strung, and he possessed too much imagination. The world was too much with him. He projected himself too quiveringly into his environment. Therefore, the last place in the world for him to come was the Solomons. He did not come, expecting to stay. A five weeks’ stop-over between steamers, he decided, would satisfy the call of the primitive he felt thrumming the strings of his being. At least, so he told the lady tourists on the MAKEMBO, though in different terms; and they worshipped him as a hero, for they were lady tourists and they would know only the safety of the steamer’s deck as she threaded her way through the Solomons.
There was another man on board, of whom the ladies took no notice. He was a little shriveled wisp of a man, with a withered skin the color of mahogany. His name on the passenger list does not matter, but his other name, Captain Malu, was a name for niggers to conjure with, and to scare naughty pickaninnies to righteousness from New Hanover to the New Hebrides. He had farmed savages and savagery, and from fever and hardship, the crack of Sniders and the lash of the overseers, had wrested five millions of money in the form of bêche-de-mer, sandalwood, pearl-shell and turtle-shell, ivory nuts and copra, grasslands, trading stations, and plantations. Captain Malu’s little finger, which was broken, had more inevitableness in it than Bertie Arkwright’s whole carcass. But then, the lady tourists had nothing by which to judge save appearances, and Bertie certainly was a fine-looking man.
Bertie talked with Captain Malu in the smoking room, confiding to him his intention of seeing life red and bleeding in the Solomons. Captain Malu agreed that the intention was ambitious and honorable. It was not until several days later that he became interested in Bertie, when that young adventurer insisted on showing him an automatic 44-caliber pistol. Bertie explained the mechanism and demonstrated by slipping a loaded magazine up the hollow butt.
“It is so simple,” he said. He shot the outer barrel back along the inner one. “That loads it and cocks it, you see. And then all I have to do is pull the trigger, eight times, as fast as I can quiver my finger. See that safety clutch. That’s what I like about it. It is safe. It is positively fool-proof.” He slipped out the magazine. “You see how safe it is.”
As he held it in his hand, the muzzle came in line with Captain Malu’s stomach. Captain Malu’s blue eyes looked at it unswervingly.
“Would you mind pointing it in some other direction?” he asked.
“It’s perfectly safe,” Bertie assured him. “I withdrew the magazine. It’s not loaded now, you know.”
“A gun is always loaded.”
“But this one isn’t.”
“Turn it away just the same.”
Captain Malu’s voice was flat and metallic and low, but his eyes never left the muzzle until the line of it was drawn past him and away from him.
“I’ll bet a fiver it isn’t loaded,” Bertie proposed warmly.
The other shook his head.
“Then I’ll show you.”
Bertie started to put the muzzle to his own temple with the evident intention of pulling the trigger.
“Just a second,” Captain Malu said quietly, reaching out his hand. “Let me look at it.”
He pointed it seaward and pulled the trigger. A heavy explosion followed, instantaneous with the sharp click of the mechanism that flipped a hot and smoking cartridge sidewise along the deck.
Bertie’s jaw dropped in amazement.
“I slipped the barrel back once, didn’t I?” he explained. “It was silly of me, I must say.”
He giggled flabbily, and sat down in a steamer chair. The blood had ebbed from his face, exposing dark circles under his eyes. His hands were trembling and unable to guide the shaking cigarette to his lips. The world was too much with him, and he saw himself with dripping brains prone upon the deck.
“Really,” he said, “… really.”
“It’s a pretty weapon,” said Captain Malu, returning the automatic to him.
The Commissioner was on board the Makembo, returning from Sydney, and by his permission a stop was made at Ugi to land a missionary. And at Ugi lay the ketch ARLA, Captain Hansen, skipper. Now the Arla was one of many vessels owned by Captain Malu, and it was at his suggestion and by his invitation that Bertie went aboard the Arla as guest for a four days’ recruiting cruise on the coast of Malaita. Thereafter the ARLA would drop him at Reminge Plantation (also owned by Captain Malu), where Bertie could remain for a week, and then be sent over to Tulagi, the seat of government, where he would become the Commissioner’s guest. Captain Malu was responsible for two other suggestions, which given, he disappears from this narrative. One was to Captain Hansen, the other to Mr. Harriwell, manager of Reminge Plantation. Both suggestions were similar in tenor, namely, to give Mr. Bertram Arkwright an insight into the rawness and redness of life in the Solomons. Also, it is whispered that Captain Malu mentioned that a case of Scotch would be coincidental with any particularly gorgeous insight Mr. Arkwright might receive…
“Yes, Swartz always was too pig-headed. You see, he took four of his boat’s crew to Tulagi to be flogged – officially, you know – then started back with them in the whaleboat. It was pretty squally, and the boat capsized just outside. Swartz was the only one drowned. Of course, it was an accident.”
“Was it? Really?” Bertie asked, only half-interested, staring hard at the black man at the wheel.
Ugi had dropped astern, and the ARLA was sliding along through a summer sea toward the wooded ranges of Malaita. The helmsman who so attracted Bertie’s eyes sported a ten penny nail, stuck skewerwise through his nose. About his neck was a string of pants buttons. Thrust through holes in his ears were a can opener, the broken handle of a toothbrush, a clay pipe, the brass wheel of an alarm clock, and several Winchester rifle cartridges.
On his chest, suspended from around his neck hung the half of a china plate. Some forty similarly appareled blacks lay about the deck, fifteen of which were boat’s crew, the remainder being fresh labor recruits.
“Of course it was an accident,” spoke up the ARLA’S mate, Jacobs, a slender, dark-eyed man who looked more a professor than a sailor. “Johnny Bedip nearly had the same kind of accident. He was bringing back several from a flogging, when they capsized him. But he knew how to swim as well as they, and two of them were drowned. He used a boat stretcher and a revolver. Of course it was an accident.”
“Quite common, them accidents,” remarked the skipper. “You see that man at the wheel, Mr. Arkwright? He’s a man eater. Six months ago, he and the rest of the boat’s crew drowned the then captain of the ARLA. They did it on deck, sir, right aft there by the mizzen-traveler.”
“The deck was in a shocking state,” said the mate.
“Do I understand – ?” Bertie began.
“Yes, just that,” said Captain Hansen. “It was an accidental drowning.”
“But on deck – ?”
“Just so. I don’t mind telling you, in confidence, of course, that they used an axe.”
“This present crew of yours?”
Captain Hansen nodded.
“The other skipper always was too careless,” explained the mate. “He but just turned his back, when they let him have it.”
