South Sea Tales
J >>
Jack London >> South Sea Tales
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 This e-text was typed by Theresa Armao, Albany, New York.
SOUTH SEA TALES
by Jack London
CONTENTS
The House of Mapuhi
The Whale Tooth
Mauki
"Yah! Yah! Yah!"
The Heathen
The Terrible Solomons
The Inevitable White Man
The Seed of McCoy
THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI
Despite the heavy clumsiness of her lines, the Aorai handled easily in the
light breeze, and her captain ran her well in before he hove to just outside
the suck of the surf. The atoll of Hikueru lay low on the water, a circle of
pounded coral sand a hundred yards wide, twenty miles in circumference, and
from three to five feet above high-water mark. On the bottom of the huge and
glassy lagoon was much pearl shell, and from the deck of the schooner, across
the slender ring of the atoll, the divers could be seen at work. But the
lagoon had no entrance for even a trading schooner. With a favoring breeze
cutters could win in through the tortuous and shallow channel, but the
schooners lay off and on outside and sent in their small boats.
The Aorai swung out a boat smartly, into which sprang half a dozen
brown-skinned sailors clad only in scarlet loincloths. They took the oars,
while in the stern sheets, at the steering sweep, stood a young man garbed in
the tropic white that marks the European. The golden strain of Polynesia
betrayed itself in the sun-gilt of his fair skin and cast up golden sheens and
lights through the glimmering blue of his eyes. Raoul he was, Alexandre Raoul,
youngest son of Marie Raoul, the wealthy quarter-caste, who owned and managed
half a dozen trading schooners similar to the Aorai. Across an eddy just
outside the entrance, and in and through and over a boiling tide-rip, the boat
fought its way to the mirrored calm of the lagoon. Young Raoul leaped out upon
the white sand and shook hands with a tall native. The man's chest and
shoulders were magnificent, but the stump of a right arm, beyond the flesh of
which the age-whitened bone projected several inches, attested the encounter
with a shark that had put an end to his diving days and made him a fawner and
an intriguer for small favors.
"Have you heard, Alec?" were his first words. "Mapuhi has found a pearl--such
a pearl. Never was there one like it ever fished up in Hikueru, nor in all the
Paumotus, nor in all the world. Buy it from him. He has it now. And remember
that I told you first. He is a fool and you can get it cheap. Have you any
tobacco?"
Straight up the beach to a shack under a pandanus tree Raoul headed. He was
his mother's supercargo, and his business was to comb all the Paumotus for the
wealth of copra, shell, and pearls that they yielded up.
He was a young supercargo, it was his second voyage in such capacity, and he
suffered much secret worry from his lack of experience in pricing pearls. But
when Mapuhi exposed the pearl to his sight he managed to suppress the startle
it gave him, and to maintain a careless, commercial expression on his face.
For the pearl had struck him a blow. It was large as a pigeon egg, a perfect
sphere, of a whiteness that reflected opalescent lights from all colors about
it. It was alive. Never had he seen anything like it. When Mapuhi dropped it
into his hand he was surprised by the weight of it. That showed that it was a
good pearl. He examined it closely, through a pocket magnifying glass. It was
without flaw or blemish. The purity of it seemed almost to melt into the
atmosphere out of his hand. In the shade it was softly luminous, gleaming like
a tender moon. So translucently white was it, that when he dropped it into a
glass of water he had difficulty in finding it. So straight and swiftly had it
sunk to the bottom that he knew its weight was excellent.
"Well, what do you want for it?" he asked, with a fine assumption of
nonchalance.
"I want--" Mapuhi began, and behind him, framing his own dark face, the dark
faces of two women and a girl nodded concurrence in what he wanted. Their
heads were bent forward, they were animated by a suppressed eagerness, their
eyes flashed avariciously.
"I want a house," Mapuhi went on. "It must have a roof of galvanized iron and
an octagon-drop-clock. It must be six fathoms long with a porch all around. A
big room must be in the centre, with a round table in the middle of it and the
octagon-drop-clock on the wall. There must be four bedrooms, two on each side
of the big room, and in each bedroom must be an iron bed, two chairs, and a
washstand. And back of the house must be a kitchen, a good kitchen, with pots
and pans and a stove. And you must build the house on my island, which is
Fakarava."
"Is that all?" Raoul asked incredulously.
"There must be a sewing machine," spoke up Tefara, Mapuhi's wife.
"Not forgetting the octagon-drop-clock," added Nauri, Mapuhi's mother.
"Yes, that is all," said Mapuhi.
Young Raoul laughed. He laughed long and heartily. But while he laughed he
secretly performed problems in mental arithmetic. He had never built a house
in his life, and his notions concerning house building were hazy. While he
laughed, he calculated the cost of the voyage to Tahiti for materials, of the
materials themselves, of the voyage back again to Fakarava, and the cost of
landing the materials and of building the house. It would come to four
thousand French dollars, allowing a margin for safety--four thousand French
dollars were equivalent to twenty thousad francs. It was impossible. How was
he to know the value of such a pearl? Twenty thousand francs was a lot of
money--and of his mother's money at that.
"Mapuhi," he said, "you are a big fool. Set a money price."
But Mapuhi shook his head, and the three heads behind him shook with his.
"I want the house," he said. "It must be six fathoms long with a porch all
around--"
"Yes, yes," Raoul interrupted. "I know all about your house, but it won't do.
I'll give you a thousand Chili dollars."
The four heads chorused a silent negative.
"And a hundred Chili dollars in trade."
"I want the house," Mapuhi began.
"What good will the house do you?" Raoul demanded. "The first hurricane that
comes along will wash it away. You ought to know.
Captain Raffy says it looks like a hurricane right now."
"Not on Fakarava," said Mapuhi. "The land is much higher there. On this
island, yes. Any hurricane can sweep Hikueru. I will have the house on
Fakarava. It must be six fathoms long with a porch all around--"
And Raoul listened again to the tale of the house. Several hours he spent in
the endeavor to hammer the house obsession out of Mapuhi's mind; but Mapuhi's
mother and wife, and Ngakura, Mapuhi's daughter, bolstered him in his resolve
for the house. Through the open doorway, while he listened for the twentieth
time to the detailed description of the house that was wanted, Raoul saw his
schooner's second boat draw up on the beach. The sailors rested on the oars,
advertising haste to be gone. The first mate of the Aorai sprang ashore,
exchanged a word with the one-armed native, then hurried toward Raoul. The day
grew suddenly dark, as a squall obscured the face of the sun. Across the
lagoon Raoul could see approaching the ominous line of the puff of wind.
"Captain Raffy says you've got to get to hell outa here," was the mate's
greeting. "If there's any shell, we've got to run the risk of picking it up
later on--so he says. The barometer's dropped to twenty-nine-seventy."
The gust of wind struck the pandanus tree overhead and tore through the palms
beyond, flinging half a dozen ripe cocoanuts with heavy thuds to the ground.
Then came the rain out of the distance, advancing with the roar of a gale of
wind and causing the water of the lagoon to smoke in driven windrows. The
sharp rattle of the first drops was on the leaves when Raoul sprang to his
feet.
"A thousand Chili dollars, cash down, Mapuhi," he said. "And two hundred Chili
dollars in trade."
"I want a house--" the other began.
"Mapuhi!" Raoul yelled, in order to make himself heard. "You are a fool!"
He flung out of the house, and, side by side with the mate, fought his way
down the beach toward the boat. They could not see the boat. The tropic rain
sheeted about them so that they could see only the beach under their feet and
the spiteful little waves from the lagoon that snapped and bit at the sand. A
figure appeared through the deluge. It was Huru-Huru, the man with the one
arm.
"Did you get the pearl?" he yelled in Raoul's ear.
"Mapuhi is a fool!" was the answering yell, and the next moment they were lost
to each other in the descending water.
Half an hour later, Huru-Huru, watching from the seaward side of the atoll,
saw the two boats hoisted in and the Aorai pointing her nose out to sea. And
near her, just come in from the sea on the wings of the squall, he saw another
schooner hove to and dropping a boat into the water. He knew her. It was the
OROHENA, owned by Toriki, the half-caste trader, who served as his own
supercargo and who doubtlessly was even then in the stern sheets of the boat.
Huru-Huru chuckled. He knew that Mapuhi owed Toriki for trade goods advanced
the year before.
The squall had passed. The hot sun was blazing down, and the lagoon was once
more a mirror. But the air was sticky like mucilage, and the weight of it
seemed to burden the lungs and make breathing difficult.
"Have you heard the news, Toriki?" Huru-Huru asked. "Mapuhi has found a pearl.
Never was there a pearl like it ever fished up in Hikueru, nor anywhere in the
Paumotus, nor anywhere in all the world. Mapuhi is a fool. Besides, he owes
you money. Remember that I told you first. Have you any tobacco?"
And to the grass shack of Mapuhi went Toriki. He was a masterful man, withal a
fairly stupid one. Carelessly he glanced at the wonderful pearl--glanced for a
moment only; and carelessly he dropped it into his pocket.
"You are lucky," he said. "It is a nice pearl. I will give you credit on the
books."
"I want a house," Mapuhi began, in consternation. "It must be six fathoms--"
"Six fathoms your grandmother!" was the trader's retort. "You want to pay up
your debts, that's what you want. You owed me twelve hundred dollars Chili.
Very well; you owe them no longer. The amount is squared. Besides, I will give
you credit for two hundred Chili. If, when I get to Tahiti, the pearl sells
well, I will give you credit for another hundred--that will make three
hundred. But mind, only if the pearl sells well. I may even lose money on it."
Mapuhi folded his arms in sorrow and sat with bowed head. He had been robbed
of his pearl. In place of the house, he had paid a debt. There was nothing to
show for the pearl.
"You are a fool," said Tefara.
"You are a fool," said Nauri, his mother. "Why did you let the pearl into his
hand?"
"What was I to do?" Mapuhi protested. "I owed him the money. He knew I had the
pearl. You heard him yourself ask to see it. I had not told him. He knew.
Somebody else told him. And I owed him the money."
"Mapuhi is a fool," mimicked Ngakura.
She was twelve years old and did not know any better. Mapuhi relieved his
feelings by sending her reeling from a box on the ear; while Tefara and Nauri
burst into tears and continued to upbraid him after the manner of women.
Huru-Huru, watching on the beach, saw a third schooner that he knew heave to
outside the entrance and drop a boat. It was the Hira, well named, for she was
owned by Levy, the German Jew, the greatest pearl buyer of them all, and, as
was well known, Hira was the Tahitian god of fishermen and thieves.
"Have you heard the news?" Huru-Huru asked, as Levy, a fat man with massive
asymmetrical features, stepped out upon the beach. "Mapuhi has found a pearl.
There was never a pearl like it in Hikueru, in all the Paumotus, in all the
world. Mapuhi is a fool. He has sold it to Toriki for fourteen hundred
Chili--I listened outside and heard. Toriki is likewise a fool. You can buy it
from him cheap. Remember that I told you first. Have you any tobacco?"
"Where is Toriki?"
"In the house of Captain Lynch, drinking absinthe. He has been there an hour."
And while Levy and Toriki drank absinthe and chaffered over the pearl,
Huru-Huru listened and heard the stupendous price of twenty-five thousand
francs agreed upon.
It was at this time that both the OROHENA and the Hira, running in close to
the shore, began firing guns and signalling frantically. The three men stepped
outside in time to see the two schooners go hastily about and head off shore,
dropping mainsails and flying jibs on the run in the teeth of the squall that
heeled them far over on the whitened water. Then the rain blotted them out.
"They'll be back after it's over," said Toriki. "We'd better be getting out of
here."
"I reckon the glass has fallen some more," said Captain Lynch.
He was a white-bearded sea-captain, too old for service, who had learned that
the only way to live on comfortable terms with his asthma was on Hikueru. He
went inside to look at the barometer.
"Great God!" they heard him exclaim, and rushed in to join him at staring at a
dial, which marked twenty-nine-twenty.
Again they came out, this time anxiously to consult sea and sky. The squall
had cleared away, but the sky remained overcast. The two schooners, under all
sail and joined by a third, could be seen making back. A veer in the wind
induced them to slack off sheets, and five minutes afterward a sudden veer
from the opposite quarter caught all three schooners aback, and those on shore
could see the boom-tackles being slacked away or cast off on the jump. The
sound of the surf was loud, hollow, and menacing, and a heavy swell was
setting in. A terrible sheet of lightning burst before their eyes,
illuminating the dark day, and the thunder rolled wildly about them.
Toriki and Levy broke into a run for their boats, the latter ambling along
like a panic-stricken hippopotamus. As their two boats swept out the entrance,
they passed the boat of the Aorai coming in. In the stern sheets, encouraging
the rowers, was Raoul. Unable to shake the vision of the pearl from his mind,
he was returning to accept Mapuhi's price of a house.
He landed on the beach in the midst of a driving thunder squall that was so
dense that he collided with Huru-Huru before he saw him.
"Too late," yelled Huru-Huru. "Mapuhi sold it to Toriki for fourteen hundred
Chili, and Toriki sold it to Levy for twenty-five thousand francs. And Levy
will sell it in France for a hundred thousand francs. Have you any tobacco?"
Raoul felt relieved. His troubles about the pearl were over. He need not worry
any more, even if he had not got the pearl. But he did not believe Huru-Huru.
Mapuhi might well have sold it for fourteen hundred Chili, but that Levy, who
knew pearls, should have paid twenty-five thousand francs was too wide a
stretch. Raoul decided to interview Captain Lynch on the subject, but when he
arrived at that ancient mariner's house, he found him looking wide-eyed at the
barometer.
"What do you read it?" Captain Lynch asked anxiously, rubbing his spectables
and staring again at the instrument.
"Twenty-nine-ten," said Raoul. "I have never seen it so low before."
"I should say not!" snorted the captain. "Fifty years boy and man on all the
seas, and I've never seen it go down to that. Listen!"
They stood for a moment, while the surf rumbled and shook the house. Then they
went outside. The squall had passed. They could see the Aorai lying becalmed a
mile away and pitching and tossing madly in the tremendous seas that rolled in
stately procession down out of the northeast and flung themselves furiously
upon the coral shore. One of the sailors from the boat pointed at the mouth of
the passage and shook his head. Raoul looked and saw a white anarchy of foam
and surge.
"I guess I'll stay with you tonight, Captain," he said; then turned to the
sailor and told him to haul the boat out and to find shelter for himself and
fellows.
"Twenty-nine flat," Captain Lynch reported, coming out from another look at
the barometer, a chair in his hand.
He sat down and stared at the spectacle of the sea. The sun came out,
increasing the sultriness of the day, while the dead calm still held. The seas
continued to increase in magnitude.
"What makes that sea is what gets me," Raoul muttered petulantly.
"There is no wind, yet look at it, look at that fellow there!"
Miles in length, carrying tens of thousands of tons in weight, its impact
shook the frail atoll like an earthquake. Captain Lynch was startled.
"Gracious!" he bellowed, half rising from his chair, then sinking back.
"But there is no wind," Raoul persisted. "I could understand it if there was
wind along with it."
"You'll get the wind soon enough without worryin' for it," was the grim reply.
The two men sat on in silence. The sweat stood out on their skin in myriads of
tiny drops that ran together, forming blotches of moisture, which, in turn,
coalesced into rivulets that dripped to the ground. They panted for breath,
the old man's efforts being especially painful. A sea swept up the beach,
licking around the trunks of the cocoanuts and subsiding almost at their feet.
"Way past high water mark," Captain Lynch remarked; "and I've been here eleven
years." He looked at his watch. "It is three o'clock."
A man and woman, at their heels a motley following of brats and curs, trailed
disconsolately by. They came to a halt beyond the house, and, after much
irresolution, sat down in the sand. A few minutes later another family trailed
in from the opposite direction, the men and women carrying a heterogeneous
assortment of possessions. And soon several hundred persons of all ages and
sexes were congregated about the captain's dwelling. He called to one new
arrival, a woman with a nursing babe in her arms, and in answer received the
information that her house had just been swept into the lagoon.
This was the highest spot of land in miles, and already, in many places on
either hand, the great seas were making a clean breach of the slender ring of
the atoll and surging into the lagoon. Twenty miles around stretched the ring
of the atoll, and in no place was it more than fifty fathoms wide. It was the
height of the diving season, and from all the islands around, even as far as
Tahiti, the natives had gathered.
"There are twelve hundred men, women, and children here," said Captain Lynch.
"I wonder how many will be here tomorrow morning."
"But why don't it blow?--that's what I want to know," Raoul demanded.
"Don't worry, young man, don't worry; you'll get your troubles fast enough."
Even as Captain Lynch spoke, a great watery mass smote the atoll.
The sea water churned about them three inches deep under the chairs. A low
wail of fear went up from the many women. The children, with clasped hands,
stared at the immense rollers and cried piteously. Chickens and cats, wading
perturbedly in the water, as by common consent, with flight and scramble took
refuge on the roof of the captain's house. A Paumotan, with a litter of
new-born puppies in a basket, climbed into a cocoanut tree and twenty feet
above the ground made the basket fast. The mother floundered about in the
water beneath, whining and yelping.
And still the sun shone brightly and the dead calm continued. They sat and
watched the seas and the insane pitching of the Aorai. Captain Lynch gazed at
the huge mountains of water sweeping in until he could gaze no more. He
covered his face with his hands to shut out the sight; then went into the
house.
"Twenty-eight-sixty," he said quietly when he returned.
In his arm was a coil of small rope. He cut it into two-fathom lengths, giving
one to Raoul and, retaining one for himself, distributed the remainder among
the women with the advice to pick out a tree and climb.
A light air began to blow out of the northeast, and the fan of it on his cheek
seemed to cheer Raoul up. He could see the Aorai trimming her sheets and
heading off shore, and he regretted that he was not on her. She would get away
at any rate, but as for the atoll--A sea breached across, almost sweeping him
off his feet, and he selected a tree. Then he remembered the barometer and ran
back to the house. He encountered Captain Lynch on the same errand and
together they went in.
"Twenty-eight-twenty," said the old mariner. "It's going to be fair hell
around here--what was that?"
The air seemed filled with the rush of something. The house quivered and
vibrated, and they heard the thrumming of a mighty note of sound. The windows
rattled. Two panes crashed; a draught of wind tore in, striking them and
making them stagger. The door opposite banged shut, shattering the latch. The
white door knob crumbled in fragments to the floor. The room's walls bulged
like a gas balloon in the process of sudden inflation. Then came a new sound
like the rattle of musketry, as the spray from a sea struck the wall of the
house. Captain Lyncyh looked at his watch. It was four o'clock. He put on a
coat of pilot cloth, unhooked the barometer, and stowed it away in a capacious
pocket. Again a sea struck the house, with a heavy thud, and the light
building tilted, twisted, quarter around on its foundation, and sank down, its
floor at an angle of ten degrees.
Raoul went out first. The wind caught him and whirled him away. He noted that
it had hauled around to the east. With a great effort he threw himself on the
sand, crouching and holding his own. Captain Lynch, driven like a wisp of
straw, sprawled over him. Two of the Aorai'S sailors, leaving a cocoanut tree
to which they had been clinging, came to their aid, leaning against the wind
at impossible angles and fighting and clawing every inch of the way.
The old man's joints were stiff and he could not climb, so the sailors, by
means of short ends of rope tied together, hoisted him up the trunk, a few
feet at a time, till they could make him fast, at the top of the tree, fifty
feet from the ground. Raoul passed his length of rope around the base of an
adjacent tree and stood looking on. The wind was frightful. He had never
dreamed it could blow so hard. A sea breached across the atoll, wetting him to
the knees ere it subsided into the lagoon. The sun had disappeared, and a
lead-colored twilight settled down. A few drops of rain, driving horizontally,
struck him. The impact was like that of leaden pellets. A splash of salt spray
struck his face. It was like the slap of a man's hand. His cheeks stung, and
involuntary tears of pain were in his smarting eyes. Several hundred natives
had taken to the trees, and he could have laughed at the bunches of human
fruit clustering in the tops. Then, being Tahitian-born, he doubled his body
at the waist, clasped the trunk of his tree with his hands, pressed the soles
of his feet against the near surface of the trunk, and began to walk up the
tree. At the top he found two women, two children, and a man. One little girl
clasped a housecat in her arms.
From his eyrie he waved his hand to Captain Lynch, and that doughty patriarch
waved back. Raoul was appalled at the sky. It had approached much nearer--in
fact, it seemed just over his head; and it had turned from lead to black. Many
people were still on the ground grouped about the bases of the trees and
holding on. Several such clusters were praying, and in one the Mormon
missionary was exhorting. A weird sound, rhythmical, faint as the faintest
chirp of a far cricket, enduring but for a moment, but in the moment
suggesting to him vaguely the thought of heaven and celestial music, came to
his ear. He glanced about him and saw, at the base of another tree, a large
cluster of people holding on by ropes and by one another. He could see their
faces working and their lips moving in unison. No sound came to him, but he
knew that they were singing hymns.
Still the wind continued to blow harder. By no conscious process could he
measure it, for it had long since passed beyond all his experience of wind;
but he knew somehow, nevertheless, that it was blowing harder. Not far away a
tree was uprooted, flinging its load of human beings to the ground. A sea
washed across the strip of sand, and they were gone. Things were happening
quickly. He saw a brown shoulder and a black head silhouetted against the
churning white of the lagoon. The next instant that, too, had vanished. Other
trees were going, falling and criss-crossing like matches. He was amazed at
the power of the wind. His own tree was swaying perilously, one woman was
wailing and clutching the little girl, who in turn still hung on to the cat.
The man, holding the other child, touched Raoul's arm and pointed. He looked
and saw the Mormon church careering drunkenly a hundred feet away. It had been
torn from its foundations, and wind and sea were heaving and shoving it toward
the lagoon. A frightful wall of water caught it, tilted it, and flung it
against half a dozen cocoanut trees. The bunches of human fruit fell like ripe
cocoanuts. The subsiding wave showed them on the ground, some lying
motionless, others squirming and writhing. They reminded him strangely of
ants. He was not shocked. He had risen above horror. Quite as a matter of
course he noted the succeeding wave sweep the sand clean of the human
wreckage. A third wave, more colossal than any he had yet seen, hurled the
church into the lagoon, where it floated off into the obscurity to leeward,
half-submerged, reminding him for all the world of a Noah's ark.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12