Joan of the Island/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
A FLAG OF TRUCE
SCARCELY a word was spoken in the whale-boat during the half hour that followed Peter Pan's departure on his perilous errand. Keith and the girl sat together in the stern, while one of the blacks, painter in hand, stood on the reef and held the boat from drifting. Either because her eyes were becoming more accustomed to the gloom, or because it was growing a shade lighter, Joan could now faintly see the face of the man by her side. Once he put his hand lightly on her arm. Although it was only a message of reassurance, it disconcerted her. She knew that such an act at such a time was not intended as a caress, and was glad the darkness hid the flush that the slight touch of his hand had summoned to her cheeks. Curiously enough, she was not conscious of danger with Keith near, though danger there undoubtedly was. They were three miles from Tao Tao, with half a gale blowing, and enveloped by blackness which would make their safe return to the island a problem, for even if they had dared to strike a light they had no compass.
"Do—do you think anything can have happened to Peter Pan?" she asked at length, almost in a whisper.
"They can't have seen him, or we should have heard a shot," Keith replied. "I hope he doesn't delay too long, though, because the clouds are getting thinner, and if it grows light he won't be able to get anywhere near the schooner. Hark! What's that?"
As he spoke the moon shone through a sudden break in the clouds, and a hoarse cry came over the water from the opposite side of the reef.
"See! The schooner! The schooner!" Joan exclaimed excitedly. "It's drifting on to the reef!"
The cries on the imperilled craft were now redoubled. Above them Moniz's deep voice could be heard bellowing, and a yell of pain told its own story of some luckless black who had not jumped to obey orders quickly enough to please the Portuguese trader. Nearer and nearer the reef the vessel drifted. There was the creaking of blocks and tackle. A sail bellied against the sheen of the moon. A canvas cracked in the wind like a great whip.
"He's scraped out of it by the skin of his teeth," muttered Keith. "It was a near thing, though."
With straining sheets the schooner was now edging away from the threatening coral, back toward her old anchorage. The figure of Peter Pan appeared suddenly on the reef, and he scrambled into the whale-boat.
"Washee-washee!" Keith ordered. "Go plenty quiet!"
With as little sound as possible they made off, but they did not get far unobserved. Just as Moniz gave the order for his spare anchor to be dropped over, his eyes fell on the boat. Up to that moment he had attributed the parting of the cable to a flaw, but now he realized that it had been cut.
With an oath Moniz reached for a rifle, and half a dozen shots flew in the direction of the whale-boat. He could not hope to make a hit in the half-darkness, but it relieved his feelings somewhat to pump lead after the retreating enemy.
"Washee-washee!" Keith cried again, and the whale-boat shot over the dark waters at racing speed until it was out of range.
"That brute has the devil's own luck," he said after a few minutes. "Number two trick goes to him. Never mind. It may be our turn next. Sorry to have kept you out of bed for nothing, Miss Trent."
In spite of their nocturnal adventure, however, neither of them slept late next morning, for they expected Chester Trent to return soon after dawn; and with his return would come the prospect of a battle royal for the reef. But there was no sign of the ketch, and Moniz was making figurative hay while the sun shone. They were still waiting when nightfall came. Keith had kept an eye on the plantation workers, who had been busy, in their own lethargic fashion; but the knowledge that Moniz was poaching without let or hindrance made Keith wince. He felt no anxiety about Chester's absence. To-day is generally considered as good as to-morrow or yesterday in the South Seas, and one rarely keeps any appointment there, except with death. It was noon on the next day before the unexpected happened. Sailing gracefully as a bird into the bay beneath the bungalow came Moniz's schooner, with a white sheet fluttering from her peak.
After his first shock of amazement Keith laughed in a queer way.
"What do you think of that!" he said to the girl who was by his side. "That dago will never go under for lack of cheek. Here he comes with a flag of truce!"
Joan frowned.
"What on earth can he want?" she said.
"The Lord only knows! We can't shoot under the circumstances, though I haven't the slightest doubt that's what he would do if the positions were reversed. Come, we'll meet the gentleman on the beach and hold a pow-wow."
"I'd rather hold a pow-wow with a rattler!" Joan declared, but she went with Keith.
The schooner luffed up in the deep water close to the shore, anchored, and sent off her small boat. Two blacks were pulling, and presently Keith got his first close view of Moniz. The trader jumped out immediately the little craft touched the beach, and advanced toward Joan and her companion with a wide sweep of his helmet. He was well built, and good-looking in a saturnine fashion, with piercing black eyes, swarthy skin, and a black beard neatly trimmed. As he replaced his hat he threw away the end of a cigarette and instantly began to roll another, which in turn was followed by a third and fourth as fast as its predecessor was consumed.
"I come on a friendly errand, Miss Trent," he said with a deferential bow. Moniz spoke excellent English, with but a trace of accent.
The girl gave a swift glance toward Keith, as though relying upon him to negotiate a difficult matter.
"The last few messengers you've sent weren't particularly friendly," Keith replied sharply. "Two of them went through my boat and one stuck into one of our niggers."
Moniz gave a slight shrug of the shoulders.
"Somebody very carelessly cut the cable of my schooner while she was near a weather shore the other evening," he said almost reproachfully.
"I hope I am betraying no confidence when I say it is a pity the schooner wasn't smashed on the reef," Keith declared without hesitation.
"Come, come," said Moniz, "need we quarrel? It can only lead to—to unpleasantness."
"It will, and there'll be a darned sight more unpleasantness if you don't keep away from that reef. We haven't started yet."
The trader raised his bushy eyebrows a trifle and turned to the girl.
"Your brother—he is not here? I came to speak to him."
"Anything you have to say to Mr. Trent you can say to me," Keith declared.
"But it is a matter of business."
"Well, I'm here to represent him for the present."
"When will he be back?"
"That's no affairs of yours. Listen, I'll give you five minutes to say what you have to say, and if you don't make yourself scarce then I'll throw you into the sea. Is that definite?"
Moniz pondered over the prospect long enough to take in Keith's height and bulk, and evidently decided there was uncompromising decision behind the threat. For the moment, however, he was a decided pacifist.
"I have been fishing for pearls," he said blandly, "and I believe we might all do very well if we worked together. I have not been altogether without success these last few days."
"You mean you've stolen some pearls," Keith said with rising colour, his hands itching to get at the Portuguese.
"Ah, no, not pearls, exactly," replied Moniz, unruffled. "There are seeds—most promising seeds. Somewhere near there pearls worth much money must be waiting. But it will take time to find them—time, skill and patience. We could work in—what shall I say—more comfort, if instead of shooting at one another we pooled our resources. I have been pearling before, and, if I may say so, my experience would be valuable. Also I have two excellent divers working for me, and skilled divers are not plentiful round here just now."
"You mean you have two of our hands whom you filled with trade gin as a bribe to stop with you."
"They can work for anyone they please," retorted Moniz, still suave although conscious of the fact that he was making no headway. He was fully alive by now to the fact that whatever happened, this plain-spoken, forceful stranger was a power to reckon with in his negotiations. If he could be placated it might put a different complexion on matters. "I will not detain those divers if they wish to join you again," he went on. "There has been a misunderstanding all through, I fear. Mr. Trent is hot-headed. I made a fair business offer to him, and we might both have been better off had he accepted it but—" he shrugged his shoulders—"he lost his temper. You know what that sort of thing means here in the South Seas. I am not a man of violence, but one must look after one's self."
"That's just our point," said Keith tersely. "We're looking after ourselves, and here's another thing—we don't need your assistance in doing it."
"It need never have come to violence—" Moniz began.
"No, unless you had started the shooting," Keith interrupted. "You damned scoundrel, the first day you went out to the reef you started your gun play when Miss Trent was there. Your five minutes is up, and what you have to say doesn't interest us. Get out of this."
Moniz showed his white teeth in a broad smile, made another sweeping bow to Joan, and rowed back to the schooner.
"Don't you acknowledge that I was right," the girl asked, "when I said he wasn't to be trusted?"
"I doubt whether the devil will trust him with a coal shovel when the time comes," Keith declared.
"Thank goodness you were here," Joan said. "He always gives me an uncomfortable feeling as though he were trying to get behind me and stab me in the back."
"Well, he's a cool customer! Look there! If he isn't making a bee-line for the reef again!"
There was something so unexpected about this that they both burst out laughing.
"Let him go on in peace for the present," Joan said. "If it is true that he is only finding seeds he isn't doing much harm. By the way, do you believe that?"
"I think for once he spoke the truth," Keith said. "He's like a tiger that's tasted blood, though, and he wants as much more as he can get. If he'd found anything big he wouldn't have been so desperately anxious to let us in on it."
For a while Keith forgot Moniz and the pearls. The problem of putting the plantation in order was quite sufficient to keep him busy for the moment, and the blacks needed firm handling. More than a thousand young trees on the western side of the island had been uprooted in the storm, and many of these could be saved with judicious handling. Taleile, however, was no optimist. He was willing enough to see that the orders of the new "white marster" were carried out, but he was woefully lacking in enthusiasm.
"Him no good," he would say from time to time, shaking his head, and turning his eyes to Keith as if appealing to him for confirmation. Taleile's experience on other plantations had made him an expert of sorts. He had many times tried to show Chester Trent that much of the land was not worth the trouble of working. He knew well enough that only on certain parts of the Tao Tao were the trees showing a passable promise of good returns, but Trent had turned a deaf ear to all such protestations, misjudging Taleile's judgment and expecting nature to perform miracles. Chester's knowledge of planting, apart from what he had picked up on Tao Tao, was limited to what he had learnt on an Englishman's place at Loruna, three hundred miles to the west of Tao Tao. Having absorbed a rudimentary idea of the work in a year spent at Loruna, he had taken this island of his own and sunk the remainder of his capital in the enterprise. At first youthful enthusiasm had carried him a long way toward making something of a success of it. That there were very decided limitations to the possibilities of planting on Tao Tao, however, was painfully apparent to Keith.
"What's the matter, you disgruntled old heathen," he said when Taleile's pessimism was beginning to irritate him. "What for you say him no good, eh?"
The black poked a stick into the shallow hole where an uprooted two-year-old tree had stood, and showed that there were but a few inches of soil.
"Him plenty soon blow down again," he said. "Him plenty soon die."
"Well, stick him up and let him die if he wants to," snapped Keith sharply.
It was not Chester Trent's troubles on the subject of Tao Tao, however, that made him thoughtful as he walked slowly back toward the bungalow that evening. He told himself that this was no concern of his anyway, and yet he was vaguely troubled. There were plenty of plantations within a figurative stone's throw of the equator that were going to ruin from a variety of causes, and he was no more perturbed on their account than he was at the thought of the number of cross-eyed Chinamen in Pekin who were suffering from dyspepsia. But Joan Trent had centred her hopes on Tao Tao. Joan had immolated herself there for four long years in the hope that it was going to prove a fine, paying concern. Joan was giving the best years of her life helping her brother to run a plantation which even an ignorant, kinky-haired cannibal summed up as "no good." True, the kinky-haired cannibal was only speaking of it as "no good" in a comparative sense; but the fairest gem of the South Seas was not good enough a setting for Joan. These were the thoughts which were chasing one another through his brain when he emerged from the avenue of palms leading to the bungalow and saw the girl standing on the veranda, with her hands resting lightly on the rail. She had let down the coils of her hair which streamed like burnished copper in the breeze. Her head was poised a little on one side as she gazed out to sea. Keith stood, breathless, for a few moments; and then, like a jangling, discordant note in his brain, a picture of the cabin in the Four Winds as he had last seen it, flashed before him. A curious, dull ache crept into his heart as he went forward and greeted her.