Black men's heads he would sell for one quid. He had some pickaninny heads, in poor condition, that he would let go for ten bob.
Five minutes afterward, Bertie found himself sitting on the companionway-slide alongside a black with a horrible skin disease. He sheered off, and on inquiry was told that it was leprosy. He hurried below and washed himself with antiseptic soap. He took many antiseptic washes in the course of the day, for every native on board was afflicted with malignant ulcers of one sort or another.
As the Arla drew in to an anchorage in the midst of mangrove swamps, a double row of barbed wire was stretched around above her rail. That looked like business, and when Bertie saw the shore canoes alongside, armed with spears, bows and arrows, and Sniders, he wished more earnestly than ever that the cruise was over.
That evening the natives were slow in leaving the ship at sundown. A number of them checked the mate when he ordered them ashore. 'Never mind, I'll fix them,' said Captain Hansen, diving below.
When he came back, he showed Bertie a stick of dynamite attached to a fish hook. Now it happens that a paper-wrapped bottle of chlorodyne with a piece of harmless fuse projecting can fool anybody. It fooled Bertie, and it fooled the natives. When Captain Hansen lighted the fuse and hooked the fish hook into the tail end of a native's loin cloth, that native was smitten with so an ardent a desire for the shore that he forgot to shed the loin cloth. He started for'ard, the fuse sizzling and spluttering at his rear, the natives in his path taking headers over the barbed wire at every jump. Bertie was horror-stricken. So was Captain Hansen. He had forgotten his twenty-five recruits, on each of which he had paid thirty shillings advance. They went over the side along with the shore-dwelling folk and followed by him who trailed the sizzling chlorodyne bottle.
Bertie did not see the bottle go off; but the mate opportunely discharging a stick of real dynamite aft where it would harm nobody, Bertie would have sworn in any admiralty court to a nigger blown to flinders. The flight of the twenty-five recruits had actually cost the Arla forty pounds, and, since they had taken to the bush, there was no hope of recovering them. The skipper and his mate proceeded to drown their sorrow in cold tea.
The cold tea was in whiskey bottles, so Bertie did not know it was cold tea they were mopping up. All he knew was that the two men got very drunk and argued eloquently and at length as to whether the exploded nigger should be reported as a case of dysentery or as an accidental drowning. When they snored off to sleep, he was the only white man left, and he kept a perilous watch till dawn, in fear of an attack from shore and an uprising of the crew.
Three more days the Arla spent on the coast, and three more nights the skipper and the mate drank overfondly of cold tea, leaving Bertie to keep the watch. They knew he could be depended upon, while he was equally certain that if he lived, he would report their drunken conduct to Captain Malu. Then the Arla dropped anchor at Reminge Plantation, on Guadalcanar, and Bertie landed on the beach with a sigh of relief and shook hands with the manager. Mr. Harriwell was ready for him.
'Now you mustn't be alarmed if some of our fellows seem downcast,' Mr. Harriwell said, having drawn him aside in confidence. 'There's been talk of an outbreak, and two or three suspicious signs I'm willing to admit, but personally I think it's all poppycock.'
'How—how many blacks have you on the plantation?' Bertie asked, with a sinking heart.
'We're working four hundred just now,' replied Mr. Harriwell, cheerfully; 'but the three of us, with you, of course, and the skipper and mate of the Arla, can handle them all right.'
Bertie turned to meet one McTavish, the storekeeper, who scarcely acknowledged the introduction, such was his eagerness to present his resignation.
'It being that I'm a married man, Mr. Harriwell, I can't very well afford to remain on longer. Trouble is working up, as plain as the nose on your face. The niggers are going to break out, and there'll be another Hohono horror here.'
'What's a Hohono horror?' Bertie asked, after the storekeeper had been persuaded to remain until the end of the month.
'Oh, he means Hohono Plantation, on Ysabel,' said the manager. 'The niggers killed the five white men ashore, captured the schooner, killed the captain and mate, and escaped in a body to Malaita. But I always said they were careless on Hohono. They won't catch us napping here. Come along, Mr. Arkwright, and see our view from the veranda.'
Bertie was too busy wondering how he could get away to Tulagi to the Commissioner's house, to see much of the view. He was still wondering, when a rifle exploded very near to him, behind his back. At the same moment his arm was nearly dislocated, so eagerly did Mr. Harriwell drag him indoors.
'I say, old man, that was a close shave,' said the manager, pawing him over to see if he had been hit. 'I can't tell you how sorry I am. But it was broad daylight, and I never dreamed.'
Bertie was beginning to turn pale.
'They got the other manager that way,' McTavish vouchsafed. 'And a dashed fine chap he was. Blew his brains out all over the veranda. You noticed that dark stain there between the steps and the door?'
Bertie was ripe for the cocktail which Mr. Harriwell pitched in and compounded for him; but before he could drink it, a man in riding trousers and puttees entered.
'What's the matter now?' the manager asked, after one look at the newcomer's face. 'Is the river up again?'
'River be blowed—it's the niggers. Stepped out of the cane grass, not a dozen feet away, and whopped at me. It was a Snider, and he shot from the hip. Now what I want to know is where'd he get that Snider?—Oh, I beg pardon. Glad to know you, Mr. Arkwright.'
'Mr. Brown is my assistant,' explained Mr. Harriwell. 'And now let's have that drink.'
'But where'd he get that Snider?' Mr. Brown insisted. 'I always objected to keeping those guns on the premises.'
'They're still there,' Mr. Harriwell said, with a show of heat.
Mr. Brown smiled incredulously.
'Come along and see,' said the manager.
Bertie joined the procession into the office, where Mr. Harriwell pointed triumphantly at a big packing case in a dusty corner.
'Well, then where did the beggar get that Snider?' harped Mr. Brown.
But just then McTavish lifted the packing case. The manager started, then tore off the lid. The case was empty. They gazed at one another in horrified silence. Harriwell drooped wearily.
Then McVeigh cursed.
'What I contended all along—the house-boys are not to be trusted.'
'It does look serious,' Harriwell admitted, 'but we'll come through it all right. What the sanguinary niggers need is a shaking up. Will you gentlemen please bring your rifles to dinner, and will you, Mr. Brown, kindly prepare forty or fifty sticks of dynamite. Make the fuses good and short. We'll give them a lesson. And now, gentlemen, dinner is served.'
One thing that Bertie detested was rice and curry, so it happened that he alone partook of an inviting omelet. He had quite finished his plate, when Harriwell helped himself to the omelet. One mouthful he tasted, then spat out vociferously.
'That's the second time,' McTavish announced ominously.
Harriwell was still hawking and spitting.
'Second time, what?' Bertie quavered.
'Poison,' was the answer. 'That cook will be hanged yet.'
'That's the way the bookkeeper went out at Cape March ,' Brown spoke up. 'Died horribly. They said on the Jessie that they heard him screaming three miles away.'
'I'll put the cook in irons,' sputtered Harriwell. 'Fortunately we discovered it in time.'
Bertie sat paralyzed. There was no color in his face. He attempted to speak, but only an inarticulate gurgle resulted. All eyed him anxiously.
'Don't say it, don't say it,' McTavish cried in a tense voice.
'Yes, I ate it, plenty of it, a whole plateful!' Bertie cried explosively, like a diver suddenly regaining breath.
The awful silence continued half a minute longer, and he read his fate in their eyes.
'Maybe it wasn't poison after all,' said Harriwell, dismally.
