The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Queen Versus Billy and Other Stories, by Lloyd Osbourne

The Queen versus
Billy and
Other Stories

THE QUEEN VERSUS
BILLY AND
OTHER STORIES

By LLOYD OSBOURNE

Charles Scribner’s Sons
New York . . . . 1900

Copyright, 1900, by
Charles Scribner’s Sons
THE DEVINNE PRESS.

Contents

THE QUEEN VERSUS BILLY

THE QUEEN VERSUS BILLY

IT was the Sandfly, Captain Toombs, that brought the news to Sydney and intercepted her Majesty’s third-class cruiser Stingaree, as she lay in Man-of-War Cove, with her boats hoisted in and a deck-load of coal as high as her bulwarks, on the eve of a long trip into the western Pacific. It was the same old story—another white man sent to his last account in the inhospitable Solomons, where if the climate does not kill you the black man soon will: “Thomas Hysslop Biggar, commonly known as ‘Captain Tom’; aged forty-six; British subject; occupation, trader in coprah; place of residence, Sunflower Bay, island of Guadalcanar; murdered by the natives in September, 1888, between the 7th and the 24th, and his station looted and burned.” There was trouble in store for Sunflower Bay; they had killed Collins in 1884, and Casseroles the Frenchman in 1887, and had drawn upon themselves an ominous attention by firing into the Meg Merrilies in the course of the same year. Murder was becoming too frequent in Sunflower Bay, and Captain Casement, while policing those sweltering seas, was asked to “conduct an inquiry into the alleged murder of T. H. Biggar, and take what punitive measures he judged to be necessary.”

It was not everybody who would have liked such a task; in dealing with savages the innocent are too often lumped with the guilty, and while you are scattering death and canister among the evil-doers, you are often mangling their wives and children in a way horrible to think of. Captain Casement had seen such things in the course of his eventful service, and though no stickler where his duty was concerned, he was neither a brute nor a coward. He was a simple gentleman of character, parts, and conscience, with refined tastes, and a horror of shedding innocent blood. Under his command were five officers: Facey, acting first lieutenant, Burder, acting second, Assistant Paymaster Pickthorn, Engineer Sennett, Dr. Roche, ten marines, and a crew of eighty-eight men.

After a roundabout cruise through the pleasant groups of Fiji, Tongataboo, and Samoa, with little to occupy him save official dinners, tennis parties, and an occasional dance ashore, Captain Casement headed his ship for the wild western islands and pricked out a course for Sunflower Bay. One hot morning, when the damp, moist air made everything sticky to the touch, and the whole ship sweated like a palm-house from stem to stern, the Stingaree ran past the towering cliffs and roaring breakers of Guadalcanar, and let go her anchor off the blow-hole in Sunflower Bay. It was a melancholy spot to look at, though beautiful in a gloomy and savage fashion, and the only signs of man’s occupancy were the blackened ruin of the trader’s house, a small mountain of coal half covered with creepers, and a flagstaff surmounted by a skull. There was no visible beach, for the mangroves ran to the water’s edge, save where it had been partially cleared away by the man whose murder they had come to avenge; nor did the closest scrutiny with the glass betray any tell-tale smoke or the least sign of habitation. Captain Casement surveyed the place with his keen, practised eyes, and the longer he looked the less he liked it. The desolation jarred upon his nerves, and his heart fell a little as the blow-hole burst hoarsely under the ship’s quarter, and the everlasting breakers on the outer reef droned their note of menace and alarm.

“Goodness gracious!” he said, in his abrupt, impatient fashion, as he stood beside Facey on the bridge and superintended the laying of the kedge. “I don’t half like the look of it, Mr. Facey; it’s a damned nasty-looking place.”

The first lieutenant nodded. He was a burly, inarticulate man, to whom speech was always a serious matter.

“And see here, Facey,” went on the captain. “Guns don’t matter much; none of the devils shoot fit to speak of; but their poisoned arrows are the very deuce—you know that was the way Goodenough was killed—and you must keep your weather eye lifting.”

“Am I to go, sir?” asked the lieutenant.

“Yes,” said Casement. “You must take Pickthorn and twenty-five men in the first cutter. Send Burder in the second, with twenty more, to cover your landing. And for God’s sake, Facey, keep cool, and neither get flustered nor over-friendly! Don’t shoot unless you have to; and always remember they are the most treacherous savages in the world. Be gentle and firm, and do everything with as little fuss and as great a show of confidence as you can.”

“All right, sir,” said Facey.

Half an hour later, Facey, with twenty-five well-armed men, had vanished into the mangroves, while Burder and his crew lay forty yards off the shore in the second cutter, the officer devouring “Under Two Flags,” and the men smoking and yarning in the bottom of the boat. On the Stingaree two light guns were cast loose and made ready to open fire at a moment’s notice, and a lookout man was stationed in the maintop. The doctor busied himself in dismal preparation, while the captain paced the bridge with quick and anxious steps, fretting for the safety of his party ashore.

Hour after hour passed and brought never a sound from the melancholy woods. The fierce sun mounted to the zenith and sank again into the western sky. Casement was beside himself with suspense; a cup of tea served him for lunch, and he smoked one cigar after another. A deep foreboding brooded over the ship; the men sat or walked uneasily about the waist; the maintop was clustered with anxious blue-jackets; and old Quinn, the gunner, a half-crazy zealot whose religious convictions were of the extremest order, pattered off prayers beside the shotted guns. Towards five o’clock, when things were looking desperate and all began to fear the very worst, a sudden shout roused the ship, and the shore party, noisy and triumphant, were seen streaming down to the beach. A few moments later the two boats pulled slowly off to the ship, Facey’s company the richer by a black man, whose costume consisted of little more than the ropes he was bound with. A thundering cheer hailed them as they swept under the stern and drew up at the starboard gangway, and Facey was soon reporting himself on the bridge.

“I can’t tell you what a relief it is to see you,” said the captain. “I wouldn’t pass another such day for a thousand pounds!”

Facey was dog-tired, and his tattered clothes and scratched face gave evidence of a toilsome march. But he was in a boisterous good humour. He had acquitted himself with marked success, and was thankful to have brought back his party and himself safe and sound.

“Well, how did you make out?” asked the captain.

“We landed at the trader’s house,” began Facey, “followed a path that led inland, and reached some Kanaka huts. Not a soul in ’em; clean gone, every man jack. Followed along a well beaten path which led us into the next bay, bearing north-northeast half-east, keeping the liveliest lookout all the time. Three miles along we ran into another village, chock-a-block with niggers. It looked a nasty go; lots of guns and spears, and everybody pretty skittish, kind of they would and they wouldn’t! I recollected your orders and went slow; you know what I mean, sir—worked off the presents, and smoked my pipe leisurely. By and by they came round, tricky as the devil, on to make friends or to eat us alive, whichever seemed the more promising. I let out what I wanted, and bit by bit found out that all the Sunflower Bay crowd were there, even to old Jibberik, the chief—him Toombs said was the biggest scoundrel of the lot. He looked pretty sick and knew mighty well what we were after. I talked broadsides to that old man, and put it to him that he had better give up the chaps who had killed the trader than waltz back to the ship and be shot instanter himself—for somebody had to go, I said; and just as soon as I got the old codger alongside of me I gave him to understand that he was my bird, and kept my cocked pistol pointed at his belly. After no end of a fuss, and lots of frothing and loud talk, with things looking precious ugly now and again, we ended by coming out on top. Then they dragged along a young nigger named Billy, a returned labour-boy from the Queensland plantations, they said, and handed him over to me as the murderer. I thought it was more than likely they’d give us some cheap nigger they had no use for, or some worn-out old customer, as they did in Pentecost to Dewar of the Royalist; but I think this Billy was all right. A lot of niggers—Billy’s own push, I suppose—looked as black as fits and wouldn’t come round for a long time. Then I lashed the prisoner’s hands and tied him to one of our men, and talked pretty straight to Jib. I made him promise he’d bring his people back at once, and be down on the beach, himself and two others, to-morrow morning to give evidence against Billy.”

“You’ve done well, Mr. Facey,” said Casement, as his lieutenant drew to a close, “and I tell you the story sha’n’t lose when I report it to the admiral. You had better go now and get your clothes off,” he added.

Facey jumped to his feet. “I am sure I am awfully obliged to you, sir,” he said.

“Ugh, that’s all right,” said Casement, in his testy way. “What have you done with the prisoner?”

“Turned him over to the sergeant for safe-keeping, sir,” returned the officer.

“Leg-irons?” asked Casement.

“Leg-irons, handcuffs, and a dog-chain,” returned Facey, with a grin. “He’s cost too much to take any chances of his getting off.”

The first thing next morning, old Jibberik was brought aboard with his two companions. He was a disgusting old gorilla of a man, with a hairy chest and a cold, leering eye—a mere scarecrow of humanity, of a type incredibly cruel and debased. He had worked up enough courage overnight to beg for everything within sight, and he fingered the clothes and accoutrements of the seamen like a greedy child. His two friends were not a whit behind him, either in manners or appearance. They clicked and chattered like monkeys, and showed extraordinary fearlessness in that armed ship amid the swarming whites; the only man they seemed to dread was old Jibberik himself; and they wilted under his piercing glance like flowers in the sun, whenever his baleful attention fell their way.

Four bells was the time set for the court martial; at nine o’clock Casement sent for Facey and told him he must prepare to defend the prisoner.

“Burder will prosecute for the Queen,” he said. “Pickthorn will act as clerk. Sennett, Roche, and I will compose the court.”

The first lieutenant was overcome. “I don’t think I can, sir,” he said feebly. “I never did such a thing in my life; I wouldn’t know where to begin, or to leave off, for that matter.”

“You can leave off when we hang your prisoner,” Casement returned, with his bull-doggish air. “Of course, it’s all a damned farce,” he went on. “Somebody’s got to act for the nigger; it’s printed that way in the book.”

“I’ll move for an adjournment,” said Facey.

“I’ll be hanged if you will,” said the captain. “It’s a beastly business, and we have got to put it through.”

Facey groaned.

“Well, do you think I like it?” said Casement.

The lieutenant saluted and walked away to find his prisoner.

Billy was clanking his chains in a canvas hutch alongside the sick-bay, where a man lay dying. He looked up as Facey approached, and his face brightened as he recognised his captor. He was a good-looking young negro, and the symmetry of his limbs, and his air of intelligence and capacity, stood out in pleasant contrast with the rest of his comrades in Sunflower Bay.

“Billy,” said Facey, “they are going to make judge and jury for you by and by; and I am to talky-talky for you.”

“All same Queensland,” returned Billy. “May the Lord have mercy on your sinful soul!”

Facey was stupefied. “Where in thunder did you learn that?” he demanded.

“Oh, me savvy too much,” said Billy.

“Now, see here,” said the lieutenant. “You didn’t kill that trader?”

“Yes, I kill him,” said Billy, cheerfully.

“You did?” cried the other.

“White fellow no good; I kill him,” said the prisoner.

“If you tell that to the captain he’ll shoot you,” said Facey. If the prisoner was to be defended he was going to give him all the help he could.

The black boy looked distressed and nodded a forlorn assent.

“You’ll be a big fool to say that,” said Facey.

“White fellow no good; I kill him,” repeated Billy.

“You unmitigated idiot, you’ll do for yourself,” cried the lieutenant, angrily. “What’s the good of my talking for you if you can’t stand up for yourself?”

Billy began to whimper; the other’s loud voice and threatening demeanour seemed to overwhelm him.

Facey was struck with contrition. “Now shut up that snivelling,” he said, more kindly. “Tell me the truth, Bill. Isn’t this some humbuggery of old Jib’s—a regular plant, to shield somebody else at the cost of your hide?”

Billy rolled his eyes, and wiped away the tears with a grimy paw.

“White fellow no good; I kill—”

“You be damned!” cried his legal adviser.

At ten o’clock the court martial was assembled on the quarter-deck. The captain, with his brawny shoulders thrown forward, and his hands deep in his trouser pockets, had all the air of a man in the throes of indigestion. On either side of him were Sennett and Roche; and in front, beside a table covered with a flag, was Pickthorn, with a clerkly outfit and a Bible. Billy stood in chains beside a couple of marines, looking extremely depressed. The old gorillas, their filthy kilts bulging with what they had begged or pilfered, were in charge of the sergeant, who had all he could do to prevent their spitting on the deck.

Facey was the first one sworn. He deposed as to the capture and identity of the prisoner. Then Billy was led up to the table and told to plead.

“Kiss the book and say whether you murdered the trader or not,” said the captain.

“White fellow no good; I kill him,” quavered the prisoner.

“Pleads guilty,” said Casement to the clerk.

“What did you do it for?” demanded the court.

Billy reiterated his stock phrase.

“Take him away,” said the captain.

Jibberik was the next witness. He kissed the book as though it were his long-lost brother, and looked almost unabashed enough to beg it of Pickthorn. I shall not weary the reader with his laboured English, that lingua Franca of the isles which in the Western Pacific is known as Beach da Mar. He told a pretty plain story: Billy and the trader had always been on bad terms. One night, crazy with palm-toddy, Billy had sneaked down to Captain Tom’s house and shot him through the body as he was reading a book at supper. As to the subsequent burning and looting of the station the old savage was none so clear, sheltering himself in the unintelligibility of which he was a master. His two companions followed suit, and drew the noose a little tighter round Billy’s throat.

Then rose Burder for the Queen. He was a cheeky youngster, with pink cheeks, a glib tongue, and no end of assurance.

“I don’t propose to waste the time of the honourable court,” he began; “but if ever there was a flat-footed, self-confessed murderer, I would say it is the dusky gentleman in the dock. The blood of Biggar cries aloud for vengeance, and it would be a shame if it cried in vain,” he said. He would point to that dreary ruin of which the defunct had been the manly ornament, radiating civilisation round him like a candle in the dark, and then to that black monster, who had felled him down. This kind of thing had got to stop in the Solomon Islands; the natives were losing all respect for whites, and he put it to the court whether they would not jeopardise the life of the new trader if they acquitted the murderer of the old. Now that they had got their hand in, he would go even further, and hang up with Billy the three witnesses for the prosecution, old Jib and the other brace of jossers, who had villain and cutthroat stamped—

“Stick to the prisoner,” cried the court.

“I bow to correction, sir,” went on Burder. “I say again, this is no time for half-measures; and I say that Sunflower Bay will be a better place to live in without Mr. Billy. I leave it to the honourable court, with every confidence, to vindicate justice in these islands by condemning the prisoner to the extreme penalty of the law. The case for the Queen is closed, gentlemen.”

“I believe you appear for the defence, Mr. Facey?” said Casement, as the Queen’s prosecutor took his seat.

“I do, sir,” returned the first lieutenant, nervously.

“I should like to say, first of all,” he began, “that I will not cross-examine these dirty old savages who have given evidence against my client. I quite agree with everything my honourable friend has said regarding them, and I cannot think that the court will attach undue importance to any evidence they may have given. We’ve been told that the Kanakas are losing all respect for whites, and that if we don’t take some strong measures there will be the deuce to pay in these islands. Perhaps there will be; but is that the British justice we’re so proud of, or is it fair play, gentlemen, to the unfortunate wretch who is trembling before you? From what I’ve seen of the whites in this group, I can say emphatically that I’m in a line with the Kanakas. Now, as to this Billy: What is there against him but his own confession? and that, I beg leave to point out, ought not to be taken as conclusive. As like as not he is the scapegoat for the whole bay, and has been coached up to tell this story under the screw. Just look one moment at old Jib there, and see how his friends wither when his eyes fall their way. For all we know to the contrary, his gibberish and click-click may be to the tune of ‘Billy, you son of a gun, I’ll cut you into forty pieces, or flay you alive if you don’t stick to what I’ve told you.’ After all, what have we learned from Billy? Nothing more than this: ‘White fellow no good; I kill him.’ Is that what anybody would call a full confession? Does it give any clew or any details as to the motive or the carrying out of this murder? It may be, indeed, that Billy is a monomaniac with a confirmed delusion that he has killed Biggar; the court may smile, but I think I am right in stating that such things have occurred and have even led to miscarriages of justice in the past. I tell you, gentlemen, I believe it was the whole blooming bay that killed Biggar, and that Billy was just as guilty or just as innocent as the rest. And there is one thing I feel mortal sure about: that if we take the prisoner outside the heads we will soon get the gag off his mouth, and learn a good deal more about this ugly business. Under old Jib’s search-light he’s got to keep a close lip; but take him out to sea, and I answer for it he won’t be so reticent. In conclusion, gentlemen, I say again that the evidence in this case is inconclusive; that the honourable gentleman who has appeared for the Queen has failed to make out a convincing case against my client; that Billy’s confession in itself is not a sufficient proof that he committed the crime charged against him; and that we cannot take the life of a human being on such flimsy and unsupported evidence.”

A dead silence fell upon the court when Facey drew his case to a close and resumed his seat. Nothing could be heard but the scratching of Pickthorn’s pen and the reverberating growl of the blow-hole as it fretted and fumed within for the screaming blast which was soon to follow. Casement rammed his hands deeper into his pockets, gnawed his tawny mustache, and protruded his chin. At last, with a start, he awoke from his reverie, and barked out:

“Mr. Sennett, as the youngest member, it is for you to speak first.”

“I think he’s guilty, sir,” said Sennett.

Casement turned his quick glance on Roche.

“Same here,” said the doctor.

“The finding of the court,” said the captain after another pause, “is that the prisoner Billy is guilty of the murder of T. H.—what’s his name?—Biggar, at Sunflower Bay, on the blank day of September, 1888, and is condemned to be shot as an example to the island. Sentence to be deferred until I get the ship back from New Ireland, where I’ve to look into that Carbutt business and the outrage at MacCarthy’s Inlet, on the chance of the prisoner making a further confession and implicating others in his crime. The court is dismissed.”

“Beg pardon, sir,” said Pickthorn, looking up from his writing as the others rose to their feet. “What am I to call the case?—the Queen versus Billy what?”

“Billy nothing,” said the captain, savagely. “Call him William Pickthorn if you think it sounds better.”

The verdict of the court was explained to Jibberik, and the old rogue and his pair of friends were landed in the cove, the boat returning to find the ship with anchor weighed and the loosened sails flapping on the yards. In a few minutes she was steaming out to sea, and every one grew confident that Billy’s tongue would soon wag as he saw Sunflower Bay dwindle behind him. But the dogged savage stuck to his tale; he had but one reply to all inquiries, to all probing and pumping for further particulars of the murder. On his side the conversation began and ended with: “White fellow no good; I kill him.” On other topics he could be drawn out at will, and proved himself a most tractable, sweet-tempered, and far from unintelligent fellow. The men got to like him immensely, keeping him in perpetual tobacco and providing him with more grog than was quite good for him. In the fo’castle it was rank heresy to call him a murderer or to express any doubts regarding his innocence. He became at once the pet and the mystery of the ship, and his canvas cell the rallying-point for all the little gaieties on board. He played cards well, was an apt pupil on the accordion, and at checkers he was the master of the ship! And he not only beat you, but he beat you handsomely, shaking hands before and after the event, like a prizefighter in the ring.

Casement felt very uneasy about the boy; he grew more and more uncomfortable at heart, and it was the talk of the ship that the problem of Billy was weighing on the “old man” like a hundredweight of bricks. The whole business preyed upon him unceasingly and he dreaded each passing day that brought the execution ever nearer. Billy kept him sleepless in the steaming nights; Billy faced him like a spectre at his solitary board; Billy’s face blurred the pages of the books and magazines he had laid up for these dreary days in the Solomons. Casement visited his prisoner twice a day, against the better judgment that bade him keep away and try to forget him. He never said much after his first two ineffectual attempts to wrestle with Billy’s stereotyped phrase and to extort further information; but, chewing a cigar, he would stare the black creature out of countenance for ten minutes at a time, with a look of the strongest annoyance and disfavor, as though his patience could not much longer withstand the strain.

The officers were not a whit behind their captain. Billy’s artless ways and boundless good humour had won the whole ward-room to his side; and his grim determination to die, at once bewildered and exasperated every soul on board. The strange spectacle offered of a hundred men at work to persuade their prisoner to recall his damning confession, and on pins and needles to save him from a fate he himself seemed not to fear. The captain as good as told Facey that if the boy would assert his innocence he would scarcely venture to shoot him; and this intelligence Facey handed on to his client, and, incidentally, to the whole ship’s company. Never was a criminal so beset. Every man on board tried in his turn to shake Billy’s obstinacy, and to paint, in no uncertain colours, the dreadful fate the future held in store for him. One and all they retired discomfited, some with curses, others on the verge of tears. They swore at him for a fool; they cajoled him as they would a child; they acted out his last end with all fidelity to detail, even to a firing platoon saying “Bang, bang!” in dreadful unison, while a couple of seamen made Billy roll the deck in agony. The black boy would shudder and wipe his frightened eyes; but his fortitude was unshaken.

“White fellow no good; I kill him.”

Then old Quinn got after him—wild-eyed, tangle-haired old Quinn, the gunner, who was half cracked on religion. He prayed and blubbered beside the wretched boy, overwhelming him with red-hot appeals and perfervid oratory. Billy became an instant convert, and got to love old Quinn as a dog his master. There was no more card-playing in Billy’s cell, no more rum or tobacco; even checkers fell under the iron ban of old Quinn, to whom every enjoyment was hateful. Billy learned hymns instead, and would beguile the weary sentry on the watch with his tuneful rendering of “Go Bury thy Sorrow,” or “Nearer, my God, to Thee.” He was possessed, too, of a Bible that Quinn gave him, from which the old gunner would read, in his strident, overbearing voice, the sweet gospel of charity and good will. But if old Quinn accomplished much, he ran, as they all ran at last, into that stone wall of words which Billy raised against the world. Contrition for the murder which had doomed him to die was what Billy would not show or profess in any way to feel. Rant though old Quinn might, and beseech on bended knees, with his eyes burning and his great frame shaking with agitation, he could extort from his convert no other answer than the one which all knew so well. Billy’s eyes would snap and his mouth harden.

“White fellow no good; I kill him.”

As the days passed, and the ship made her way from bay to bay, from island to island, in the course of her policing cruise among those lawless whites and more than savage blacks, the captain grew desperate with the problem of Billy. They all said that Casement looked ten years older, and that something would soon happen to the “old man” if Billy did not soon skip out; and the “old man” showed all the desire in the world to bring about so desirable a consummation. Billy was accorded every liberty; his chains had long been things of the past, and no sentinel now guarded him in his cell or watched him periodically in his sleep. Billy was free to go where he would; and it was the fervent hope of all that he would lose no time in making his way ashore. But though Casement stopped at half a hundred villages, and laid the ship as close ashore as he dared risk her, still, for the life of him, Billy would not budge. Then they thought him afraid of sharks, which are plentiful in those seas, and kept the dinghy at the gangway, in defiance of every regulation, in the hope that the prisoner would deign to use it. But Billy showed no more desire to quit the ship than Casement himself, or old Quinn. He did the honours of the man-of-war to visiting chiefs, and seemed to be proud of his assured position on board. Go ashore? Escape? Not for worlds!

Then the captain determined upon new measures. He passed a hint to Facey, and Facey passed it to the mess, and the mess to the blue-jackets, that they were making things too comfortable for their prisoner. For a while Billy’s easy life came to an abrupt conclusion. His best friends began to kick and cuff him without mercy. He was rope’s-ended by the bo’sun’s mate, and the cook threw boiling water over his naked skin. The boy’s heart almost broke at this, and he went about dejected and unhappy for the first time since he had come aboard. But no harsh usage, no foul words, could drive him to desert the ship. He stuck to it like a barnacle, for all the captain spun out the cruise to an unconscionable length and stopped at all sorts of places that offered a favorable landing for the prisoner. But if Billy grew sad and moody under the stress of whippings and bad words, it was as nothing to the change in Casement himself, who turned daily greyer and more haggard as he pricked a course back to Sunflower Bay. Of course, he maintained a decent reserve all along, and betrayed, in words at least, not a sign of his consuming anxiety to rid himself of Billy. But at last even his iron front broke down. It was on the bridge, to Facey, when the ship had just dropped anchor in Port McGuire, not forty miles from Sunflower Bay.

“Mr. Facey,” he said, “send Mr. Burder ashore with an armed party; tell him just to show himself a bit and come off again.”

“Yes, sir,” said Facey.

“I am thinking they might take that fellow Billy to translate for them,” he went on, shamefacedly.

The first lieutenant turned to go.

“Hold on,” said the captain, suddenly lowering his voice and drawing his subordinate close to him. “Just you pass it on to Burder that I wouldn’t skin him alive—you know what I mean—if—well, suppose that black fellow cut his lucky altogether—”

Facey smiled.

“Of course,” rasped out the captain, “I can’t tolerate any dereliction of duty; but if the young devil made a break for it—”

“Ay, ay, sir,” returned the first lieutenant, and darted down the brass steps three at a time. He called Burder aside and gave his instructions to that discreet youngster, who was sharp to see the point without the need for awkward explanations. A broad grin ran round the boat when Billy was made to descend and take his place beside Burder in the stern; and so palpable and open was the whole business that some aboard even shook the negro by the hand and bade him God-speed.

A couple of hours later Burder embarked again and headed for the ship in a tearing hurry. A chuckle ran along the decks as not a sign of Billy could be made out, and the nearing boat soon put the last doubt at rest. There was no black boy among the blue-jackets.

Burder skipped up the steps and saluted the captain on the bridge.

“I have to report the escape of Billy, sir,” he said, with inimitable gravity and assurance. “I scarcely know how it came to happen, sir, but he managed to bolt as he was walking between Miller and Cracroft.”

“This is a very serious matter,” said the captain, with ill-concealed cheerfulness. “I don’t know but what it is my duty to reprimand you very severely for your carelessness. However, if he’s gone, he’s gone, I suppose. I hope you took measures to recapture him?”

“Yes, sir,” returned Burder. “Looked for him high and low, sir.”

“Poor Billy!” said the captain, with a smile that spoke volumes. “We’ll say no more about it, Mr. Burder; it may be all for the best; but remember, sir, it mustn’t happen again.”

“No, sir,” said Burder.

“How did you manage it, old man?” was the eager question that met the youngster as he took shelter in the ward-room and ordered “a beer.” All his messmates were round him, save Facey, who was officer of the deck and could not do more than hang in the doorway.

“I tell you it wasn’t easy,” said the boy. “We promenaded all round the place, and I tried like fun to shake him off. I sent him errands and hid behind trees, and talked of how we were going to shoot him to-morrow—but it was all no blooming good! I was at my wits’ end at last, and had almost made up my mind to tie him to a tree and run for it, when I got a bright idea. I pretended I had dropped my canteen under a banyan a mile behind the town, a kind of cemetery banyan, full of dead men’s bones—a rummy place, I can tell you. And when we got down near the boat, I took the nigger on one side and bade him go and fetch it. ‘And don’t you come back without it, Billy,’ said I. ‘I’ll be dismissed the service if I can’t account for that canteen!’ Then he asked how long I was going to stay, and I said a week; and he went off like a lamb, while we squared away for the ship. Didn’t you see the jossers pull!”

It had been the merest pretence that had taken the war-ship into Port McGuire, and now that her merciful errand had been so successfully accomplished, and Billy reluctantly torn at last from those who had to kill him, Captain Casement lost no time in ordering the ship to sea. But as the winch tugged at the anchor, and the great hull crept up inch by inch to the tautened chain, a sudden yell roused the captain on the bridge and struck him as cruelly as one of those poisoned arrows he feared so much.

“Billy, on the starboard bow!”

Sure enough, a black poll protruded above the rippling bosom of the bay, and two frantic arms were seen driving a familiar dark countenance on a course towards the vessel. It was Billy indeed, his honest face marked with anguish and despair as he fought his way to regain his prison.

Casement groaned. And for this he had been holding the cruiser two long weeks in those God-forsaken islands, and had invented one excuse upon another to delay his return to Sunflower Bay! Billy had been given a hundred chances to escape, and now, like a bad penny, here he was again, ready to precipitate the catastrophe which could no longer be postponed.

A great laugh went up when Billy presented himself on deck, exhausted, dripping like a spaniel, and sorely hurt in spirit. He began at once to blurt out the story of the canteen, and made a bee-line for Burder; but that intrepid youngster could afford to listen to no explanations, and in self-defence had to order Billy into the hands of the marines, who led him away protesting.

Casement’s patience was now quite at an end. He headed the ship for Sunflower Bay, and spared no coal to bring her there in short order. Three hours after they had passed out of the heads of Port McGuire the Stingaree was at anchor off the blow-hole.

Facey was drinking a whisky-and-soda, and preparing himself, as best he could, for the ordeal he knew to be before him, when the captain’s servant entered the ward-room and requested his presence in the cabin.

“Mr. Facey,” said the captain, “take the doctor and the pay and forty men well armed from the ship, and when you’ve assembled the village take that Billy and shoot him.”

“Yes, sir,” said the lieutenant, turning very pale.

“Faugh,” rasped Casement, “it makes me sick. Damn the boy, why couldn’t he cut? Well, be off with you, and kill him as decently as you know how.”

Billy did not at first realize how seriously he was involved in the plans of the shore party that was making ready. He dropped into one of the boats light-heartedly enough, and took his place cheerfully between two marines with loaded rifles. But the mournful hush of all about him, the eyes that turned and would not meet his own, the tenderness and sorrow which was expressed in every movement, in every furtive look, of his whilom comrades, all stirred and shook him with consternation. No one laughed at his little antics. He tickled the man next him, and nudged him, his friend Tommy, who could whistle like a blackbird and do amazing tricks with cards; but instead of an answering grin, Tommy’s eyes filled with tears and he stared straight in front of him. Billy was whimpering before they were half ashore, and some understanding of the fate in store for him began to struggle through his thick head.

There was no need to assemble the village. It was there to meet them, old Jibberik and all, silent, funereal, and expectant. The men were marched up to the charred remains of the trader’s house and formed up on three sides of a square, leaving the fourth open to the sea. To this space Billy was led by Facey and old Quinn, the gunner. The negro looked about him like a frightened child and clung to the old man.

“Will you give the prisoner a minute to make his peace with God?” asked old Quinn.

Facey nodded.

Quinn plunged down on his knees, Billy beside him. For a brief space the gunner pattered prayers thick and fast, like a man with no time to lose.

“Billy,” he said at last, “as you stand on the brink of that river we all must cross, as the few seconds run out that you have still to live and breathe and make your final and everlasting peace with the God you have so grievously offended, let me implore you to show some sorrow, some contrition, for the awful act that has brought you to this! Billy, tell God you are sorry that you killed Biggar.”

For a moment Billy made no answer. At last, in a husky voice, he said:

“You mean Cap’n Tom, who live here before?”

“Him you hurled into eternity with all his sins hot on him. Yes, Captain Tom, the trader.”

“No!” cried Billy, with a strangled cry. “Me no sorry. White fellow no good; I kill him.”

“Quinn,” cried Facey, “your time’s up.” The first lieutenant’s face was livid, and his hands trembled as he bound Billy’s eyes with a silk handkerchief.

“Stand right there, Billy,” said the officer, turning the prisoner round to face the firing party, that was already drawn up.

“Good-bye, Missy Facey and gennelmen all,” whimpered the boy.

“Good-bye, Billy,” returned the other. “Now, men,” he added, as he ran his eye along the faltering faces, “no damned squeamishness; if you want to help the nigger, you’ll shoot straight. For God’s sake don’t mangle him.

“Fire!”

THE BEAUTIFUL MAN OF PINGALAP

THE BEAUTIFUL MAN OF PINGALAP

HE stood five feet nothing in his naked feet, a muscular, sandy little fellow, with a shock of red hair, a pair of watery blue eyes, and a tawny, sun-burned beard, the colour of fried carrots. I could not see myself that he was beautiful, and might have lived a year with him and never found it out; though he assured me, with a giggle of something like embarrassment, that he was no less a person than the Beautiful Man of Pingalap. Such at least was his name amongst the natives, who had admired him so persistently, and talked of him so much, that even the whites had come to call him by that familiar appellation.

“You see,” he said, in that whining accent which no combination of letters can adequately render, “it tykes a man of a ruddy complexion to please them there Kanakas; and if he gains their respeck and ’as a w’y with him sort of jolly and careless-like, there’s nothing on their blooming island he carn’t have for the arsking.”

I gathered, however, as I talked with him in the shadow of the old boat-house in which we lived together at Ruk like a pair of tramps, that he, Henery Hinton, had not presumed to ask for much in those isles from which he had so recently emerged. Indeed, except for a camphor-wood chest, a nondescript valise of decayed leather, a monkey, a parrot, and a young native lady named Bo, my friend owned no more in the world than the window-curtain pyjamas in which he stood.

“It ain’t much, is it,” he said, with a sigh, “to show for eight long years on the Line? Sixty dollars and w’at you see before you! Though the monkey may be worth a trifle, and a w’aler captain once offered me a mee-lodian for the bird.”

“And the girl?” I asked.

“Who’d tyke her?” he replied, with a drop of his lip. “Did you ever see an uglier piece in all your life?”

“What do you mean to do with her?” I asked, knowing that the firm had promised him a passage to Sydney in the Ransom, and wondering what would become of the unfortunate Bo, whom he was little likely to drag with him to the colonies.

“You don’t think I’m going to desert that girl,” he said truculently, giving me a look of deep suspicion. “My word!” he went on, “after having taught her to byke bread and sew, and regularly broke her in to all kinds of work, it ain’t likely I am going to leave her to be snapped up by the first feller that comes along. The man as gets her will find himself in clover, and might lie in bed all day and never turn his hand to nothink, as I’ve done myself time and time again at Pingalap, while she’d make breakfast and tend the store. It would tyke several years to bring a new girl up to her mark, and then maybe she mightn’t have it in her, after all,—not all of them has,—and so your pains and lickings would be wasted.”

“Lickings!” I said. “Is that the way you taught Bo?”

“I’d like to know any other w’y,” he said. “My word! a man has to master a woman, and there’s no getting around it. With some you can do it with love and kindness, but the most need just the whip and plenty of it. That little Bo, w’y, I’ve held her down and lashed her till my arm was sore, and there ain’t a part of me she hasn’t bit one time and another! Do you see that purple streak on my ear? I thought I was booked for hydrophobiar that morning, for it swelled up awful, and I was that weak with loss of blood that when I laid her head open with a fancy trade lamp I just keeled over in a dead faint. But there was never no nasty malice in Bo, and if we had a turn up now and then, she always played to the rules, and never bit a feller when he was down; and she never hurt me but what she’d cry her eyes out afterwards and sometimes even arsk me to whip her for her wickedness. My word! I’d lay it on to her then, for I could use both hands and had nothing to be afryde of. Of course that was long ago, when she was raw and only half trained like. I don’t recollect having laid my hand to her since the Belle Brandon went ashore on Fourteen Island Group.”

Having gone so deeply into the history of her subjugation, the Beautiful Man could not resist showing me a proof of Bo’s dearly bought docility, and whistled to her to come to him. This she did readily enough, her ugly face wrinkling into smiles at sight of him. She was a wizened little creature, with an expression midway between that of a monkey and a Japanese image. Of all things in the world, Bo’s chief pleasure was in clothes, of which she possessed an inordinate quantity, and it was her custom to make at least three toilets a day. She wore tight-fitting jackets plastered with beadwork like an Indian’s, with embroidered skirts of bright cotton, and she incessantly occupied herself in adding to her stock. Half the day her little claws were busy with needle and beads, covering fresh bodices with barbarous patterns, while the monkey played about her and pilfered her things, and the parrot screamed whole sentences in the Pingalap language.

My own business in the Islands was of a purely scientific description, a learned society having equipped me for two years, with instructions to study the anthropological character of the natives, dip into the botany of Micronesia, and do what I could in its little-known zoölogy. I had meant to go directly to Yap, but in the uncertainties of South Sea travelling I had been landed for a spell on the island of Ruk, from which place I had hope of picking up another vessel before the month was out. Here I had run across the Beautiful Man, himself a bird of passage, waiting for the barque Ransom; and when I learned that Johnson, the firm’s manager, had meant to charge me two dollars and a half a day for the privilege of messing at his table and seeing him get drunk every night, I was glad to chum in with Hinton and share the tumble-down boat-house in which he camped. Here we lived together, the Beautiful Man, Bo, and myself, in a simplicity that would have shamed the Garden of Eden. We slept at night on the musty sails of some forgotten ship, and in the daytime Bo prepared our meals over a driftwood fire. She baked the most excellent bread, and made her own yeast from fermented rice and sugar, which used to blow up periodically, with an explosion like that of a cannon. She also made admirable coffee, and a sort of sugar candy in the frying-pan, as well as griddle-cakes and waffles with the gulls’ eggs we used to gather for ourselves. More than this she did not know, except how to open the can of beef or salmon which was the inevitable accompaniment of all our meals.

We rose at no stated hour in the morning, the sun being our only clock, and, as we read it, a very uncertain one. Hinton and I bathed in the lagoon, where he taught me daily how to dive with the greatest good humour and zeal, roaring with laughter at my failures, and applauding my successes to the skies. He often spoke to me in Pingalap, forgetting for the moment his own mother-tongue, and would wear a hang-dog expression for an hour afterwards, as though in some way he had disgraced himself. On our return to the boat-house we would find breakfast awaiting us, Bo guarding it with a switch from the depredations of the monkey and the parrot. After breakfast, when the Beautiful Man and I would lie against the wall and smoke our pipes, the little savage would wash her dishes, and putting them away in an empty gin-case, would next turn her attention to the pets, cleaning and brushing them with scrupulous care. Then, for another hour, we would see no more of her, while she retired behind a sail to effect fresh combinations of costume, reappearing at last with her hair nicely combed, and her breast dazzling like a robin’s. There was to me something touching in the sight of this little person doing the round of a treadmill she had invented for herself, and spending the bright days in stringing her unending beads. It seemed a shame that she should be abandoned, so forlorn, solitary, and friendless, on the alien shore of Ruk; and the matter weighed on me so much that it often disturbed my dreams and gave rise to an anxiety that I was half ashamed to feel. Several times I spoke to the Beautiful Man on the subject, drawing a little on my imagination in depicting the wretchedness and degradation to which he was meaning to leave poor Bo, who could not fail, circumstanced as she was, to come to a miserable end. He always took my lecture in good part; for, in fairness to the Beautiful Man, I must confess he was the most good-natured creature alive, and used invariably to reply that he would not think of doing such a thing were it not for the pressing needs of his health, which, he assured me with solemnity, was in a bad way. I never could learn the exact nature of his malady, nor persuade him into any recital of his symptoms beyond a vague reference to what he called constitutional decay. Of course, I knew well enough that this was a mere cloak to excuse his conduct to Bo, whom I could see he meant to desert in the most heartless fashion, if in the meantime he failed to sell her to some passing trader. This he was always trying to do, on the sly, for he had enough decency left to screen the business from my view and carry on the negotiations with as much secrecy as he could manage. But the prospective buyer invariably cried off when he was shown the article for sale, however much it was bedizened with beads and shined up with oil, and the matter usually ended in a big drunk at the station, from which the Beautiful Man was more than once dragged insensible by his helpmeet. He even hinted to me that, owing to our long and intimate relations, I might myself become Bo’s proprietor for a merely nominal sum; and when I told him straight out that I had come to the Islands to study, and not to entangle myself in any disreputable connection with a native woman, he begged my pardon very earnestly, and said that he wished to Gord he had been as well guided. But he always had a bargaining look in his eye when I praised Bo’s bread, which indeed was our greatest luxury, or happened to pass my plate for another of her waffles.

“You’re going to miss them things up there,” he would say. “My word, ain’t you going to miss them!”

This remark, incessantly repeated, made such an impression on me that I persuaded Bo to give me some lessons in bread-making, and even extorted from her, for a pound of beads paid in advance, the secret of her dynamitic yeast; so that I, too, started a bomb-shell of my own, and was half-way through a sack of flour before it finally dawned upon me that here was an art that I was incapable of learning. Bread I could certainly make, of a peculiarly stony character, but the trouble (as Hinton said) was the digesting of it afterwards. Nor was I more successful with my waffles, which glued themselves with obstinacy to the iron, like oysters on a rocky bottom, requiring to be detached in shreds by the aid of a knife. My efforts convulsed the Beautiful Man, and were the means of leading him, through his own vainglory and boastfulness, to perpetrate a basaltic lump of his own, the sight of which doubled Bo up with laughter, and caused her to burst out in giggles for a day afterwards. These attempts, of course, only enhanced her own prowess as a cook, and Hinton was never tired of expatiating on the lightness of her loaves and the melting quality of her cakes and waffles, with a glitter in his eye that I knew well how to interpret.

One day my long-overdue ship appeared in sight, and, beating her tedious way up the lagoon, dropped her anchor off the settlement. Captain Mins gave me six hours to get aboard, and promised me, over an introductory glass of square-face in the cabin, a speedy and prosperous run to the westward. My packing was a matter of no difficulty, for I had lived from day to day in the expectancy of a sudden call to start; besides, in a country where pyjamas are the rule and even socks are regarded as something of a superfluity, life reduces itself to first principles and baggage disappears. In half an hour I was ready to shift my things to the ship, only dallying a little longer to say farewell to my friends and take one final glance at the old boat-house. My heart misgave me when I looked, as I thought for the last time, at poor Bo in the midst of her pets, threading beads with the same tireless industry; while the Beautiful Man, at the farther end of the shed, was trying to sell her to a new-comer off the barque, an evil-looking customer they called Billy Jones’s Cousin.

Prompted (I have since supposed) by the devil, I called the little man to where I stood and asked him peremptorily to name his lowest price for Bo. He replied in a brisk, businesslike manner that he couldn’t dream of letting her go for less than a hundred dollars.

“A hundred fiddlesticks!” I exclaimed. “Rather than see her abandoned here to starve, I will take her for my servant and pay her ten dollars a month.”

“Oh, she don’t need no money,” he said. “Just you hug and kiss her a bit, and keep her going with beads and such-like, and she’ll work her hands off to serve you. It’s a mug’s game to give a Kanaka money. W’y, they ain’t no more fit for money than that monkey to navigate a ship.”

“See here, Hinton,” I said, “I have told you before that I did not come up here to start a native establishment—least of all with a woman who looks like Bo. But I’m ready to take her off your hands and pay her good wages, and I don’t think you can be so contemptible as to stand in her light.”

“Oh, I shan’t stand in her blooming light,” he said. “I’d sleep easier to think I had left her in a comfortable home with a perfeck gentleman such as you to tyke care of her. My word, I would, and the thought of it will be a comfort to me in the privations of my humble lot; and I trust you will believe me that it was in no over-reaching spirit that I ventured to nyme my figger for the girl. But I put it to you, as between man and man, won’t you spare me a few dollars as a sort of token of your good will?”

“I’ll give you twenty-five dollars for her,” I said, “and not one penny more.”

“My word,” he said, “you’re getting her cruel cheap!”

“Well, that’s my price,” I said.

“Perhaps you wouldn’t care to give her a half a year’s wages in advance?” he inquired. “A little money in her hand might hearten her up for the parting.”

“Hearten you up, you mean,” I said.

“I never was no haggler,” he said. “She’s yours, Mr. Logan, at twenty-five dollars.”

“You go and talk to her a bit,” I said, “and try to explain things to her, for I tell you I won’t take her at all if she is unwilling.”

It cut me to the heart to watch the poor girl’s face as the Beautiful Man unfolded the plans for her future, and to see the way she looked at me with increasing distress and horror. When she began to cry, I could stand the sight no longer, and hurriedly left the place, feeling myself a thorough-paced scoundrel for my pains. It was only shame that took me back at last, after spending one of the most uncomfortable hours of my life on the beach outside the shed. I found her sitting on her chest, which apparently had been packed in hot haste by the Beautiful Man himself. With the parrot in her lap and the monkey shivering beside her, Bo presented the most woebegone picture. I don’t know whether he had used the strap to her, or whether he had trusted, with apparent success, to the torrents of Pingalap idiom which was still pouring from his lips; but whatever the means he had used, the desired result, at least, had been achieved; for the little creature had been reduced to a stony docility, and, except for an occasional snuffle and an indescribable choking in her throat, she made no sign of rebellion when the Beautiful Man proposed that we should lose no further time in taking her aboard the ship. Between us we lifted the camphor-wood chest and set out together for the pier, Bo bringing up the rear with the monkey and the parrot and a roll of sleeping-mats. If ever I felt a fool and a brute, it was on this melancholy march to the lagoon, and I tingled to the soles of my feet with a sense of my humiliation. My only comfort, besides the support of an agitated conscience, was the intense plainness of my prisoner, whose face, I assured myself, betrayed the singleness and honesty of my intentions.

We put the chest in the corner of the trade-room, and made a little nest for Bo among the mats she had brought with her; and leaving her to tidy up the monkey with my hair-brush, the Beautiful Man and I retreated to the cabin to conclude the terms of our contract. To my surprise, he handed me a sheet of paper, made out in all appearance like any bill for merchandise, and asked me, with the most brazen assurance, to kindly settle it at my convenience. This was what I read:

I burst out into a roar of laughter, and without any waste of words I told the Beautiful Man that he might carry the lady ashore again and peddle her to some bigger fool than I, for I was clean sick of him and her and the whole business, and though I still felt bound to give the twenty-five dollars I had originally promised, he might go and whistle for one cent more. Then, boiling over at the thought of his greed and heartlessness, I let out at him without restraint, he trying to stem the tide with “Oh, I s’y!” and “My word, Mr. Logan, sir!” until at last I had to pause for mere lack of breath and expletives. He took this opportunity to enter into a prolonged explanation, quavering for my pardon at every second word, while he expatiated on the value of that monkey and the parrot’s really phenomenal knowledge of the Pingalap language. He was willing, seeing that I took the matter in such a w’y, to pass over the girl’s duds (about which there might be some question) and even give w’y about the mats, w’ich, as Gord saw him, had cost eight dollars, Chile money, as he could prove by Captain Coffin of the Cape Horn Pigeon, now w’aling in the Arctic Seas; but as to the parrot and the monkey, he appealed to me, as between man and man, to settle for them out of hand, as they were truly and absolutely his own, and could not be expected to be lumped in with the price of the girl. I grew so sick of the fellow and his whining importunity that I counted out thirty-seven dollars from my bag, and told him to take or leave them and give me a clean receipt. This he did with the greatest good humour, having the audacity to shake my hand at parting, and make a little speech wishing me all manner of prosperity and success.

I noticed, however, that he did not return to the trade-room, but sneaked off the ship without seeing Bo again, and kept well out of sight on shore until the actual moment of our sailing. When I went in to pay a sort of duty call on my prisoner, I found her huddled up on the mats and to all appearance fast asleep; and I was not a little disappointed to find that she had not escaped in the bustle of our departure. Now that I was her master in good earnest and irrevocably bound to her for better or worse, I became a prey to the most dismal misgivings, and cursed the ill-judged benevolence that had led me into such a mess. And as for bread, the very sight of it was enough to plunge me into gloom, and when we sat down that day to lunch I asked the steward, as a favour, to allow me seamen’s biscuit in its stead.

Every few hours I carried food to Bo and tried to make her sit up and eat; but, except for a little water, she permitted nothing to pass her lips, but lay limp and apathetic on the square of matting. The monkey and parrot showed more appetite, and gobbled up whole platefuls of soup and stew and preserved fruit, which at first I left on the floor in the hope that their mistress might be the less shy when my back was turned. Finally I decided to remove the pets altogether, for they were intolerably dirty in their habits, and I could not but think that Bo would be better off without a frowsy parrot roosting in her hair and a monkey biting her in play, especially as she was in the throes of a deathly seasickness and powerless to protect herself. Getting the parrot on deck was a comparatively simple matter, though he squawked a good deal and talked loudly in the Pingalap language. At last I stowed him safely away in a chicken-coop, where I was glad to see him well trounced by some enormous fowls with feathered trousers down their legs. But the monkey was not so lightly ravished from his mistress. He was as strong as a man and extraordinarily vicious; in ten steps I got ten bites, and came on deck with my pyjamas in blood and rags, he screeching like a thousand devils and clawing the air with fury. For the promise of a dollar I managed to unload him on old Louey, one of the sailors of the ship, who volunteered to make a muzzle for the brute, and tie him up until it was ready. But as I was still panting with my exertions, and cursing the foolishness that had ever led me into such a scrape, I heard from behind me a kind of heartbroken wail, and turned to see Bo emerging from the trade-room door. I am ashamed to say I trembled at the sight of her, for I recalled in a flash what the Beautiful Man had said of her temper when aroused, and I thought I should die of mortification were she to attack me now. But, fortunately, such was not her intention, though her face was overcast with reproach and indignation as she unsteadily stepped past me to the coop, where, with a cry, she threw open the door and clasped the parrot in her arms. Even as she did so, the trousered fowls themselves determined to make a break for liberty, and finding the barrier removed, they tumbled out in short order; and the ship happening at that moment to dip to leeward, two of them sailed unhesitatingly overboard and dropped in the white water astern. Subsequently I had the pleasure of paying Captain Mins five dollars for the pair. Bo next started for the monkey, which she took from old Louey’s unresisting hands, and almost cried over it as she unbound the line that held him. Having thus rescued both her pets, she retreated dizzily to the shelter of the trade-room, where I found her, half an hour later, lying in agony on the floor.

We were three days running down to Yap, and arrived there late one afternoon just at the fall of dusk. On going ashore, I had the good fortune to secure a little house which happened to be lying vacant through the death of its last tenant; who, on the principle, I suppose, of letting the tree lie where it falls, had been buried within six feet of my front verandah. The following morning I moved my things into my new quarters, Bo following me obediently ashore in the ship’s boat, seated on the top of her chest. I soon got the trade-room into shape for my work, unpacking my note-books, my little library, my collector guns, my photographic and other apparatus, as well as my big compound microscope with which I meant to perform scientific wonders in a part of the world so remote and so little known. Busy in these preparations, I managed to forget my slave and enjoy a few hours’ unalloyed pleasure. I was brought back to earth, however, by the sound of her sobbing in the next room, where I rushed in to find her weeping on her mats, with her face turned to the wall. I made what shift I could to comfort her, talking to her as I might to a frightened dog, though she paid no more attention to me than she did to the parrot, who had raised its voice in an unending scream. At last, in despair, and at my wits’ end to know what else to do, I put ten dollars in her little claw, and tried to tell her that it was her first month’s wages in advance. This form of consolation, if altogether ineffective in the case of Bo herself, came in capitally to cheer the monkey, whom I heard slinging the money out of the window, a dollar at a time, to the great gratification of a crowd of natives outside.

All that day and all the following night Bo lay supinely on the mats, and hardly deigned to touch more than a few morsels of the food I prepared and brought her. The next morning, finding her still of the same mind, I unpacked my flour and other stores, and ordered her, in a rough voice, to get up and make bread. This she did, in a benumbed sort of fashion, dripping tears into the dough and snuffling every time I looked her way. The bread was all right when it was done, though it stuck in my throat when I reflected on the price I had paid to get it, and wondered how I was going to endure two long years of Bo’s society. After a few weeks of this sort of housekeeping I began almost to wish that I were dead, and the sight of the creature became so intolerable to me that I hated to spend an unnecessary hour within my own house. Instead of improving in health, or spirits, or in any other way, Bo grew daily thinner and more woebegone and started a hacking cough, which, she communicated, in some mysterious manner, to the monkey, so that when one was still the other was in paroxysms, giving me, between them, scarce a moment of peace or sleep. Of course I doctored them both from my medicine-chest, and got the thanks I might reasonably have expected: bites and lacerations from the monkey, and from Bo that expression of hers that seemed to say, “Good God! what are you going to do to me now?” I found it too great a strain to persevere with the bread-making, and soon gave up all thought of turning her to any kind of practical account; for what with her tears, her cough, and her passive resistance to doing anything at all, save to titivate the monkey with my comb and brush and wash him with my sponge, I would rather have lived on squid and cocoanuts than anything of her making. Besides, she really seemed to be threatened with galloping consumption; for in addition to her cough, which grew constantly worse, she had other symptoms which alarmed me. Among my stores were a dozen tins of some mushy invalid food,—“Imperial something,” it was called,—with which I manufactured daily messes for my patient, of the consistency (and flavour) of white paint. If she at least failed to thrive on this, it was otherwise with the monkey and the parrot, who fought over her prostrate body for the stuff, and the former would snatch the cup from his mistress’s very mouth.

I think I could have borne up better under my misfortunes had I not suffered so much from loneliness in that far-off place; for, with the exception of half a dozen sottish traders, and a missionary and his wife named Small, there was not another white on the island to keep me company. The Smalls lived in snug missionary comfort at the other end of the bay, with half a dozen converts to do their work and attend to a nestful of young Smalls; and though they had parted, as it seemed to me, with all the principles of Christianity, they still retained enough religious prejudice to receive me (when I once ventured to make a formal call on them) with the most undisguised rudeness and hostility. Small gave me to understand that I was a sort of moral monster who, with gold and for my own wicked purpose, had parted a wife from her husband. It appeared, according to Mr. Small, that I had blasted two fair young lives, as well as condemned my own soul to everlasting perdition; and he promised the active interference of the next man-of-war. On my attempting to make my position in the matter a little clearer, the reverend gentleman began to take such an offensive tone that it was all I could do to leave his house without giving freer vent to my indignation than words alone sufficed. Indeed, I was angry enough to have kicked him down his own missionary steps, and made him in good earnest the ill-used martyr he pretended to be in his reports home.

With the traders I fared even worse, for the discreditable reports about me had become so well established that I was exposed by them to constant jokes and innuendoes, as well as to a friendliness that was more distasteful than the missionary’s pronounced ill will. It was spread about the beach, and carried thence, I suppose, to every corner of the group, that Bo was a half-white of exquisite beauty, for whose possession I had paid her husband a sum to stagger the imagination, and that, unable to repel my loathsome embraces, she was now taking refuge in a premature death.

I doubt whether there was in the wide Pacific a man so depressed, so absolutely crushed and miserable, as I was during the course of those terrible days on Yap. Had it not been for the shame of the thing, I believe I would have sailed away on the first ship that offered, whatever the port to which she was bound, and would have quitted my unhappy prisoner at any hazard. But, to do me justice, I was incapable of treating any woman so badly, particularly such a sick and helpless creature as Bo was fast becoming. I had now begun, besides, to suspect another name for her complaint, and to see before me a situation more ambiguous and mortifying than any of which I had dreamed. My household was threatened with the advent of another member!

The idea of Bo and I both leaving together never struck my mind until the opportune arrival of the Fleur de Lys, bound for Ruk, suddenly turned my thoughts in a new direction. With feverish haste I calculated the course of the Ransom, the barque in which the Beautiful Man had been promised his passage to Sydney, and it seemed that with any kind of luck I might manage to intercept her in the Fleur de Lys by a good three days. Of course I knew a sailing-ship was ill to count upon, and that a favourable slant might bring her in a week before me or delay her for an indefinite time beyond the date of my arrival; but the chance seemed too good a one to be thrown away, and I lost no time in making my arrangements with Captain Brice of the schooner. When I explained the matter to Bo with signs that she could not misunderstand, she became instantly galvanised into a new creature, and ate a two-pound tin of beef on the strength of the good news.

I never grudged a penny of what it cost me to leave Yap, though I was stuck for three months’ rent by the cormorant who said he owned my house, besides having to pay an extortionate sum to Captain Brice for our joint passage. But what was mere money in comparison to the liberty I saw before me—that life of blissful independence in which there should be no Bo, no dark shadow across my lonely hearth, no sleepless nights and apprehensive days, no monkey, no parrot! I trod the deck of the Fleur de Lys with a light step, and I think Bo and I began to understand each other for the first time. For once she even smiled at me, and insisted on my accepting a beadwork necktie she had embroidered for the monkey. If there was a worm in the bud, a perpetual and benumbing sense of uneasiness that never left me, it was the thought that the Beautiful Man might have slipped away before us; and I never looked over our foaming bows but I wondered whether the Ransom was not as briskly ploughing her way to Sydney, leaving me to face an unspeakable disaster on the shores of Ruk. But it was impossible to be long despondent in that pleasant air, with our little vessel heeling over to the trades and the water gurgling musically beneath our keel. Indeed, I felt my heart grow lighter with every stroke of the bell, with every twist of the patent log; and each day, when our position was pricked out on the chart, I felt a sense of fresh elation as the crosses grew towards Ruk. Nor was Bo a whit behind me in her cheerfulness, for she, too, livened up in the most wonderful manner, playing checkers with the captain, exercising her pets on the open deck, and romping for an hour at a stretch with the kanaka cabin-boy.

By the time we had raised the white beaches of our port, the whole ship’s company, from the captain to the cook, were in the secret of our race, and as eager as I was myself to forestall the Ransom in the lagoon. When we entered the passage and opened out the head-station beyond, there was a regular cheer at the sight of our quest at anchor; for it was by so narrow a margin that I had cut off the Beautiful Man’s retreat, and intercepted the vessel that was to carry him away. Coming up under the Ransom, we made a mooring off her quarter; and among the faces that lined up to stare at us from her decks, I had the satisfaction of recognising the frizzled red beard of our departing friend. On perceiving us, he waved his hand in the jauntiest manner, and replied to Bo’s screams of affection by some words in Pingalap which effectually shut up that little person. She was still crying when we bundled her into the boat, bag and baggage, monkey, parrot, and camphor-wood chest; and pulling over to the barque, we deposited her, with all her possessions, on the disordered quarter-deck of the Ransom. The Beautiful Man sauntered up to us with an affectation of airy indifference, and languidly taking the pipe from his mouth, he had the effrontery to ask me if I, too, were bound for Sydney.

Resisting my first impulse to kick him, I controlled myself sufficiently to say that I was not going to Sydney—telling him at the same time that I washed my hands of Bo, whom I had now the satisfaction of returning to him.

“My word!” he said, “you don’t think I’m going to tyke her?”

“That’s your affair,” said I, moving off.

“Oh, I s’y!” he cried in consternation, attempting, as he spoke, to lay a detaining hand on my sleeve. But I jerked it off, and stopping suddenly in my walk towards the gangway, I gave him such a look that he turned pale and shrank back from me.

“Oh, I s’y!” he faltered, and allowed me to descend in quiet to my boat.

Most of that afternoon I spent in the schooner’s cabin, covertly watching Bo from a port-hole. For hours she remained where I had left her on the quarter-deck, seated imperturbably on her chest, the monkey and parrot on either hand. As for the Beautiful Man, he, like myself, had also disappeared from view, and was doubtless watching the situation from some secure hiding-hole of his own. Bo was again and again accosted by the officers of the ship, who alternately cajoled and threatened her in their fruitless attempts to get her off the vessel. But nothing was achieved until five o’clock, when the captain came off from the station, and, in an off-with-his-head style, commanded the presence of the Beautiful Man. I was too far off, of course, to hear one word that passed between them, but the pantomime needed no explanation, as Hinton cringed and the captain fumed, while Bo looked on like a graven image in a joss-house. In the end Bo was removed bodily from the ship to the shore, and landed, with her things, on the beach, where, until night fell and closed round her, I could see her still roosting on her box. Seriously alarmed, I began to experience the most disquieting fears for the result, especially as I could perceive the Beautiful Man lounging serenely about the barque’s deck, smoking a cigar and spitting light-heartedly over her side. It made me more than uneasy to see him afloat and her ashore; and the barque’s loosened sail lying ready to open to the breeze warned me there was little time to lose. It was some relief to my mind to learn from Captain Brice that the barque was not due to sail before the morrow noon; but even this short respite served to quicken my apprehension when I reflected on my utter powerlessness to interfere. I passed a restless night, revolving a thousand plans to hinder the Beautiful Man’s departure, and rose at dawn in a state of desperation.

The first thing I saw, on going to the galley for my morning cup of coffee, was poor Bo planted on the beach, where, as far as I could see, she must have passed the night, sitting with unshaken determination on her camphor-wood chest. Taking the schooner’s dinghy, I pulled myself over to the Ransom, bent on a fresh scheme to retrieve the situation. The first person I ran across on board was the Beautiful Man himself, who hailed me with the greatest good humour, and asked what the devil had brought me there so early.

“To put you off this ship,” I replied. “When the captain has heard my story, I don’t think you will ever see Sydney, Mr. Beautiful Man.”

“W’y, w’at’s this you have against me?” he asked, with a very creditable show of astonishment.

I pointed to the melancholy spectre on the beach.

“W’at of it?” he said. “She ain’t mine: she’s yours.”

“You wait till I see the captain!” I retorted.

“A fat lot he’ll care,” said Hinton. “The fack is, as between man and man, I don’t mind telling you he’d shake me if he dared, the old hunks; but I’ve got an order for my passage from the owner, and it will be worth his job for him to disregard it. My word! I thought he was going to bounce me last night, for he was tearing up and down here like a royal Bengal tiger in a cage of blue fire, giving me w’at he called a piece of his mind. A dirty low mind it was, too, and I don’t mind who hears me say it. But I stood on my order. I said, ‘Here it is,’ I said, ‘and I beg to inform you that I’m going to syle in this ship to Sydney. Put me ashore if you dare,’ I said.”

At this moment the captain came on deck. He gave a stiff nod in reply to my salutation, and marched past the Beautiful Man without so much as a look.

“That’s a nice sight, sir,” I said, pointing in the direction of Bo.

He gave a snort and muttered something below his breath.

“Is his order good?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” he replied; “his order is good.”

“See here, Hinton,” I said, “wouldn’t you care to sell it?”

“W’y, w’at are you driving at?” he returned.

“If you’ll take her back,” I said, indicating Bo in the distance, “I’ll buy your passage for what it’s worth.”

“I don’t know as I’d care to sell,” he returned; “leastw’ys, at any figger you’d care to nyme.”

“What would you care to nyme?” I repeated after him, in involuntary mimicry of his whine.

“One hundred dollars,” he replied.

“And for one hundred dollars you will surrender your passage and go back to the girl,” I demanded, “and swear never to leave her again, unless it is on her own island and among her own relations?”

“Oh, come off!” he exclaimed. “Ain’t you blooming well deserting her yourself?”

“If you are not careful I will punch your head,” I said.

“Don’t mind me, sir,” said the captain, significantly, turning an enormous back upon us.

“Is it business you’re talking, or fight?” inquired the Beautiful Man. “You sort of mix a feller up.”

“I tell you I’ll pay you one hundred dollars on those terms,” I said.

“Hand them along, then,” said Hinton. “I tyke you.”

Unbuckling the money-belt I wore round my waist, I called upon the captain to witness the proceedings, and counted out one hundred dollars in gold. Without a word the Beautiful Man resigned his order into my hands and tied up the money in the corner of a dirty handkerchief, looking at me the while with something almost like compunction.

“Would you mind accepting this red pearl?” he said, producing a trumpery pill of a thing that was worth perhaps a dollar. “You might value it for old syke’s syke.”

I was rather disarmed by this gift and took it with a smile, putting in another good word for Bo.

“Might I ask what you are going to do now?” asked the captain, addressing Hinton in a tone that bordered on ferocity.

“W’y, I was just thinking of st’ying to breakfast, sir,” quavered the little man, “and then toddle ashore to my happy home.”

“Get off my ship!” roared the captain. “Get off my ship, you red-headed beach-comber and pirate. Get off before you are kicked off!”

Hinton bolted like a rabbit for the rail, and almost before we could realise what he was about, we saw him leap feet foremost into the lagoon. Blowing and cursing, he rose to the surface, and informed the captain he should hold him personally responsible for his bag, which, it seems, had been left in one of the cabins below.

“Your bag!” cried the captain, going to the open skylight and thundering out: “Steward, bring up that beach-comber’s bag!”

The boy came running up with the valise I remembered so well; it looked even more dilapidated than before, for the thing was patched with canvas in a dozen places, and was wound round and round with a kind of cocoanut string. The captain lifted it in his brawny arms, and aiming it at the Beautiful Man’s head, let it fly straight at him. It just missed Hinton by an inch, and splashed water all over him as he grasped it to his breast. Turning on his back and dragging the spongy thing along with him, as one might the body of a drowning person, he set off most unconcernedly for the shore. In this fashion we saw him strike the beach, and rise up at last with the bag in his hand, not a dozen paces from where Bo was still encamped. We were, unfortunately, at too great a distance to watch their faces or to observe narrowly the greeting that must have passed between them; but the meeting was to all appearance not unfriendly, and I had the satisfaction of seeing them move off together in the direction of the boat-house, lugging the chest and bag between them, as though they were about to resume housekeeping in the old place.

I spent the rest of the morning writing letters to go by the Ransom, which sailed away at noon, homeward bound. I had no heart to go ashore again that day, for the Bo affair stuck in my throat, and the loss of so much money, not to speak of time, made me feel seriously crippled in the plans I had laid out for my future work. I was undecided, besides, whether to remain at Ruk and wait for another ship to the westward, or to stand by the schooner in her cruise through the Kingsmills, remaining over, perhaps, at Butaritari, or at one of the islands towards the south. On talking over the matter with the captain, I found his feelings so far changed towards me that he was eager now to give me a passage at any price; for, as he told me, he had taken a genuine liking to my company, and was desirous of having another face at his lonely table. Accordingly we patched up the matter to our mutual satisfaction, and arranged to sail the next day when the tide turned at ten.

Shortly before this hour, I remembered some improvised tide-gauges I had set on the weather side of the island, and I snatched an opportunity to see them on the very eve, as it was, of the schooner’s sailing. It seemed, however, that I had been too late in going, for not one of them could I find, though I searched up and down the beach for as long a time as I dared to stay.

I was returning leisurely back across the island, when a turn of the path brought me face to face with the Beautiful Man himself, carrying some kind of fish-trap in his hand. I would have walked silently past him, for the very sight of the creature now turned my stomach, had he not, in what proved an evil moment for himself, detained me as I was passing.

“My word!” he said, “that girl is regularly gone on you, she is! W’y, last night, when I told her of the hundred dollars, she was that put out that I heard the teeth snap in her head like that, and I thought she was going to do for me sure, while I lit out in the dark and looked for a club. She’s put by a little present for you before you go,—one of them pearl-shell bonito-hooks, and a string of the last monkey’s teeth,—and she asked me to say she hoped you wouldn’t forget her.”

“I won’t forget her,” I answered pretty quietly. “Nor you either, you little cur.”

“Cur!” he repeated, edging away from me.

I don’t know what possessed me, but the memory of my wrongs, wasted money, lost time, the man’s egregious cynicism and selfishness, suddenly set my long-tried temper flaming, and almost before I knew what I was doing, I had the creature by the throat and was pounding him with all my force against a tree. I was twice his size and twice his strength, but I fought him regardless of all the decencies of personal combat in a lawless and primeval manner, even as one of our hairy ancestors might have revenged himself (after extraordinary provocation) upon another. I shook and kicked him, and I pulled out whole handfuls of frowsy red hair and whisker, and when at last he lay limp before me in the dirt, whimpering aloud for mercy, I beat him for ten minutes with a cocoanut branch that happened, by the best of fortunes, to be at hand. When I at length desisted, it was from no sense of pity for him, but rather in concern for myself and my interrupted voyage. I did turn him over once or twice to assure myself that none of his bones were broken, and that my punishment had not gone too far; and as I did so, he executed some hollow groans, and went through with an admirable stage-play of impending dissolution. I could plainly see that he was shamming, and had an eye to damages and financial consolation, as well as the obvious intention of wringing my bosom with remorse. I left him sitting up in the path, rubbing his fiery curls and surveying the cocoanut branch with which he had made such a painful acquaintance, a figure so mournful, changed, and dejected that Pingalap would scarce have known him for her Beautiful Man.

As I was hurrying down to the beach, I saw the schooner getting under way, and heard the boat’s crew imperiously calling out to me to hasten. I broke into a run, and was almost at the water’s edge when I turned to find Bo panting at my side. I stopped to see what she wanted, and when she forced a little parcel into my pocket I suddenly remembered the present of which Hinton had spoken.

“Good-bye, Bo,” I cried, wringing her little fist in mine. “Many thanks for the fish-hook, which I shall always keep in memory of our travels.”

All the way out to the schooner I seemed to feel the package growing heavier and heavier in my pyjama pocket, and the suspicion more than once crossed my mind that it was no fish-hook at all. Feeling loath to determine the matter before the men, who must needs have seen and wondered at the transaction from the boat, I kept down my curiosity until I could satisfy it more privately on board. Then, as the captain and I were watching the extraordinary antics of the Beautiful Man (who had rushed down to the beach and thrown himself into a native canoe, in the impossible hope of overtaking us, alternately paddling and shaking his fist demoniacally in the air), I drew out the package and cut it open with my knife. In a neat little beadwork bag (which still conserved a lurking scent of monkey), and carefully done up in fibre, like a jewel in cotton wool, I found a shining treasure of gold and silver coin.

One hundred and thirty-seven dollars!

It was Bo’s restitution.

THE DUST OF DEFEAT

THE DUST OF DEFEAT

THEY took their accustomed path beside the strait, walking slowly side by side, each conscious that they would never again be together. The melancholy pines, rising from the water’s edge to the very summit of the mountains, gave that look of desolation which is the salient note of New Caledonian landscape. Across the narrow strait as calm and clear as some sweet English river, the rocky shore rose steep and precipitous, cloaked still in pines. A faint, thrilling roar broke at times upon the ear, and told of Fitzroy’s mine far up on the hill, its long chutes emptying chrome on the beach below. Except for this, there was not a sound that bespoke man’s presence or any sign that betrayed his habitation or handiwork.

“This is our last day,” he said. “Do you not once wish to see the little cabin where I have eaten my heart out these dozen years? Do you never mean to ask me what brought me here?”

“I would like to know,” she answered; “but I was afraid. I didn’t wish to be—to be—”

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for that unspoken word. You did not wish to be disillusioned—to be told that the man you have treated with such condescension was a mere vulgar criminal, a garroter perhaps, such a one as you have read of in Gaboriau’s romances. Ah, mademoiselle, when you have heard my unhappy story,—that story which no one has ever listened to save the counsel that defended me,—you will perhaps think better of poor Paul de Charruel.”

“You are innocent?” she cried, looking up at him with eyes full of tenderness and curiosity. “You have shielded some one?”

M. de Charruel shook his head. “I am not innocent,” he said. “I am no martyr, mademoiselle—not, at least, in the sense you are good enough to imply. I was fortunate to get transportation for life, doubly fortunate to obtain this modified liberty after only three years. You may, however, congratulate yourself that your friend is a model prisoner; his little farm has been well reported on by the Chef de l’Administration Pénitentiaire; it compares favourably with Leclair’s, the vitriol-thrower of Rue d’Enfer, and his early potatoes are said to rival those of Palitzi the famous poisoner.”

His companion shuddered.

“Pardon me,” he continued. “God knows, I have no desire to be merry; my heart is heavy enough, in all conscience.”

“You will tell me everything,” she said softly.

He walked along in silence for several minutes, moody and preoccupied, staring on the ground before him.

“I suppose I ought to begin with my father and mother, in the old-fashioned way,” he said at last, with a sudden smile. “There are conventionalities even for convicts! My father (if we are to go so far back) was the Comte de Charruel, one of the old noblesse; my mother an American lady from whom I got the little English I possess, as well as a disposition most rash, nervous, and impulsive. There were two of us children—my sister Berthe and myself, she the younger by six years. My father died when I reached twenty years, just as I entered the Eighty-sixth Hussars as a sub-lieutenant. Had he survived I might perhaps have been saved many miseries and unhappinesses; on the other hand, he, the soul of honour, might have been standing here in my place, condemned as I have been to a lifelong exile.

“I was a good officer. Titled, rich, and well born, there was accorded me the friendship of the aristocratic side of the regiment; a good comrade, and free from stupid pride, I stood well with those who had risen from the ranks and the humbler spheres of society. Many a time I was the only officer at home in either camp, and popular in both. When I look back upon my army life, so gay, so animated, so filled with small successes and commendations from my superiors, I wish that I had been fated to die in what was the very zenith of my happiness and prosperity.

“My mother, except for a short time each year at our hôtel in Paris, lived in our old château in Nemours, entertaining, in an unobtrusive fashion, many of the greatest people in France; for the entrée of few houses was more eagerly sought than our own. Though we were not so well born as some, nor so rich as many, my mother contrived to be always in request, and to make her salon the centre of all the gaiety and wit of France.

“From her earliest infancy my sister Berthe was counted one of the company at the château, and while I was at the lycée and afterwards at St. Cyr, she was leading the life of a great lady at Nemours. Marshals of France were her cavaliers; famous poets and musicians played with her dolls and shared her confidences; men and women distinguished in a thousand ways paid court to her childish beauty. Beauty, perhaps, I ought not to say, for her charm lay most in the extraordinary liveliness and intrepidity of her character, which captivated every beholder. Indeed, she ought to have been the man of the family, I the girl—so diverse were our tastes and aspirations, our whole outlook on life.

“You, of course, cannot recollect the amazing revolution that swept over Europe when I was a young man—that upheaval of everything old, accepted, and conventional, which was confined to no one country, but raged equally throughout them all. Huxley, Darwin, Haeckel, Renan, and Herbert Spencer were names that grew familiar by incessant repetition; young ladies whom one remembered last in boxes at the opera, or surrounded by admirers at balls and great assemblies, now threw themselves passionately into this new Renaissance. One you would find studying higher mathematics; another geology and chemistry; another still, teaching the children of thieves and cut-throats how to read. Girls you had seen at their father’s table, with downcast eyes and blushes when one spoke to them, now demanded separate establishments of their own; worked their way, if necessary, through foreign universities; fought like little tigers for the privilege of studying till two in the morning and starving with one another in the gloomiest parts of the town. Nor were the young men behind their sisters: to them also had come the new revelation, this self-denying and austere standard of life, this religion of violent intellectual effort. To many it was ennobling to a supreme degree; and while our girls boldly made their way into avenues hitherto closed to women, there were everywhere young men, no less ardent and disinterested, to support them in the mêlée. In every house there was this revolt of the young against the old, this perpetual argument of humanitarianism against apathy and laisser-faire.

“To me it all seemed the most frightful madness. I was bewildered to see bright eyes pursuing studies which I knew myself to be so wearisome, taking joy where I had found only vexation and fatigue. Like all my caste, I was old-fashioned and thought a woman’s place at home. You must not go to the army for new ideas. It was no pleasure to me to see delicately nurtured ladies rubbing shoulders with raw medical students or tainting their pretty ears with the unrestrained conversation of men. You must remember how things have changed in eighteen years; you can scarcely conceive the position of those forerunners of your sex in Europe, so much has public opinion altered for the better. In my day we went to extremes on either side, for it was then that the battle was fought. The elders would not give way an inch; the children dashed into a thousand extravagances. To some it looked as though the dissolution of society was at hand. Girls asked men to marry them,—men they had seen perhaps but once,—in order that they might gain the freedom accorded to married women and secure themselves against the intolerable interference of their families. Some of them never saw their husbands again, nor could even recollect their names without an effort. Ah, it was frightful! It was a revolution!

“In spite of all her liberal opinions, her unconventional views, her apparent allegiance to the new religion, my mother soon took her place amid the reactionary ranks, while my sister, the mondaine, just as surely joined the rebellion. As I said before, it was the battle of the young against the old; age, rather than conviction, assigned one’s position in the fight. Our house, hitherto so free from domestic discord, became the theatre of furious quarrels between mother and daughter—quarrels not about gowns, allowances, suitors, or unpaid bills, but involving questions abstract and sublime: one’s liberty of free development; one’s duty to one’s self, to mankind; one’s obligation, in fact, to cast off all shackles and take one’s place in the revolution so auspiciously beginning.

“The end of it was that Berthe left Nemours, coming to Paris without my mother’s permission, to study medicine with a Russian friend of hers, a girl as defiant and undaunted as herself. This was Sonia Boremykin, with whose name you must be familiar. Needless to say, I was interdicted from giving any assistance to my sister, my mother imploring me not to supply the means by which Berthe’s ruin might be accomplished. But I could not allow my sister to starve to death in a garret, and if I disobeyed my poor mother, she had at least the satisfaction of knowing that my sympathies were on her side of the quarrel. My greatest distress, indeed, was that Berthe would accept so little, for she was crazy to be a martyr, and was, besides, prompted by a generous feeling not to take a sou more than the meagre earnings of her companion. So they lived and starved together, these two remarkable young women, turning their backs on every luxury and refinement. Either, for the asking, could have received a thousand-franc note within the hour; for each a château stood with open doors; for each there was a dowry of more than respectable dimensions, and lovers who would have been glad to take them for their beaux yeux alone! And yet they chose to live in a garret, to be constantly affronted as they went unescorted through the wickedest parts of Paris, to subsist on food the most unappetising and unwholesome. For what? To cut up dead paupers in the Sorbonne!

“I was often there to see them with the self-imposed task of trying to lighten the burden of their sacrifices. I introduced food in paper bags, and surreptitiously dropped napoleons in dark corners—that is, until I was once detected. Afterwards they watched me like hawks. Sometimes they were so hungry that tears came into their eyes at the sight of what I brought; at others they would appear insulted, and throw it remorselessly out of the window. Though I had no sympathy whatever with their aims, I was profoundly interested, profoundly touched, as one might be at the sight of an heroic enemy. Their convictions were not my convictions; their mode of life I thought detestable: but who could withhold admiration for so much courage, so much self-denial, in two beautiful young women? I used often to bring with me my old colonel, a glorious veteran with whom I was always a favourite, and the girls liked to hear our sabres clank as we mounted the grimy stair, and to see our brilliant uniforms in their garret. It reminded them of the monde they had resigned; besides, they needed an audience of their own caste who could appreciate, as none other, their sacrifices and their fortitude. Mademoiselle Sonia used to look very kindly at me on the occasion of my visits, never growing angry, as my sister did, at my stupidity, or by my failure to understand their high-flown notions of duty. Once, when I was accidentally hurt at the salle d’armes by a button coming off my opponent’s foil, it was she who dressed my wound with the greatest tenderness and skill, converting me for all time as to the medical career for women. Poor Sonia, how her eyes sparkled at her little triumph!

“On one of my visits I was thunderstruck to find before me the Marquis de Gonse, a gentleman much older than myself, with whom I had not actual acquaintance, though we had a host of friends in common. Upon his departure I protested vehemently against this outrage of the proprieties. I besought them to show a little more circumspection in their choice of friends, admitting no man to their intimacy who counted not his fifty years. But my protestations were received with laughter; I was told that the marquis was a friend of Sonia’s father, and was trying to effect a reconciliation highly to be desired. Berthe accused me mockingly of wishing to keep the little Russian to myself. Indeed, she said, what could be more demoralising to her companion than the constant presence of a beautiful young hussar? With her saucy tongue she put me completely to the blush; in vain I pleaded and argued; de Gonse’s footing was assured. Yet, if they had searched all Paris, they could not have found a man more undesirable, or more dangerous for two young women to know. Ardent, generous, and himself full of aspirations for the advancement of humanity, nothing was better calculated to appeal to him than the struggle in which my sister was engaged. His sympathy, his sincere desire to put his own shoulder to the wheel, were more to be feared than the most strenuous protestations of regard. If he had made love to my sister, she was enough a woman of the world to have sent him to the right about; but he adopted, all unconsciously, I am sure, a more subtle plan to win her good opinion: he was converted!

“If I shut my eyes I can see him sitting there in that low garret as he appeared on one occasion which particularly imprinted itself on my mind; such a high-bred, such a distinguished figure, with his silk hat and gloves beside the box which had been given him for a chair, and his face full of wonder and sadness! You have read of Marie Antoinette in prison, of her sufferings so uncomplainingly borne, of her nobility and steadfastness in the squalor of her cell! You have revolted, perhaps, at the picture—clinched your little fists and felt a great bursting of the heart? It was thus with M. de Gonse. Berthe he had often seen at our château in Nemours; Sonia’s father he had known in Russia, a general of reputation, standing high in the favour of the Czar. None was better aware than he of what the young ladies had given up. I could see that he was deeply moved. He asked many questions; at times he exclaimed beneath his breath. He insisted on learning everything—the amount of their income, the nature of their studies, all their makeshifts and contrivances. The two beautiful, solitary girls, from whom sympathy and appreciation had so long been withheld, unbared their lives to us without reserve. Berthe told us, amid the passionate interjections of Sonia Boremykin, the story of their struggles at the medical school: the open hostility of the professors; the brutal sneers and innuendoes; the indescribable affronts that had been put upon them. During this terrible recital—for it was terrible to hear of outrages so patiently borne, of insults which bring the blood to the cheek even to remember after all these years—de Gonse rose more than once from his seat, walking up and down like one possessed, uttering cries of rage and pity. It was no feigned anger, no play-acting to win the regard of these poor women. Let me do the man that justice.

“I don’t think my sister was prepared for the effect of her eloquence on the marquis, or could have foreseen, even for a moment, the tempest she had raised within his breast. He swore he would challenge every professor in the school; that he would unloose spadassins on the offending students, whose bones should be broken with clubs; that to blight their careers in after life he would make his business, his pleasure, his joy! It was with difficulty that he was recalled to the realities of every-day existence, my sister telling him frankly that such a course as he proposed might benefit woman in general, but could not fail to destroy the future of herself and Sonia Boremykin. To be everywhere talked about, to get their names into the newspapers, to be pointed at on the street as the victims of frightful insults—what could be more detestable, more ruinous to the careers they hoped to make? De Gonse was reluctantly compelled to withdraw his plans of extermination; for who could controvert the logic with which they were demolished or fail to see the justice of my sister’s contention? Confessing himself beaten on this point, he sought for some other solution of the problem. Private tutors? Intolerably expensive, came the answer; poor substitutes for one of the greatest schools in Europe; unable, besides, to confer the longed-for degree. The University of Geneva, famous for its generous treatment of women? Good, but its diploma would not carry the desired prestige in France. I hazarded boys’ clothes and false mustaches; but my remark was greeted with a shout of laughter and a half-blushing confession from Mademoiselle Sonia that one experiment in this direction had sufficed. It was to the marquis that light finally came.

“‘Fool! Idiot!’ he thundered, striking himself on his handsome forehead with his fist. ‘Why did I not think of it before? To-morrow I join the medical school myself—the student de Gonse, cousin of the marquis, a man tired of the hollowness and the trivialities of high life. I do nothing to show I am acquainted with you, nothing to compromise you in the faintest manner. But de Gonse, the medical student, is a gentleman, a man of honour. A companion ventures on a remark derogatory to the dignity of the young ladies; behold, his head cracks like an egg against his desk! Another opens his mouth, only to discover that le boxe (you know I am quite an Anglais) is driving the teeth down his throat, setting up medical complications of an extraordinary and baffling nature. A professor so far forgets his manhood as to heap insults on the undefended; the strange medical student tweaks his nose in the tribune and challenges him to combat! How simple, how direct!’

“Imagine my surprise a few days later to learn that this had been no idle gasconade on the marquis’s part. True to his word, he had appeared at the school elaborately attired for the part he was to play, even to a detestable cravat and a profusion of cheap jewellery! Unquestionably there must have been others in the plot, for no formalities anywhere tied his hands or opposed the least obstacle to his audacity. As one would have expected from a man so eager and so full of resource, the object for which he came was soon achieved. Mingling with the students as one of themselves, he singled out those who went the farthest in persecuting the women, and insensibly cajoled them into a better way of conduct. The minority, too, those that still kept alive the chivalry of young France, were strengthened and encouraged by the force of his example, so that the crusade, once authoritatively begun, went on magnificently of itself. Not a blow was struck, not a wry word said, and behold, de Gonse had accomplished a miracle! From that time the position of women was assured; protectors arose on every side as though by magic; in a word, gallantry became the fashion. When professors ventured on impertinences, hisses now greeted them in place of cheers; they changed colour, and were at pains to explain away their words. The battle, indeed, was won.

“Had de Gonse contented himself with this victory, which saved my sister and Mademoiselle Sonia from countless mortifications, how much human misery would have been averted, how great a tragedy would have remained unplayed! But evil and good are inexplicably blended in this world, a commonplace of whose truth, mademoiselle, you will have many opportunities of verifying. Having acted so manly a part, one so calculated to earn the gratitude and esteem of these poor girls, he turned from one to the other, wondering with which he should reward himself. I have reason to think his choice first fell on Sonia Boremykin, who had the whitest skin and the prettiest blue eyes in the world. How can I doubt, to judge from her wild, tragic after life, but that he could have persuaded her to her ruin? But he must have paused half-way, struck by the incomparable superiority of my sister. In beauty she was not perhaps the equal of her companion, though to compare blonde and brune is a matter of supererogation. In other ways, at least, there never lived a woman more desirable than Berthe de Charruel. She possessed to a supreme degree the charm that springs from intelligence,—I might say from genius,—which, when found in the person of a young and beautiful woman, is almost irresistible to any man that gains her favour. Jeanne d’Arc was such another as my poor sister, and must have been impelled on her career by something of the same fire, something of the same passionate earnestness. To break a heart like hers seemed to de Gonse the crown to a hundred vulgar intrigues and bonnes fortunes.

“Of course, I knew nothing of this gradual undoing of my sister, though during the course of my visits to the little garret I often found the marquis in the society of Berthe and her friend. I disliked to see him there, but I was powerless to interfere. I was often puzzled, indeed, by the ambiguous conduct of Mademoiselle Sonia, who had the queerest way of looking at me, and whose eyes were always meeting mine in singular glances, whether of warning or appeal I was at a loss to tell. Her words, too, often left me uneasy, recurring to me constantly when I was in the saddle at the head of my troop or as I lay awake in bed awaiting the reveille. I wondered if the little Russian were making love to me, for, like all hussars, I was something of a coxcomb, though, to do me justice, neither a lady-killer nor a pursuer of adventures. It was in my profession that I found my only distraction, my only mistress. I am almost ashamed to tell you how good I was, how innocent—how in me the Puritan stock of my mother seemed to find a fresh recrudescence. Some thought me a hypocrite, others a coward; but I was neither.

“I learned the truth late one afternoon from Sonia Boremykin, who came to my quarters closely veiled, in a condition of agitation the most frightful. I could not believe her; I seemed to see only another of her devices to win my regard. My sister! My Berthe! It was impossible! I said to her the crudest things; I was beside myself. She went on her knees; she hid nothing; it was all true. My anger flamed like a blazing fire; I rushed out of the barracks regardless of my duties—of everything except revenge. A lucky rencontre on the street put me on de Gonse’s track, and I ran him down in the salle of the Jockey Club. He was standing under one of the windows, reading a letter by the fading light, a note, as like as not, he had just received from Berthe. I think he changed colour when he saw me; at least, he drew back with a start.

“I lifted my glove and struck him square across his handsome face.

“‘You will understand what that is for, M. le Marquis de Gonse!’ I cried.

“He turned deadly white, and with a quick movement caught my wrists in both his hands.

“‘Mon enfant!’ he exclaimed in a loud voice, which he tried to invest with a tone of jocularity, ‘you carry your high spirits beyond all reason; I am too old to enjoy being hit upon the nose.’ Then in a lower key he whispered: ‘Paul, calm thyself; for the love of God, do not force a quarrel. Come outside and let us talk with calmness.’

“But I was in no humour to be cajoled. I fiercely shook off his restraining hands. ‘Messieurs,’ I cried, as the others, detecting a scene, began to close round us, ‘Messieurs, behold how I buffet the face of the Marquis de Gonse!’ And with that I again flicked my glove across his face.

“De Gonse slunk back with a sort of sob.

“‘Captain de Charruel and I have had an unfortunate difference of opinion,’ he cried, recovering his aplomb on the instant. ‘It seems we cannot agree upon the Spanish Succession. M. le Comte, my seconds will await on you this evening.’

“I turned and left the club, my head in a whirl, my face so distraught and haggard that I carried consternation through the jostling street, the people making way for me as though I were a madman. To obtain seconds was my immediate preoccupation, a task of no difficulty for a young hussar. My colonel kindly condescended to act, and with him my friend Nicholas van Greef, the military attaché of the Netherlands government. To both I told the same story of the Spanish Succession and the quarrel of which it had been the occasion. But my colonel smiled and laid a meaning finger against his nose; the Dutchman said drily it was well to keep ladies’ names out of such affairs. I am convinced, however, that neither of them had the faintest glimmering of the truth. Having thus arranged matters with my seconds, I attempted next to find my poor sister, hastening up her interminable stairs with an impatience I leave you to imagine. Needless to say, she was not in the garret, which was inhabited by Mademoiselle Sonia alone, her pretty face swollen with weeping, her humour one of extraordinary caprices and contradictions. She blamed me altogether for the catastrophe: I ought not to have given Berthe a sou; I ought to have starved her back into servitude. Women were intended for slaves; to make them free was to give them the rope to hang themselves. For her part, said mademoiselle, she thought a convent the right place for girls, and crochet work the best occupation! At any other time I might have stared to hear such sentiments from my sister’s friend, but for the moment I could think of nothing but Berthe. To find her was my one desire. In this, however, Sonia would afford me no assistance, frankly asking what would be the good.

“‘The harm is done, my poor Paul,’ she said, looking at me sorrowfully. ‘Why should I expose you or her to an interview so unpleasant? How could it profit any one?’

“I could not altogether see the force of this acquiescence in evil. I said that the honour of one of the oldest families in France was at stake; that if my sister did not leave the marquis I should kill her with my own hands and fly the country. I implored Mademoiselle Sonia, with every argument I thought might move her, to betray my sister’s hiding-place. But she kept putting me off, mocked at my impatience, and tried to learn, on her side, whether or not I meant to fight de Gonse.

“‘If you really wish to find out where she is,’ she cried at last, ‘why don’t you make me tell you? Why don’t you take me by the throat and pound my head against the wall, as they do down-stairs with such admirable success? Those women positively adore their men.’ As she spoke she threw back her head and exposed her charming neck with a gesture half defiant, half submissive! Upon my soul, I felt like carrying her suggestion into effect and choking her in good earnest, for I had become furious at her contrariety. But, restraining the impulse, I saw there was nothing left for me save to retire.

“‘Mademoiselle Boremykin,’ I said, ‘you are heartless and wicked beyond anything I could have imagined possible. You have helped to bring a noble name to dishonour, and in place of remorse your only feelings seem those of levity. I have the honour of wishing you good day.’

“De Gonse and I met the following morning in the Bois de Boulogne. His had been the choice of arms, and he selected rapiers, knowing, like all men of the world, that a pistol has the knack of killing. I ground my teeth at his decision, for he had the reputation of being a fine fencer, while I could boast no more than the average proficiency. He appeared to great advantage on the field; so cool, so handsome, such a grand seigneur—in every way so marked a contrast to myself. It was not unnatural, however: he was there to prick me in the shoulder, I to kill him if I could. Small wonder that my face was livid, that my eyes burned like coals in my head, that I was petulant with my own seconds, insulting towards my adversary’s. I looked at these with scorn, the supporters of a scoundrel, themselves, no doubt, seducers and libertines like him they served. My dear old colonel chid me for my discourtesy—bade me be a galant homme for his sake, if not for mine. I kissed his wrinkled hand before them all; I said I respected men only who were honourable like himself. Every one laughed at my extravagance, at the poor old man’s embarrassment. It was plain they considered me a coward. They said things I could not help overhearing. But I cared for nothing. My God, no! I was there to kill de Gonse, not to pick quarrels with his friends.

“We were placed in position. Everything was en règle. The doctors, of whom there were a couple, lit cigarettes and did not even trouble to open their wallets. They knew it to be an affair of scratches.

“The handkerchief fell. We set to, warily, cautiously, looking into each other’s eyes like wild beasts. More than once he could have killed me, so openly did I expose myself to his attack, so unconscionably did I force him back, hoping to give lunge for lunge, my life for his. But in his adventurous past de Gonse must often have crossed swords with men no less desperate than myself; it was no new thing to him to face a determined foe, or to guard himself against thrusts that were meant to kill. His temper was under admirable control; he handled his weapon like a master in the school of arms, and allowed me to tire myself out against what seemed a wall of steel. Suddenly he forced my guard with a stroke like a lightning-flash; I felt my left arm burn as though melted wax had been dropped upon it. Some one seized my sword; some one caught me in his arms!

“My dizziness, my bewilderment, were the sensations of a moment, and in a trice I was myself again. The wound was nothing—a nicely calculated stroke through the fleshy part of the arm. I laughed when they talked of honour satisfied and of our return to the barracks. I said I never felt better in my life. It was true, for I was possessed with a berserker rage, as they call it in the old Norse sagas; a bullet through my heart could not have hurt me then. The seconds demurred; they told me that I was in their hands; that I was overruled; repeated, like parrots, that honour was satisfied. This only made me laugh the more. I went up to the marquis and asked him was it necessary for me to strike him again? I called him a coward, and swore I would post him in every salon and club in Paris. I slapped him in the face with my bare hand—my right, for my left felt numb and strange. There was another scene. De Gonse appeared discomposed for the first time; the seconds were pale and more than perturbed. One had a sense of death being in the air. There were consultations apart; appeals to which I would not listen; expostulations as idle as the wind. De Gonse, trembling with wrath, left himself unreservedly to his seconds, walking up and down at a little distance like a sentinel on duty. I also strolled about to show how strong and fit I was—the angriest, the bitterest man in France.

“At length it was decided that we might continue the combat. De Gonse solemnly protested, bidding us all take notice that he had been allowed no alternative. My colonel was almost in tears. Repeatedly, as a favour to himself, he besought me to apologise for that second blow and retire from the field. But I was adamant. ‘Mon colonel,’ I said to him, in a whisper, ‘this is a quarrel in which one of us must fall. Let me assure you it is not about a trifle.’