South of the Line/Barter
Barter
BELLAIRS crushed a mosquito on his left cheek with the precision of an expert, and addressed the Pacific Ocean dispassionately:
"Do you mind telling me the fascination—or is it the lure?—of these storied isles of the Equator?"
The Pacific, except for flinging another lazy ripple up the wet sand, did not answer. Neither did Tritton.
"You are uncommunicative, my friend," observed Bellairs.
"What's the good of talking?" grumbled Tritton, who carried throughout life the air of one nursing a grievance.
"Talking is a recognized medium of intercourse," explained Bellairs sententiously. "It is one of the few proofs we possess that we are in any way removed above the beasts of the field. You surely wouldn't deprive us of our little conceit?"
"Then talk sense."
Bellairs sighed, and drew his knees closer to his chin.
"I will," he said. "Now that we are on Ono, what do we do?"
"I've got my trade," asserted Tritton with a touch of pride.
"Why, of course," said Bellairs hopefully. "I had forgotten—in fact, I have forgotten. What did you say"
"Bartender."
"Ah, yes."
"I can make a 'twelve-colour rainbow' with any man."
"Really," mused Bellairs. "What a thing it is to carry at one's finger tips, as it were, an accomplishment that can be converted into hard cash at any moment. As for me—I wonder if they want a potman on Ono."
"Thought you was the educated sort," sneered Tritton.
"I am," admitted Bellairs, "very highly educated, I believe. Hence my colossal ignorance."
It was this sort of remark that annoyed Tritton. It left nothing to be said. He considered Bellairs a fool, and Bellairs was the first to admit it, which rather takes the wind out of one's sails. But there was reason to believe that he had money, which in itself was quite enough to quell any outward signs of dislike on Tritton's part.
The two men, as strangely assorted a pair as ever drifted across one another's path, had been stewards aboard the Manara for the last month, and by some freak of fate had both seen fit to desert at Ono, in the Lau Group. They had come from heaven knows where; they were bound they knew not whither. They belonged to that restless band of world-wanderers who appear for a space in the utmost corners of the earth and are gone, unmourned and unsung.
"If a steward, why not a potman!" persisted Bellairs. "I believe I could be a potman; in fact, I will be a potman."
He rose deliberately and shook the sand from his shapeless ducks. He was a large man, inclining to corpulence, and of an age as uncertain as a woman's. But there was an air about him that in some subtle way demanded, and usually elicited, respect.
"There is a great deal in will power, friend Tritton," he remarked, as they trudged through the sand toward the settlement. "I have heard one can think oneself into almost anything. Potman!" he added, with closed eyes.
The settlement proved to be the usual semi-circle of weather-board stores and bungalows facing the beach. Elephantine native women in gaudy wrappers drifted aimlessly about the thoroughfare, and dogs, with their inevitable Island heart disease, lay sleeping at intervals along the wooden sidewalk. Apart from these signs of animation, Ono's metropolis apparently contained nothing but yellow sunlight and the boom of surf.
"Looks lively, don't it?" observed Tritton.
Bellairs mopped his face with an already soaking handkerchief.
"Never go by outward appearances," he urged hopefully. "Who knows?"
But Tritton had left him and vanished through the swinging doors of the Polynesian Hotel. Bellairs seated himself in a weather-beaten cane chair under a screwpine. In a surprisingly short time Tritton emerged.
"Nothing doing," he said. "Whisky neat with chaser."
"But how nice," murmured Bellairs.
"If you can pay for it. But where's the chance for a real live wire with a nigger woman dispenser and nothing to dispense? This is what they call 'steamer day' in these parts, and as far as I can see the whole of Ono lives at the Polynesian until the shipment runs dry."
"Then a potman"
"Oh, dry up!" snapped Tritton.
"I am," returned the imperturbable Bellairs, moistening his lips. "Let us mingle with the giddy throng and trust to something eventuating. I can feel the lure of these blessed islands stealing over me already."
After something like an hour's contact with every known species of the human race south of the Line Tritton insinuated himself through a medley of planters, traders, and what-not to where Bellairs was carrying on a dignified conversation with the local magistrate. In answer to a nudged elbow, Bellairs excused himself with an old-world courtesy that left the magistrate agape, and followed his companion upstairs.
"I've happened on to something," said Tritton, turning suddenly at the end of a murky passage and speaking in a tense undertone. "Have you got any money?"
Bellairs regarded him speculatively for a moment, and Tritton's eyes fell. He was physically incapable of sustaining a direct gaze, and he knew it, which always makes an affliction the harder to bear.
"A plain question deserves—a plain question," said Bellairs ponderously. "Do I look as if I had money?"
Tritton was on the point of turning away in disgust. There was no getting nearer to this fool of a man. But he remembered himself in time.
"You're mighty cheerful for any one who hasn't," he said, with a feeble attempt at banter.
"Thank you for those kind words," beamed Bellairs. "And what if I have?"
"I know how you can multiply it by a hundred in two months."
"Really? How?"
Tritton's glance roamed the dim interior of the Polynesian for a space, and, by the time it had reached his feet, where it usually rested, he had gained control of himself.
"See here," he said patiently, "if I told you how this thing is to be done you could do it without me, couldn't you?"
"I very much doubt it," said Bellairs.
"Well, that's how most people would look at it. I have the scheme, you have the money. What about it?"
"A partnership?" suggested Bellairs, with the light of inspiration in his rather weak eyes.
Tritton nodded.
"Lead on, partner," said Bellairs.
A doubtful-looking individual in soiled ducks and a battered pith helmet awaited them on the veranda overlooking the sun-soaked beach. Bellairs bowed gracefully and ordered three glasses of the Polynesian's invariable from a Solomon Island houseboy.
"It's like this," said the individual, in unnecessarily subdued tones, when the three heads were well over the wicker table: "Ono's no good to any man."
"I suspected as much," said Bellairs brightly. "In fact, it's a case of 'Oh, no'!"
The individual regarded him blankly until Tritton's foot came into contact with his own, when he contrived to laugh.
"Exactly," he said. "But to return to business: you mustn't judge the Laus by Ono, any more than you can judge the last place on the map. It's the outlying islands that count. I've just come in from Taneba—had to, fever, and" He stopped abruptly, produced a dirty bandana handkerchief, and, untying a knot in one corner, rolled on to the table three fair-sized pearls.
"Two hundred," he added shortly; "just had 'em priced; and all for a dud safety-razor and three coloured prints of a defunct monarch in medals. Fact is, they don't know. The Laus are not like the Paumotus or any recognized pearling-grounds, where every Kanaka is a born judge of stones. Here they find them sometimes, and just don't know what they've got. These were in a baby's rattle...."
He said a great deal more, and the brief tropical twilight had descended on Ono when the partners emerged from the Polynesian.
"A most informative person," was Bellairs's verdict as he strolled along the beach toward the harbour with Tritton in anxious attendance. "I wonder what it was all about?"
"Can't you see?" wailed Tritton. "There's money in this thing."
"Quite," agreed Bellairs. "I was merely wondering where our obliging friend comes in."
"He has a trading cutter open to charter. It's only a pound a day, and"
"Ah," murmured Bellairs.
This brief utterance had an extraordinary effect on Tritton. His thin mouth twitched at the corners, and a glint came into his furtive eye.
"You're not going to let me down," he accused in a tone half whine, half threat—"not after me telling you? Because"
For no apparent reason he stopped. Bellairs regarded him with the air of one studying the writhings of an insect.
"Because what?" he said, and, receiving no answer, resumed his way toward the harbour. "Try and remember that confidence is the foundation of successful partnership, friend Tritton," he remarked airily. "My innocent observation was intended to convey that I had discerned the reason of our friend's magnanimity; and why should we, the firm of Bellairs & Tritton, pay one pound a day for a craft when Now, how would that snub-nosed atrocity suit us?"
They had stopped at the harbour wall of coralite boulders and stood looking down on the Ono trading fleet, which reflected the characteristics of its owners to a halyard. The particular craft Bellairs had pointed out was a decrepit cutter of about ten tons register, with the name Moana on her quarter and a board lashed to the port shrouds marked "For Sale."
"I didn't know you meant to buy," said Tritton in surly apology.
"That is where you have to be so exceedingly careful," returned Bellairs.
"Can you sail a ship?"
Bellairs closed his eyes.
"I seem to remember a following sea off Finisterre when to look astern was to be lost. And haven't I—yes, surely—some recollection of the Mediterranean when Lady Sibyl inadvertently dropped her 'pom' overboard, and I failed to retrieve...?"
"Then that's all right," said Tritton with dawning hope in his voice. "We shall only want some grub and a bit of barter."
"A bit of what?"
"Barter." Tritton winked knowingly. "You leave that to me."
"I will," said Bellairs; "barter shall be your special care. I'll see about the ship. I suggest that we meet here about eleven o'clock to-night."
Tritton nodded almost cheerfully, and departed on his mysterious quest.
He received something of a surprise about 11.30 that same night, when, raising his head from the task of stowing barter in the Moana's fo'cstle locker, he distinctly heard the ripple of water past the ship's side.
On reaching deck he was still more astonished to find the decrepit cutter slipping quietly out to sea under mainsail and jib, with his partner in the steering well humming a contented little tune as he fondled the tiller.
The lights of Ono, mostly issuing from the Polynesian Hotel, grew fainter astern, and presently they were alone with the sea and the stars and a light southeast "trade."
It affected Tritton strangely. He had never done anything of the sort before, and he was vaguely awed by the mystery of it all—awed for the first time in his life by something other than money and brute force. He went aft for company.
"This is all right," he said, staring up at the towering mainsail. "What's it worth?"
"That is impossible to say," said Bellairs, "until we've tried her; as impossible as in the case of a horse or a wife."
"And how d'you know where you're going?"
"I don't," admitted Bellairs, "except that by the Cross and a pocket compass we're heading for Taneba."
"The Cross?"
"Yes; some of those curious little twinkling fellers up there. Ever noticed them, friend Tritton?"
Tritton remained silent. He was thinking, wondering, if Bellairs were quite the sort of fool he seemed.
He was wondering much the same thing the next morning, when the Moana was bowling comfortably along with lashed tiller, and Bellairs came below to consult the chart.
"As this was lent me by my particular friend the magistrate, I should be obliged if you would refrain from sitting on it," he said, smoothing out the parchment on the fo'castle table, and studying its strange hieroglyphics with apparent understanding.
Undoubtedly Bellairs knew what he was about at sea. Tritton reached this conclusion on the second day, and when on the third Bellairs pointed out a blue smudge on the starboard bow, and laconically intimated that it was Taneba, Tritton found himself holding his partner in much the same esteem as a child might a conjurer who produces a rabbit from a hat.
"According to direction," said Bellairs, when six fathoms of the Moana's rusty cable had run into Taneba lagoon, "this is where we await developments."
It was not long before canoes put out from shore, and, following a parley which neither side understood in the least, the Moana's decks were soon crowded with Kanakas and their wares. These consisted for the most part of taro root, chickens suffering from malnutrition, and bunches of bananas swarming with white ants.
"Punk," said Tritton, after a cursory inspection. "We'd better show 'em what we do want, eh, Bellairs?"
"I leave the commercial side entirely in your hands," replied Bellairs, seating himself on the stern horse and peeling a banana.
In impressive silence Tritton produced his "barter" and arranged it with the tender care of a window-dresser on the aft hatch. There were three papier mâche belts, six Jew's harps, a packet of fish hooks, and, in strict accordance with instructions, several coloured prints of someone or other in whiskers and a red cummerbund. Tritton then passed on to the gem of his collection—a few synthetic pearls of the curio-store variety, which he held cupped in his unclean palm and submitted for inspection with an interrogative raising of the eyebrows. Beyond a few nods and duckings of recognition the audience remained unimpressed.
"He's right," Tritton told Bellairs excitedly when the last of the visitors had taken to their canoes and were paddling shoreward. "They just don't know."
It was late that night, and the partners were asleep, when a gentle rasping on the Moana's side brought Bellairs on deck.
"Missi Turaga (gentleman)!" came a plaintive voice out of the darkness, and looking over the side, Bellairs saw an outrigger canoe made fast to the Moana's rail, with a diminutive dark person sitting patiently on a stern thwart.
"Good mornin', Missi Turaga," droned the voice. "Um Buli (chief) of Niama say me go all along Turaga plenty quick. Me go."
"Madam," said Bellairs gravely, "I greet you. My bêche-de-mer is faulty but sincere. Come aboard plenty quick."
The visitor swung herself up the Moana's side with the agility of a cat, and stood on deck revealed as a native girl of perhaps twelve, with a mass of raven-black hair, a spotless sulu, and soft brown eyes.
The reason for her visit was an engaging mystery to Bellairs for upward of half an hour, during which she inspected the Moana from stem to stern with duckings of admiration and delight. Then, happening on to the locker containing some of the remaining items of Tritton's "barter," it became apparent that she had paid a midnight call for no other purpose than to curl her legs under her and twang a Jew's harp.
Bellairs laughed. Tritton did not.
"Kick her out," he growled from his bunk, and turned his yellow face to the wall.
He may have slept, though it is doubtful. At any rate, when next he turned and opened his eyes he lay for a moment rigid with astonishment. The child was on Bellairs's knee, industriously curling an end of his ragged moustache to the accompaniment of a crooned meke air. It was a homely little scene under the yellow light of the swinging lamp; but Tritton hardly noticed it—his eyes feasted on the table, where lay ten fair-sized pearls.
"Um Buli of Niama say Turaga like um plenty all right, "the child was babbling between twirls of Bellairs's moustache. "Um say Turaga pay plenty all right."
"Um Turaga, um—maybe," said. Bellairs, with an air of splendid indifference.
It was too much for Tritton. He moved, and the child looked up. Instinctively she shrank closer to Bellairs and uttered something in her unintelligble jargon. Bellairs smiled.
"Pray don't disturb yourself, partner," he said; "the lady tells me she is not taken with you."
"Keep her talking," snapped Tritton; "that's all you've got to do." His hand went under the pillow for a moment; then he swung from the bunk, carefully striking the table with his foot so that the pearls rolled to the floor.
"With a startled cry the child sprang after them, but Tritton was before her.
"There," he said, rising after a protracted hunt and studiously counting ten pearls into the waiting brown palm. "Now are you more taken with your Uncle Tritton?"
"You no want um?" inquired the visitor perplexedly. "Um Buli of Niama say Turaga like um plenty all right."
"Not this time, thank you," grinned Tritton. "Good-night, and mind the step."
A few minutes later a bewildered child of nature paddled off into the darkness.
Bellairs stood at the ship's rail for some time after the rhythmic plash of the canoe paddles had died away; then he sighed unaccountably and went below.
Tritton was hunched over the table examining the pearls as Bellairs came down the companion.
"Can you beat it?" he exploded. "Ten-ten! I don't know much about 'em, but they look as good as his, and at the same price it means a thousand—a thousand," he added in an awed whisper.
Bellairs put the coffee-pot on the stove, and stood regarding it awhile in silence.
"I confess to a misspent life," he said at last deliberately, "but in this case—I am not sure that I like it, friend Tritton."
Tritton turned in a flash.
"If you don't like it, you know what to do!" he jerked out.
"I was wondering," mused Bellairs. "In a way it was excusable—the true commercial instinct can be held to account for much—but don't you think this particular transaction rather savours of robbing the kid's money-box?"
Tritton sprang to his feet impatiently.
"You make me tired," he stuttered. "We came out after pearls, didn't we? Well, we've got 'em. If they don't know what a pearl is, why shouldn't they be as satisfied with the curio-store brand as the real thing? Exchange is no robbery. If you want to pay for 'em into the bargain, you can, but leave me out of it."
Bellairs poured the coffee into a tin mug, drank it, and climbed into his bunk.
"There is something in what you say," he admitted, staring up at the Moana's dingy timbers. "To-morrow we will visit the Buli of Niama—that I may relieve my pesky conscience—and you spy out the land for further consignments."
After which enigmatic utterance he slept.
But Tritton did not. There was too much to think about. "A thousand!" He repeated the magic words many times before it occurred to him with something of a shock that his own share would be precisely half that amount. There was certainly a good deal to be thought about.
The pilgrimage to Niama was not the pleasant excursion that it had promised to be. According to bêche-de-mer directions and copious gesticulations, it lay "all along beach plenty far too much," and the beach led in turn through ankle-deep mangrove swamp, through primeval jungle, and over a perfect switchback of red earth hills.
Even Bellairs had little to say, and Tritton trudged at his side in stony silence. He had ceased to speculate on things in general, because he had long since decided in his own mind what must be done to equalize the deficit in his calculations of the previous evening. Opportunity was all that he lacked, and toward noon it looked remarkably like coming his way.
They had reached a village of sorts, and Bellairs unexpectedly collapsed on the mats of the guest house, shivering convulsively.
"Not to p-put too fine a p-point on it," he stuttered between chattering teeth, "I feel rotten."
Those were the last words Tritton heard him utter. The last sight of him was a bulky figure under a pyramid of mats that shook as with an earthquake. Then he ran. There was no need to, because fever always takes large men first and leaves them last, but for some reason Tritton ran. He boarded the Moana and contrived to set sail, and it was not until Taneba was a smudge on the horizon that his peace of mind was fully restored, which for Tritton was probably a record.
Perhaps even then his satisfaction was premature. Cities and men and women he knew how to mould to his own ends, but toward night, alone on a waste of waters, with no sense of direction, less knowledge of a ship, and some unhealthy looking clouds banking up on the horizon, Tritton was compelled to admit that there was something baffling about the sea. The same distressing sensation of awe that had assailed him on sailing from Ono crept over him now. He dispelled it by a glance at the pearls. They were all there, all ten—a thousand pounds' worth! The mere sight of them revived him like an elixir. During the next few hours he inspected them not less than twenty times. It was necessary. The Moana was tearing through a jet-black sea, mountains high, before a hurricane, or so it seemed to Tritton. In reality, she was probably doing a lumbering eight knots before half a gale; but ignorance has an unpleasant knack of magnifying. It was only possible to think of the pearls now; Tritton was too occupied with the tiller to do anything else, and even that was difficult. Seas were coming aboard—cold, unpleasant seas that lashed the face and chilled to the marrow. Where was he going? He did not know, except that it must be away from Taneba. This was the Pacific Ocean; he did know that; and there should have been blue sea and sunshine and islands—many islands, where one could land at will and barter with fools of Kanakas. There was something radically amiss with Tritton's universe. It was wrong, all wrong—except for the pearls....
They were his last thought before the boom swung out of the night with a shriek of tackle and struck him on the side of the head.
The long-suffering Moana had gibed, and gibing before half a gale was rather more than she had bargained for. Her ancient mast went at the deck, and when Tritton opened his eyes the ship wallowed a dismantled wreck.
There followed days and nights which to Tritton were now vague memories of an ugly dream. He remembered that the storm had spent itself and that a stark calm had followed, accompanied by a brazen, wilting heat. He remembered the awful discovery that in his haste to leave Taneba he had omitted to fill the water-beakers, and that half-ripe bananas held maddeningly little moisture. But over all a mist now seemed to hover, a mist that slowly grew more opaque, obliterating all things except the pearls. They were all that had kept Tritton alive.
So the crew of a trading cutter found him, babbling quietly to himself in the fo'castle, with a chewed banana skin in one hand and something in the other that he thrust from sight at their approach.
The Buli of Niama tugged a horny foot closer to his groin.
"I do not savvy, Mr. Bellairs," he said in his precise mission English, and with a perplexed wrinkling of the brow. "I send my daughter to sell you pearls because I run a curio store in Levuka for many year, and know how the white man loves them. I learn many things at my curio store in the great city; but what I do not learn is why, when I send you pearls, you will not buy but send me other pearls in exchange. Now that the fever is better maybe you will tell me."
"Certainly, Buli" said Bellairs, with the utmost suavity. "I could not pay you for the pearls because I have no money. My worthy partner was under the impression that I had, and is now paying the penalty by being afloat somewhere on the Pacific in a ship that is neither his nor mine. But that is beside the point. Now that he has seen fit to abscond, I see nothing against giving you the facts, as a slight token of gratitude for all you have done for me."
"That is well said," commented the Buli judicially.
"I'm glad you like it," said Bellairs. "Must say I'm rather taken with it myself. But here's the rub. You who have owned a curio store in a great city like Levuka should know that there are two kinds of pearls—real and imitation."
"I have heard so," admitted the Buli.
"Well, not to put too fine a point to it, we took your pearls and sent you ours, which were imitation."
The Buli of Niama glanced up at the high rafters of the guest house, then at Bellairs.
"So were mine!" he said.