The Ebbing Of The Tide - George Lewis Becke (best books to read ever txt) 📗

Peese, the handsome, savagely humorous, and voluble colleague of Captain "Bully" Hayes, the modern rover of the South Seas, one day appeared. Lupton, with his son and two natives, were out searching the beach of a little islet for turtles' eggs, when the boy, who had been sent to obtain a few young drinking cocoanuts from a tree some little distance away, called out, "_Te Pahi!_" (a ship). A few minutes passed, and then, outlined against the narrow strip of cocoanuts that grew on the north end of the main islet of the lagoon, Lupton saw the sails of a schooner making for the only opening--a narrow passage on the eastern side.

Now vessels came but rarely to Mururea, for Du Petit Thouars, the French Admiral of the Pacific fleet, had long since closed the group to the Sydney trading ships that once came there for pearl-shell, and Lupton felt uneasy. The vessel belonging to the Tahitian firm for whom he traded was not due for many months. Could the stranger be that wandering Ishmael of the sea--Peese? Only he--or his equally daring and dreaded colleague, Bully Hayes--would dare to sail a vessel of any size in among the coral "mushrooms" that studded the current-swept waters of the dangerous passage.

What did he want? And honest Frank Lupton, a quiet and industrious trader, thought of his store of pearl-shell and felt still more doubtful. And he knew Peese so well, the dapper, handsome little Englishman with the pleasant voice that had in it always a ripple of laughter--the voice and laugh that concealed his tigerish heart and savage vindictiveness. Lupton had children too--sons and daughters--and Peese, who looked upon women as mere articles of merchandise, would have thought no more of carrying off the trader's two pretty daughters than he would of "taking" a cask of oil or a basket of pearl-shell.

*****


His anxious face, paling beneath the tropic bronze of twenty years' ocean wanderings, betrayed his feelings to the two natives who were now pulling the boat with all their strength to gain the village, and one--Maora, his wife's brother, a big, light-skinned man, with that keen, hawk-like visage peculiar to the people of the eastern islands of Polynesia, said--

"'Tis an evil day, Farani! No ship but that of the Little Man with the Beard hath ever passed into the lagoon since the great English fighting ship came inside" (he spoke of 1863), "for the reef hath grown and spread out and nearly closed it. Only the Little Bearded Devil would dare it, for he hath been here twice with the Man of the Strong Hand" (Hayes). "And, Farani, listen! 'The hand to the club!'"

They ceased pulling. From the village came the sound of an almost forgotten cry--a signal of danger to the dwellers under the palms--"The hand to the club!"--meaning for the men to arm.

*****


Lupton hesitated. The natives would, he knew, stand to him to a man if violence to or robbery of him were attempted. But to gain the village he must needs pass close the vessel, and to pass on and not board her would savour of cowardice--and Lupton was an Englishman, and his twenty years' wanderings among the dangerous people of some of the islands of the Paumotu Group had steeled his nerves to meet any danger or emergency. So, without altering the course of the boat, he ran alongside of the vessel--which was a brigantine--just as she was bringing to, and looking up, he saw the face he expected.

"How are you, Lupton, my dear fellow?" said Peese, as the trader gained the deck, wringing his hand effusively, as if he were a long-lost brother. "By Heavens! I'm glad to meet a countryman again, and that countryman Frank Lupton. Don't like letting your hand go." And still grasping the trader's rough hand in his, delicate and smooth as a woman's, he beamed upon him with an air of infantile pleasure.

*****


This was one of Peese's peculiarities--an affectation of absolute affection for any Englishman he met, from the captain of a man-of-war (these, however, he avoided as much as possible), to a poor beachcomber with but a grass girdle round his loins.

"What brings you here, Captain Peese?" said Lupton, bluntly, as his eye sought the village, and saw the half-naked figures of his native following leaving his house in pairs, each carrying between them a square box, and disappearing into the _puka_ scrub. It was his pearl-shell. Mameri, his wife, had scented danger, and the shell at least was safe, however it befell. Peese's glance followed his, and the handsome little captain laughed, and slapped the gloomy-faced and suspicious trader on the back with an air of _camaraderie_.

"My dear fellow, what an excessively suspicious woman your good Mameri is! But do not be alarmed. I have not come here to do any business this time, but to land a passenger, and as soon as his traps are on the beach I'm off again to Maga Reva. Such are the exigencies, my dear Lupton, of a trading captain's life in the South Seas, I cannot even spare the time to go on shore with you and enjoy the hospitality of the good Mameri and your two fair daughters. But come below with me and see my passenger." And he led the way to his cabin.

*****


The passenger's appearance, so Lupton told me, "was enough to make a man's blood curdle," so ghastly pale and emaciated was he. He rose as Lupton entered and extended his hand.

"My friend here," said the worthy little Ishmael, bowing and caressing his long silky beard, "is, ah, hum, Mr. Brown. He is, as you will observe, my dear Lupton, in a somewhat weak state of health, and is in search of some retired spot where he may recuperate sufficiently----"

"Don't lie unnecessarily, sir."

Peese bowed affably and smiled, and the stranger addressed Lupton.

"My name is not Brown--'tis of no consequence what it is; but I am, indeed, as you see, in a bad way, with but a few months at most to live. Captain Peese, at my request, put into this lagoon. He has told me that the place is seldom visited by ships, and that the people do not care about strangers. Yet, have you, Mr. Lupton, any objections to my coming ashore here, and living out the rest of my life? I have trade goods sufficient for all requirements, and will in no way interfere with or become a charge upon you."

Lupton considered. His influence with the people of Mururea was such that he could easily overcome their objections to another white man landing; but he had lived so long apart from all white associations that he did not care about having the even monotony of his life disturbed. And then, he thought, it might be some queer game concocted between the sick man and the chattering little sea-hawk that sat beside him stroking and fondling his flowing beard. He was about to refuse when the sunken, eager eyes of "Mr. Brown" met his in an almost appealing look that disarmed him of all further suspicion.

"Very well, sir. The island is as free to you as to me. But, still, I _could_ stop any one else from living here if I wished to do so. But you do look very ill, no mistake about that. And, then, you ain't going to trade against me! And I suppose you'll pass me your word that there isn't any dodge between you and the captain here to bone my shell and clear out?"

For answer the sick man opened a despatch-box that lay on the cabin table, and took from it a bag of money.

*****


"This," he said, "is the sum I agreed to pay Captain Peese to land me on any island of my choice in the Paumotu Archipelago, and this unsigned order here is in his favour on the Maison Brander of Tahiti for a similar sum."

Signing the paper he pushed it with the money over to Peese, and then went on:--

"I assure you, Mr. Lupton, that this is the only transaction I have ever had with Captain Peese. I came to him in Tahiti, hearing he was bound to the Paumotu Group. I had never heard of him before, and after to-day I will not, in all human probability, see him again."

"Perfectly correct, my dear sir," said Peese. "And now, as our business is finished, perhaps our dear friend, Lupton, will save me the trouble of lowering a boat by taking you ashore in his own, which is alongside."

Five minutes later and Lupton and the stranger were seated in the boat.

"Good-bye, my dear Lupton, and _adios_ my dear Mr. Brown. I shall ever remember our pleasant relations on board my humble little trading vessel," cried the renowned Peese, who, from former associations, had a way of drifting into the Spanish tongue--and prisons and fetters--which latter he once wore for many a weary day on the cruiser _Hernandez Pizarro_ on his way to the gloomy prison of Manilla.

The boat had barely traversed half the distance to the shore ere the brigantine's anchor was hove-up and at her bows, and then Peese, with his usual cool assurance, beat her through the intricate passage and stood out into the long roll of the Pacific.

*****


When Lupton, with his "walking bone bag," as he mentally called the stranger, entered his house, Mameri, his bulky native wife, uttered an exclamation of pity, and placing a chair before him uttered the simple word of welcome _Iorana!_ and the daughters, with wonder-lit star-like eyes, knelt beside their father's chair and whispered, "Who is he, Farani?"

And Lupton could only answer, "I don't know, and won't ask. Look to him well."

He never did ask. One afternoon nearly a year afterwards, as Lupton and Trenton, the supercargo of the _Marama_ sat on an old native _marae_ at Arupahi, the Village of Four Houses, he told the strange story of his sick guest.

*****


The stranger had at first wished to have a house built for himself, but Lupton's quiet place and the shy and reserved natures of his children made him change his intention and ask Lupton for a part of his house. It was given freely--where are there more generous-hearted men than these world-forgotten, isolated traders?--and here the Silent Man, as the people of Mururea called him, lived out the few months of his life. That last deceptive stage of his insidious disease had given him a fictitious strength. On many occasions, accompanied by the trader's children, he would walk to the north point of the low-lying island, where the cloudy spume of the surge was thickest and where the hollow and resonant crust of the black reef was perforated with countless air-holes, through which the water hissed and roared, and shot high in air, to fall again in misty spray.

And here, with dreamy eyes, he would sit under the shade of a clump of young cocoanuts, and watch the boil and tumble of the surf, whilst the children played with and chased each other about the clinking sand. Sometimes he would call them to him--Farani the boy, and Teremai and Lorani, the sweet-voiced and tender-eyed girls--and ask them to sing to him; and in their soft semi-Tahitian dialect they would sing the old songs that echoed in the ears of the desperate men of the _Bounty_ that fatal dawn when, with bare-headed, defiant Bligh drifting astern in his boat, they headed back for Tahiti and death. *****

Four months had passed when one day the strange white man,