Jerry of the Islands | Page 8

on this small deck, in addition to the crew, were the "return"
niggers from three far-flung plantations. By "return" was meant that
their three years of contract labour was up, and that, according to
contract, they were being returned to their home villages on the wild
island of Malaita. Twenty of them--familiar, all, to Jerry--were from
Meringe; thirty of them came from the Bay of a Thousand Ships, in the
Russell Isles; and the remaining twelve were from Pennduffryn on the
east coast of Guadalcanar. In addition to these--and they were all on
deck, chattering and piping in queer, almost elfish, falsetto
voices--were the two white men, Captain Van Horn and his Danish
mate, Borckman, making a total of seventy-nine souls.
"Thought your heart 'd failed you at the last moment," was Captain Van
Horn's greeting, a quick pleasure light glowing into his eyes as they
noted Jerry.
"It was sure near to doin' it," Tom Haggin answered. "It's only for you
I'd a done it, annyways. Jerry's the best of the litter, barrin' Michael, of
course, the two of them bein' all that's left and no better than them that
was lost. Now that Kathleen was a sweet dog, the spit of Biddy if she'd
lived.--Here, take 'm."
With a jerk of abruptness, he deposited Jerry in Van Horn's arms and
turned away along the deck.
"An' if bad luck comes to him I'll never forgive you, Skipper," he flung
roughly over his shoulder.
"They'll have to take my head first," the skipper chuckled.
"An' not unlikely, my brave laddy buck," Haggin growled. "Meringe
owes Somo four heads, three from the dysentery, an' another wan from
a tree fallin' on him the last fortnight. He was the son of a chief at that."
"Yes, and there's two heads more that the Arangi owes Somo," Van
Horn nodded. "You recollect, down to the south'ard last year, a chap
named Hawkins was lost in his whaleboat running the Arli Passage?"
Haggin, returning along the deck, nodded. "Two of his boat's crew
were Somo boys. I'd recruited them for Ugi Plantation. With your boys,
that makes six heads the Arangi owes. But what of it? There's one
salt-water village, acrost on the weather coast, where the Arangi owes
eighteen. I recruited them for Aolo, and being salt-water men they put

them on the Sandfly that was lost on the way to the Santa Cruz.
They've got a jack-pot over there on the weather coast--my word, the
boy that could get my head would be a second Carnegie! A hundred
and fifty pigs and shell money no end the village's collected for the
chap that gets me and delivers."
"And they ain't--yet," Haggin snorted.
"No fear," was the cheerful retort.
"You talk like Arbuckle used to talk," Haggin censured. "Manny's the
time I've heard him string it off. Poor old Arbuckle. The most sure and
most precautious chap that ever handled niggers. He never went to
sleep without spreadin' a box of tacks on the floor, and when it wasn't
them it was crumpled newspapers. I remember me well, bein' under the
same roof at the time on Florida, when a big tomcat chased a cockroach
into the papers. And it was blim, blam, blim, six times an' twice over,
with his two big horse-pistols, an' the house perforated like a cullender.
Likewise there was a dead tom- cat. He could shoot in the dark with
never an aim, pullin' trigger with the second finger and pointing with
the first finger laid straight along the barrel.
"No, sir, my laddy buck. He was the bully boy with the glass eye. The
nigger didn't live that'd lift his head. But they got 'm. They got 'm. He
lasted fourteen years, too. It was his cook-boy. Hatcheted 'm before
breakfast. An' it's well I remember our second trip into the bush after
what was left of 'm."
"I saw his head after you'd turned it over to the Commissioner at
Tulagi," Van Horn supplemented.
"An' the peaceful, quiet, everyday face of him on it, with almost the
same old smile I'd seen a thousand times. It dried on 'm that way over
the smokin' fire. But they got 'm, if it did take fourteen years. There's
manny's the head that goes to Malaita, manny's the time untooken; but,
like the old pitcher, it's tooken in the end."
"But I've got their goat," the captain insisted. "When trouble's hatching,
I go straight to them and tell them what. They can't get the hang of it.
Think I've got some powerful devil-devil medicine."
Tom Haggin thrust out his hand in abrupt good-bye, resolutely keeping
his eyes from dropping to Jerry in the other's arms.
"Keep your eye on my return boys," he cautioned, as he went over the