducklings, and the number of eggs sold, would be simple enough—much easier than the heartbreaking work of a supercargo, when such customers as Flash Harry of Apia or Fiji Bill of Apamama would challenge the correctness of their grog bills, and offer to fight him instead of paying. And then, he thought, it would be simply delightful to sit in a room in a quiet farmhouse and hear the gentle moaning of calves and the cheerful cackle of exultant hens, as he wrote items in a book about eggs and things, and drink buttermilk, instead of toiling in the ill-smelling trade-room on board the Palestine, bottling off Queensland rum and opening tierces of negrohead tobacco, while the brig was either standing on her head or rolling her soul out, and Packenham the skipper was using shocking language to everyone on deck.

So he sent a ‘collect’ telegram to his brother, and stated that he thoroughly understood all branches of poultry and book-keeping.

On the voyage up to Cooktown he kept to himself, and studied ‘Pip and Its Remedy,’ ‘Warts and the Sulphur Cure,’ ‘Milligan on Roup in Ducks,’ and other valuable works; so that when the steamer reached the port and he met his brother, the latter was deeply impressed with the profound knowledge he displayed of the various kinds of poultry diseases, and said he felt sure that Denison would ‘make the thing pay.’ The poultry farm, he said, belonged to the bank, which had advanced money to the former proprietor, who had most unjustifiably died in delirium tremens at Cooktown Hospital a few months ago, leaving the farm to the care of some aboriginals, and his estate much in debt to the good, kind bank.

On the following evening Denison was driven out to the place by his brother, who took advantage of the occasion to point out to the youth the beauties of a country life, away from the temptations of cities. Also he remarked upon the folly of a young man spending the bloom of his years among the dissolute natives of the South Seas; and then casually inquired if the women down there were pretty. Then the younger Denison began to talk, and the elder brother immediately pulled up the horse from a smart trot into a slow walk, saying there was no need to rush along on such a hot night, and that he liked to hear about the customs of foreign countries. About ten o’clock they reached their destination, and the elder brother, without getting out of the trap and entering the house, hurriedly bade Tom good-bye and drove off as quickly as possible, fearing that if he stayed till the morning, and the youth saw the place by daylight, the latter would become a fratricide.

The occupants of the farm were, the new manager found, three black fellows and two ‘gins,‘15 all of whom were in a state of stark nudity; but they welcomed him with smiles and an overpowering smell of ants, the which latter is peculiar to the Australian nigger. One of the bucks, who when Denison entered was sleeping, with three exceedingly mangy dogs, in the ex-proprietor’s bunk—a gorgeous affair made of a badly-smelling new green hide stretched between four posts, at once got up and gave him possession of the couch; and Denison, being very tired, spread his rug over the hide and turned in, determined not to grumble, and make the thing pay, and then buy a place in the Marquesas or Samoa in a few years, and die in comfort. During the night the mosquitoes worried him incessantly, until one of the coloured ladies, who slept on the ground in the next room, hearing his petulant exclamations, brought him a dirty piece of rag, soaked in kerosene, and told him to anoint his hair, face and hands with it. He did so, and then fell asleep comfortably.

Early in the morning he rose and inspected the place (which I forgot to say was twenty miles from Cooktown, and on the bank of the Endeavour River). He found it to consist of two rusty old corrugated iron buildings, vaguely surrounded by an enormous amount of primaeval desolation and immediately encompassed by several hundred dead cattle (in an advanced state of putrefaction) picturesquely disposed about the outskirts of the premises. But Denison, being by nature a cheerful man, remembered that his brother (who was pious) had alluded to a drought, and said that rain was expected every day, as the newly-appointed Bishop of North Queensland had appointed a day of general humiliation and prayer, and that poultry-rearing was bound to pay.

The stock of poultry was then rounded up by the black-fellows for his inspection—thirty-seven dissolute-looking ducks, ninety-three degraded and anaemic female fowls, thirteen spirit-broken roosters, and eleven apathetic geese. Denison caught one of the ducks, which immediately endeavoured to swallow his fore-finger, under the impression it was food of some sort.

‘Jacky,’ he said to the leading coloured gentleman, ‘my brother told me that there were five hundred ducks here. Where are they?’

Jacky said that the ducks would go on the river and that ‘plenty feller big alligator eat ‘em up.’

‘Then where are the seven hundred and fifty laying hens?’

Jacky scratched his woolly head and grinned. ‘Goanner’ eat some, snake eat some, some die, some run away in bush, hawk eat some. By –, this feller duck and fowl altogether dam fool.’ »

During the following week Denison found that Jacky had not deviated from the truth—the alligators did eat the ducks, the tiger and carpet-snakes and iguanas did crawl about the place at night-time and seize any luckless fowl not strong enough to fly up to roost in the branch of a tree, the hawks did prefer live poultry to long-deceased bullock, and those hens physically capable of laying eggs laid them on an ironstone ridge about a mile away from the house. He went there one day, found nine eggs, and saw five death adders and a large and placid carpet snake. Then he wrote to his brother, and said that he thought the place would pay when the drought broke up, but he did not feel justified in taking £3, 10s. a week from the bank under the present circumstances, and would like to resign his berth, as he was afraid he was about to get an attack of fever.

A few days later he received an official letter from the bank, signed ‘C. Aubrey Denison, Manager,’ expressing surprise at his desire to give up the control of a concern that was ‘bound to pay,’ and for the management of which the bank had rejected twenty-three other applications in his favour, and suggesting that, as the poultry were not thriving, he might skin the carcases of such cattle as died in the future, and send the hides to Cooktown—‘for every hide the bank will allow you 2s. 6d. nett.’ With the official letter was a private communication from the Elder Brother telling him not to be disheartened so quickly—the place was sure to pay as soon as the drought broke up; also that as the river water was bad, and tea made from it was not good for anyone with fever, he was sending up a dozen of whisky by the mailman next week. Again Denison was touched by his brother’s thoughtfulness, and decided to remain for another week at least. But at night-time he thought a good deal about the dear old Palestine and Harvey Packenham, her skipper.

While awaiting with considerable anxiety the arrival of the mailman, Denison passed the time in killing tiger-snakes, cremating the dead cattle around the place, bathing in the only pool in the river safe from alligators, and meditating upon the advantages of a berth ashore. But when the mailman arrived (four days late) with only five bottles of whisky, and said in a small, husky voice that the pack-horse had fallen and broken seven bottles, he felt a soured and disappointed man, and knew that he was only fit for the sea. The mailman, to whom he expressed these sentiments, told him to cheer up. It was loneliness, he said, that made him feel like that, and he for his part ‘didn’t like to see no man feelin’ lonely in the bloomin’ bush.’ Therefore he would keep him company for a few days, and let the sanguinary mail go to Hades.

He did keep him company. And then, when the whisky was finished, he bade Denison good-bye, and said that any man who would send ‘his own bloomin’ brother to perish in such a place was not fit to live himself, and ought to be flamin’ well shown up in the bloomin’ noospapers.’ At daybreak next morning Denison told the coloured ladies and gentlemen to eat the remaining poultry; and, shouldering his swag, tramped it into Cooktown to ‘look for a ship.’

ADDIE RANSOM: A MEMORY OF THE TOKELAUS

A hot, steamy mist rose from the gleaming, oily sea, and the little island lay sweltering and gasping under a sky of brass and a savagely blazing sun. Along the edges of the curving lines of yellow beach the drought-smitten plumes of the fast-withering coco-palms drooped straight, brown and motionless; and Wallis, the trader at Avamua village, as he paced to and fro upon the heated boards of his verandah, cursed the island and the people, and the deadly calm, and the brassy sky, and the firm of Tom de Wolf & Sons (whom he blamed for the weather), and the drought, and the sickness, and the overdue ship, and himself, and everything else; and he wished that Lita would go away for a month—her patience and calmness worried and irritated him. Then he might perhaps try getting drunk on Sundays like Ransom; to-day was Sunday, and another Sunday meant another hell of twelve hours’ heat, and misery, and hope deferred.

‘Curse that damned bell! There it goes again, though half of the people are dead, and the other half are dying like rotten sheep! Oh, for a ship, or rain, or a howling gale—anything but this!’

He dashed his pipe furiously upon the verandah, and then flung himself into a cane lounge, pressed his hands to his ears, and swore silently at the jarring clamour of the hated church bell.

Lita’s brown hand touched him on the shoulder.

‘Wassa th’ matter, Tom, wis you?’

‘Oh, go away, for God’s sake, Lita, there’s a good girl. Leave me alone. Go to church, and tell Ioane I’ll give him a couple of dollars not to ring that damned, infernal bell again to-day. I’m going mad! I’ll get drunk, I think, like Ransom. My God! just think of it, girl! Twelve months without a ship, and this hateful, God-forsaken island turning into a pest-house.’

‘Wasa is pesta-house, Tom?’

‘Place where they put people in to die—lazzaretto, charnel-house, morgue, living grave! Oh, go away, girl, go to the blarsted church if you want to, and leave me alone.’

Her slender fingers touched his hand timidly.

‘I don’ wan’ go to church, Tom. I don’ wan’ leave you here to get mad an’ lon’ly by yourse’f.’

‘Very well, old woman, stay here with me. Perhaps a breeze may come by-and-by and then we can breathe. How many people died yesterday, Lita?’

‘’Bout nine, Tom—four men, tree woman, an’ some child.’

‘Poor devils! I wish I had some medicine for them. But I’m hanged if I know what it is—some sort of cholera brought here by that infernal American missionary brig, I believe. Hallo! there’s Ioane beginning.’

The white-walled native church was not a stone’s throw away, and through the wide, paneless windows and open doors the deep voice of Ioane, the Samoan native teacher, sounded clearly and solemnly in the still, heated morn. Wallis, with his wide straw hat covering his bronzed face, lay back in the lounge, and, at first, took no heed. Lita, sitting at his feet, rested her chin on one hand and listened intently.

‘Turn ye all, men and women of this afflicted land of Nukutavau, to the Word of God, which is written in the Book of Isaiah, in the fortieth chapter and the sixth verse. It was to my mind that we should first sing to the praise of Jehovah; but, alas! we cannot sing to-day; for my cheeks are wetted with many tears, and my belly is bursting with sorrow when I see how few there are of us who are left. But yet can we pray together; and the whisper of affliction shall as surely reach the ear of God as the loud, glad song of praise. But first hear ye these words:—

‘“The Voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? And the Voice answered. All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth; because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: Surely the people is grass.”’

Wallis sat up and listened; for as the preacher ceased he heard the sound of many sobs; and presently a woman, old, gaunt and feeble, staggered out from the church and flung herself face downwards upon the burning sand.

‘A mate, a mate tatou,’ she moaned, ‘e agi mai le manava Ieova.’ (‘We perish, we perish with the breath of Jehovah.’)

She lay there unheeded; for now the preacher, with broken voice, was passionately imploring his congregation to cast themselves upon the mercy of God, and beseech Him to stay the deadly pestilence which had so sorely smitten the land.

‘And spare Thou, O God Most High, Most Merciful, and Most Just, these many little children who yet live, for they are but very small, and have not yet sinned before Thee. Three of mine own hast thou touched with Thy hand, and taken to Thee, and my belly and the belly of my wife are empty, and yearn in the night for the voices we shall hear no more. And for those three whom Thou hast taken, spare Thou three of those who yet live. And shield, O God, with Thy care, the papalagi16 Ranisome and his child, the girl Ati’ (Addie), ‘for she loveth Thy word; and turn Thou the heart of her father from the drinking of grog, so that he shall be no more as a hog that is loia.‘17 ‘And shield, too, the papalagi Walesi and the woman Lita—she who liveth with him in sin—for their hearts are ever good and their hands ever open to us of Nukutavau; and send, O most merciful and compassionate One, a ship, so that the two white men and the woman Lita, and the girl Ati, and we, Thy people, may not die of hunger and thirst and sickness, but live to praise Thy holy name.’

A burst of weeping, and Amene! Amene! came from his hearers, then silence; and Wallis, taking his hat from his face, bent his head.

Presently the scanty congregation came slowly forth. Some, as they passed the white man and Lita, tried to smile a greeting to them, though every brown face was wet with tears. Last of all came Ioane, the Samoan teacher, short, square-built, with deep sunken earnest eyes bent to the ground, his right arm supporting his wife, whose slender frame was shaken with the violence of her grief for those three of her heart whom ‘He had taken.’ Wallis, followed by Lita, stepped down from his verandah, and held out his hand. The teacher pressed it in silence, and, unable now to speak, walked slowly on. Lita, her dark, oval face still hot with anger, drew back and made no sign, though Eliné, the teacher’s wife, murmured as she passed,—‘Nay, be not angry, Lita; for death is near to us all.’