Chapter V

“He’d struck an idea in the night of how to dispose of Tawela. Buck had a fine knowledge of the Kanaka mind, and when he’d explained his idea to us I allowed it was a peach, if what he said was true.

“Have you ever heard tell of the Swatchway—the Scours some call it? It’s an island, or more truly speaking a big lump of reef with half a dozen cocoanut trees on it lying south of the Australs about four hundred and fifty miles from the steamer track between Auckland and Tahiti. It’s got reefs round it all spouting like whales, and ships’ captains give it a big wide berth.

“Well, Buck’s plan was to land Tawela on the Scours; there’s water there according to the Pacific Directory, and Buck said he wasn’t going to maroon her without grub. He’d give her six months’ grub—canned. Bully beef and so on with biscuits in tins. If she starved herself to death in the middle of plenty then it wouldn’t be our fault. He said he’d come back in six months, and if she was alive he’d take her back home, said she was only an ignorant Kanaka and he reckoned six months’ punishment would fill the bill, and if she chose to kill herself, why, then it would be Providence not us that did the business.

“Ridley, at first go off, flew out against this till Buck quieted him, asking who was master of the schooner, and whether he wanted to be logged for insubordination; the course was changed to sou’-sou’-west and two days later we raised the Scours.

“There were six cocoanut trees there, all bearing, so we cut them down and brought the nuts on board, then we landed Tawela and her provisions with a can opener, showing her how to use it. There was a fresh water pond in the coral, so she couldn’t want for water, and there we left her.

“We made for Suva and sold that coral, not getting near the price we thought to, and then we ran a cargo to Auckland.

“I’d noticed for some time Buck wasn’t the man he used to be, and one night it come out. ‘I’ve got something on my mind,’ he says, ‘it’s that dam Kanaka. Can’t help thinking about her. My conscience is clear enough,’ he says, ‘for she deserved her gruel, but I can’t help thinking of her—wonder if she’s dead.’

“‘Oh, it’s ten to one she’s either broke her tabu or some ship has taken her off by this,’ I says to ease him, for I saw that being a good-hearted chap, and imaginative as most Irishmen are, the thing was hitting him as it never hit me.

“Buck shakes his head and falls back into himself and says no more, and time goes on, till one day when we were on the run to Papeete with a mixed cargo, seeing that the chap was making an old man of himself over the business, I says, ‘S’pose we run down to the Scours now instead of on the voyage back as you’d fixed, and see what’s become of that woman?’

“His face lit up, but he pretended to hang off for a while; then he falls in with the idea, and we shifted the helm, raising the place four days later and dropping anchor outside the reefs four months and eight days from the time we’d left it.

“There wasn’t a sign to be seen of anyone on the island, so Buck tells me to take a boat and look; he hadn’t the heart to go himself and said so, plump, and off I put, leaving the boat’s crew with the boat on the beach and tramping across the coral on the look-out for signs.

“I found the canned stuff. There had evidently been a big wind and blown the stuff about, and I found it here and there, but not one empty can could I find or one that had been opened, then, in a dip of the coral I found a skull, the black hair still sticking to it, and a backbone and ribs—the birds make a skeleton of a corpse in no time on a place like that; I reckon I could have found the whole skeleton if I’d hunted, but I didn’t. I put back for the schooner and came on board laughing.

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘she’s done us. You and your talk of Kanakas not breaking their tabu; why, half the tins are opened and empty, and she’s gone, took off by some ship.’

“‘Thank God,’ says Buck.

“That lie of mine lifted the black dog right off his back, and to his dying day he never knew he’d killed that woman as sure as if he’d shot her with a gun. He was as cheerful as a magpie all the rest of that voyage, and so was I. You see I’d heard Sellers screaming whilst those brutes were doing him in and Buck hadn’t.

“That’s all I know about tabu, but it’s first-hand knowledge, personal experience as you might say.”

He ceased, and through the night came the voices of fish spearers from the reef and the far rumble of the surf, and from the back premises the voice of Tahori singing some old song of an Island world whose brilliancy breaks sometimes to reveal the strangest phantoms from the Past.

XI—THE STORY OF BILLY BROKE