There was I, sitting in that verandah, in as handsome a piece of scenery as you could find, a splendid sun, and a fine fresh healthy trade that stirred up a man’s blood like sea-bathing; and the whole thing was clean gone from me, and I was dreaming England, which is, after all, a nasty, cold, muddy hole, with not enough light to see to read by; and dreaming the looks of my public, by a cant of a broad highroad like an avenue, and with the sign on a green tree.
So much for the morning, but the day passed and the devil anyone looked near me, and from all I knew of natives in other islands I thought this strange. People laughed a little at our firm and their fine stations, and at this station of Falesá in particular; all the copra in the district wouldn’t pay for it (I had heard them say) in fifty years, which I supposed was an exaggeration. But when the day went, and no business came at all, I began to get downhearted; and, about three in the afternoon, I went out for a stroll to cheer me up. On the green I saw a white man coming with a cassock on, by which and by the face of him I knew he was a priest. He was a good-natured old soul to look at, gone a little grizzled, and so dirty you could have written with him on a piece of paper.
“Good day, sir,” said I.
He answered me eagerly in native.
“Don’t you speak any English?” said I.
“French,” says he.
“Well,” said I, “I’m sorry, but I can’t do anything there.”
He tried me awhile in the French, and then again in native, which he seemed to think was the best chance. I made out he was after more than passing the time of day with me, but had something to communicate, and I listened the harder. I heard the names of Adams and Case and of Randall — Randall the oftenest — and the word “poison,” or something like it, and a native word that he said very often. I went home, repeating it to myself.
“What does fussy-ocky mean?” I asked of Uma, for that was as near as I could come to it.
“Make dead,” said she.
“The devil it does!” says I. “Did ever you hear that Case had poisoned Johnnie Adams?”
“Every man he savvy that,” says Uma, scornful-like. “Give him white sand — bad sand. He got the bottle still. Suppose he give you gin, you no take him.”
Now I had heard much the same sort of story in other islands, and the same white powder always to the front, which made me think the less of it. For all that, I went over to Randall’s place to see what I could pick up, and found Case on the doorstep, cleaning a gun.
“Good shooting here?” says I.
“A 1,” says he. “The bush is full of all kinds of birds. I wish copra was as plenty,” says he — I thought, slyly— “but there don’t seem anything doing.”
I could see Black Jack in the store, serving a customer.
“That looks like business, though,” said I.
“That’s the first sale we’ve made in three weeks,” said he.
“You don’t tell me?” says I. “Three weeks? Well, well.”
“If you don’t believe me,” he cries, a little hot, “you can go and look at the copra-house. It’s half empty to this blessed hour.”
“I shouldn’t be much the better for that, you see,” says I. “For all I can tell, it might have been whole empty yesterday.”
“That’s so,” says he, with a bit of a laugh.
“By-the-bye,” I said, “what sort of a party is that priest? Seems rather a friendly sort.”
At this Case laughed right out loud. “Ah!” says he, “I see what ails you now. Galuchet’s been at you.” — Father Galoshes was the name he went by most, but Case always gave it the French quirk, which was another reason we had for thinking him above the common.
“Yes, I have seen him,” I says. “I made out he didn’t think much of your Captain Randall.”
“That he don’t!” says Case. “It was the trouble about poor Adams. The last day, when he lay dying, there was young Buncombe round. Ever met Buncombe?”
I told him no.
“He’s a cure, is Buncombe!” laughs Case. “Well, Buncombe took it in his head that, as there was no other clergyman about, bar Kanaka pastors, we ought to call in Father Galuchet, and have the old man administered and take the sacrament. It was all the same to me, you may suppose; but I said I thought Adams was the fellow to consult. He was jawing away about watered copra and a sight of foolery. ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘you’re pretty sick. Would you like to see Galoshes?’ He sat right up on his elbow. ‘Get the priest,’ says he, ‘get the priest; don’t let me die here like a dog!’ He spoke kind of fierce and eager, but sensible enough. There was nothing to say against that, so we sent and asked Galuchet if he would come. You bet he would. He jumped in his dirty linen at the thought of it. But we had reckoned without Papa. He’s a hard-shell Baptist, is Papa; no Papists need apply. And he took and locked the door. Buncombe told him he was bigoted, and I thought he would have had a fit. ‘Bigoted!’ he says. ‘Me bigoted? Have I lived to hear it from a jackanapes like you?’ And he made for Buncombe, and I had to hold them apart; and there was Adams in the middle, gone luny again, and carrying on about copra like a born fool. It was good as the play, and I was about knocked out of time with laughing, when all of a sudden Adams sat up, clapped his hands to his chest, and went into the horrors. He died hard, did John Adams,” says Case, with a kind of a sudden sternness.
“And what became of the priest?” I asked.
“The priest?” says Case. “O! he was hammering on the door outside, and crying on the natives to come and beat it in, and singing out it was a soul he wished to save, and that. He was in a rare taking, was the priest. But what would you have? Johnny had slipped his cable; no more Johnny in the market; and the administration racket clean played out. Next thing, word came to Randall the priest was praying upon Johnny’s grave. Papa was pretty full, and got a club, and lit out straight for the place, and there was Galoshes on his knees, and a lot of natives looking on. You wouldn’t think Papa cared — that much about anything, unless it was liquor; but he and the priest stuck to it two hours, slanging each other in native, and every time Galoshes tried to kneel down Papa went for him with the club. There never were such larks in Falesá. The end of it was that Captain Randall knocked over with some kind of a fit or stroke, and the priest got in his goods after all. But he was the angriest priest you ever heard of, and complained to the chiefs about the outrage, as he called it. That was no account, for our chiefs are Protestant here; and, anyway, he had been making trouble about the drum for morning school, and they were glad to give him a wipe. Now he swears old Randall gave Adams poison or something, and when the two meet they grin at each other like baboons.”
He told this story as natural as could be, and like a man that enjoyed the fun; though, now I come to think of it after so long, it seems rather a sickening yarn. However, Case never set up to be soft, only to be square and hearty, and a man all round; and, to tell the truth, he puzzled me entirely.
I went home and asked Uma if she were a Popey, which I had made out to be the native word for Catholics.
“E le ai!” says she. She always used the native when she meant “no” more than usually strong, and, indeed, there’s
