Chapter III

Day before we sailed, down came two trunks and a hat box, and the next day down came the girl herself with the old Kanaka mammy and Pat.

He stood on the wharfside and waved to us as we were tugged out, and Sadie stood and waved back to him. She had a lot of good points that girl, though straight dealing wasn’t one of them, and she didn’t seem to mind, no more than if she was going on a picnic. She took the tumble at the bar as if she was used to it, and she settled to the life of the ship same as a man might have done.

She was always wanting to know things—names of the ropes and all such, and she hadn’t been a week on board before she began to poke her nose into the navigating and charts. She used to cough sometimes at first, but after a while she dropped all that, saying the sea air had taken her cough away.

Now you wouldn’t believe unless you’d been there, the down we took on that piece before a week had gone.

It wasn’t anything she said or anything she did, it was just the way she carried on. She was civil and she gave no more trouble than another might have done, but we weren’t her style, and she made us feel it. Only a woman can make a strong and straight man feel like a worm. It wasn’t even that she despised us for being below her class, she didn’t; she never thought of us, and she made us feel we weren’t men but just things—get me?

“Buck,” I says to him one day, “if you could hollow that piece out, stick her on a pivot and put a lid on her, she’d make an A 1 freezing machine.”

“She would,” said Buck, “and if you were to plate her with gold and set her with diamonds, you couldn’t make a lady out of her.”

“That’s so,” said I, “but all the same she’ll be an A 1 navigator before she’s done with us.”

One evening, somewhere north of Palmyra—we’d been blown a bit south of our course—I was on deck. Buck was below and a Kanaka was at the wheel, and a moon like a frying pan was rising up and lighting the deck so’s you could count the dowels. I’d turned to have a look over the after rail, and when I turned again there was Buck just come on deck and an hour before his time.

He came up and took me by the arm and walked me forward a bit.

“I’ve found it out,” he says.

“What?” I asks.

“Why Pat O’Brien took Mrs. Murphy’s child off to buy it candy,” he says.

I thought he’d gone off his head for the moment.

“I’ve been thinking and thinking ever since we left ’Frisco,” he goes on, “thinking and thinking, and there it was under my nose all the time.”

“What?” I questions.

“The reason of the whole of this business,” says he, “why Pat O’Brien, the brother of my mother Mary—God rest her soul—parted with five cents to buy a kid candy, why he asked us to dinner, why he pretended that freezing mixture down below had consumption, why he shipped her on board the _Greyhound_, and what it is she’s after. It’s all as plain as day, and there’s more to it than that. Brent, we’re millionaires.”

“Look here,” I says, “like a good chap, will you take your mind off the business and pull yourself together—you’ve been thinking too much over this business; forget it.”

Buck was a queer devil. You never knew how he’d take things. Seeing I thought his head had gone wrong, instead of explaining like a sensible chap, he cut the thing off short.

“Maybe you’re right,” he says. “Maybe I’m crazy, maybe I’m not. I’ll say nothing more. We’ll see.”

I left it at that, not wanting to stir up trouble in his head, and we didn’t talk of the thing again—not for a long time, anyhow.

But a change had come over Buck. He’d got to be as cheerful as a cricket, and I’d see him sometimes at table sitting staring in front of himself as if he was looking at the New Jerusalem, instead of the bird’s-eye panelling of the after bulkhead; then, by his talk I could tell his head was travelling on the same old track; when a man talks of the building price of steam yachts you can tell how his mind is running, same as when he talks of rents on Pacific Avenue and such places. But I said nothing, just kept my head shut and let him talk, and glad I was the morning we raised Levua.

It’s a big island—if you’ve never been down that way—mountainous and with no proper reef only to the west, for east the sea comes smack up to the cliffs—but it’s pretty, what with the trees and all, and there’s a big waterfall comes down on the south from the hills that’s reckoned one of the sights of the island.

Levenstein’s house was on the beach to the west; a run of reef, broken here and there, kept the sea pretty smooth on the beach, and there was ten fathoms close up to the sand. A lot of scouring goes on there with the tides, and the fishings the best I’ve seen anywhere, just in that bit of water.

Old Pat O’Brien hadn’t asked to see a photograph of Levenstein, else maybe he wouldn’t have been so keen on shipping Sadie off on her travels; I’d forgot the fellow’s good looks, but when he boarded us after we’d dropped the hook, I remembered the fact and I saw he’d taken Sadie’s eye.

Levenstein wasn’t unlike Kaiser Bill, only younger and better-looking; he was the sort women like, and he could coo like a damn turtle dove when he was in the mind, but he had the reputation of having whipped a Kanaka to death. I’d just as soon have given a girl’s happiness to that chap as I’d have given a rump steak to a tiger cat trustin’ in it to honour it. No, sir, that build don’t make for happiness, not much, and if Sadie had been my girl when I saw her setting her eyes on him like that, I’d have put the _Greyhound_ to sea again, even if I’d had to shove her over the reef to get out.

But I wasn’t bothering about Sadie’s happiness; I reckoned a little unhappiness mightn’t help to do her much harm by unsticking her glue a bit, and I reckon Buck felt the same, so, having business in the trade room and ashore enough to last us for days, we let things rip and didn’t bother.

Sadie and the old Mammy were given the overseer’s house on shore, and the girl settled down to enjoy herself. She was awfully keen on exploring the island and seeing the natives, and she and the old Kanaka woman would make excursions, taking their grub with them, and having picnics all over the place, and Levenstein would go with her sometimes, and Marks, from the north of the island, would come over sometimes, and it made my blood fair boil to see her carrying on with those two Germans because she thought them gentlemen, and at the same time cold-shouldering us as if we weren’t more than the dirt she walked on.

I said the same to Buck, and Buck he only says: “Leave her to me,” he says, “she’s come out to get what she won’t get, but she’ll get what she little expects if she marries uncle Lev,” says Buck. “Leave her to me,” he says, “I’ll l’arn her before I’ve done with her,” he says. “Damn her!” says he—which wasn’t the language to use about a girl, but then Sadie wasn’t so much a girl as a china figure all prickles, no use to hold or carry and not the ornament you’d care to stick on your chimney-piece if you wanted to be happy in your home.

One day Buck says to me: “Come on over to the north of the island,” he says, “I want to have a talk to Marks.”

“What about?” I asks.

“The beauty of the scenery,” he replies.

Off we started. Germans are some good, they can make roads—if I haven’t told you Levua was a German island, I’ll tell you now. I’m saying Germans can make roads, and if you doubt me, go and see the twelve-mile coral road they’ve made round Nauru or what they’ve done in German New Guinea, and the road to Marks’ plantation was as good as those.

Coming along for late afternoon we hit the place, and found Marks in. Marks was like one of those Dutchmen you see in the comic papers, long china pipe and all, but he was the most level-headed man in the Islands, and I soon found that Buck had come to him for information and not to talk about the beauty of the scenery.

We had drinks and cigars, and presently Buck says to Marks, “Look here,” he says, “you’re a man that knows everything about the West Pacific, s’pose I found an island that wasn’t on the charts and didn’t belong to anybody, which of the blessed nations would make a claim to it; would it be the one whose territory was closest to it?”

Marks leans back in his chair and lights his pipe again, then he says: “If you find an unknown island, it would belong to England or Germany, all depends on where it lies in the West Pacific.”

“How’s that?” says Buck. “Why wouldn’t the French or Dutch have a look in?”

“It’s this way,” says Marks, “Germany in old days wasn’t a sea-going nation much, and so the English and French and Dutch took up nearly all the islands of the Pacific, leaving Germany in the cold till 1865, when she began to want things and show that she could get them. She took a big bite of New Guinea, then she came to an arrangement with England that she and England would take all the lands and islands in the West Pacific no one else had seized and divide them between them. Get me?”

“Yes,” says Buck.

“The line starts from New Guinea,” says Marks, “then goes east, then north to fifteen degrees north latitude, and 173 degrees, 30 seconds east longitude; anything new found west of that would be German, anything to the east, British.”

“Show us the line on a map,” says Buck, and Marks gets up and fetches down a map and draws the line with a pencil.

Buck gives a great sigh and thanks him, and then we started off back home with the rising moon to show us our way and a three hours’ tramp before us.

On the way I tried to get out of him what his meaning was in asking those questions, but he wouldn’t tell.

“You thought I was mad when I tried to tell you first,” he said, “and now you’ll have to wait till I’ve landed the business, but I’ll tell you one thing——”

“What?” I asks.

“Never mind,” he says, “shut heads are best where a word might spoil everything.”