By Reef and Palm Part 10

Taplin was the name of the only other white trader on Funafuti besides old Tom Humphreys, our own man. He had been two years on the island, and was trading in opposition to our trader, as agent for a foreign house--our owners were Sydney people--but his firm's unscrupulous method of doing business had disgusted him. So one day he told the supercargo of their vessel that he would trade for them no longer than the exact time he had agreed upon--two years. He had come to Funafuti from the Pelews, and was now awaiting the return of his firm's vessel to take him back there again. Getting into our boat we were pulled ash.o.r.e and landed on the beach in front of the trader's house.

"Well, Taplin, here's your schooner at last," said old Tom, as we shook hands and seated ourselves in the comfortable, pleasant-looking room.

"I see you're getting ready to go."

Taplin was a man of about thirty or so, with a quiet, impa.s.sive face, and dark, deep-set eyes that gave to his features a somewhat gloomy look, except when he smiled, which was not often. Men with that curious, far-off look in their eyes are not uncommon among the lonely islands of the wide Pacific. Sometimes it comes to a man with long, long years of wandering to and fro; and you will see it deepen when, by some idle, chance word, you move the memories of a forgotten past--ere he had even dreamed of the existence of the South Sea Islands and for ever dissevered himself from all links and a.s.sociations of the outside world.

"Yes," he answered, "I am nearly ready. I saw the schooner at daylight, and knew it was the ALIDA."

"Where do you think of going to, Taplin?" I asked.

"Back to the Carolines. Nerida belongs down that way, you know; and she is fretting to get back again--otherwise I wouldn't leave this island.

I've done pretty well here, although the people I trade for are--well, you know what they are."

"Aye," a.s.sented old Humphreys, "there isn't one of 'em but what is the two ends and bight of a--scoundrel; and that supercargo with the yaller moustache and womany hands is the worst of the lot. I wonder if he's aboard this trip? I don't let him inside my house; I've got too many daughters, and they all think him a fine man."

Nerida, Taplin's wife, came out to us from an inner room. She was a native of one of the Pelew Islands, a tall, slenderly-built girl, with pale, olive skin and big, soft eyes. A flowing gown of yellow muslin--the favourite colour of the Portuguese-blooded natives of the Pelews--b.u.t.toned high up to her throat, draped her graceful figure.

After putting her little hand in ours, and greeting us in the Funafuti dialect, she went over to Taplin, and touching his arm, pointed out the schooner that was now only a mile or so away, and a smile parted her lips, and the star-like eyes glowed and filled with a tender light.

I felt Captain Warren touch my arm as he rose and went outside. I followed.

"L----," said Warren, "can't we do something for Taplin ourselves?

Isn't there a station anywhere about Tonga or Wallis Island that would suit him?"

"Would he come, Warren? He--or, rather, that pretty wife of his--seems bent upon going away in the schooner to the Carolines."

"Aye," said the skipper, "that's it. If it were any other vessel I wouldn't care." Then suddenly:

"That fellow Motley (the supercargo) is a d.a.m.ned scoundrel--capable of any villainy where a woman is concerned. Did you ever hear about old Raymond's daughter down at Mangareva?"

I had heard the story very often. By means of a forged letter purporting to have been written by her father--an old English trader in the Gambier Group--Motley had lured the beautiful young half-blood away from a school in San Francisco, and six months afterwards turned her adrift on the streets of Honolulu. Raymond was a lonely man, and pa.s.sionately attached to his only child; so no one wondered when, reaching California a year after and finding her gone, he shot himself in his room at an hotel.

"I will ask him, anyway," I said; and as we went back into the house the ALIDA shot past our line of vision through the coco-palms, and brought up inside the brig.

"Taplin," I said, "would you care about taking one of our stations to the eastward? Name any island you fancy, and we will land you there with the pick of our 'trade' room."

"Thank you. I would be only too glad, but I cannot. I have promised Nerida to go back to Babelthouap, or somewhere in the Pelews, and Motley has promised to land us at Ponape, in the Carolines. We can get away from there in one of the Dutch firm's vessels."

"I am very sorry, Taplin----" I began, when old Captain Warren burst in with--"Look here, Taplin, we haven't got much time to talk. Here's the ALIDA'S boat coming, with that (blank blank) scoundrel Motley in it.

Take my advice. Don't go away in the ALIDA." And then he looked at Nerida, and whispered something.

A red spark shone in Taplin's dark eyes, then he pressed Warren's hand.

"I know," he answered, "he's a most infernal villain--Nerida hates him too. But you see how I am fixed. The ALIDA is our only chance of getting back to the north-west. But he hasn't got old Raymond to deal with in me. Here they are."

Motley came in first, hat and fan in hand. He was a fine-looking man, with blue eyes and an unusually fair skin for an island supercargo, with a long, drooping, yellow moustache. Riedermann, the skipper, who followed, was stout, coa.r.s.e, red-faced, and brutal.

"How are you, gentlemen?" said Motley affably, turning from Taplin and his wife, and advancing towards us. "Captain Riedermann and I saw the spars of your brig showing up over the coconuts yesterday, and therefore knew we should have the pleasure of meeting you."

Warren looked steadily at him for a moment, and then glanced at his outstretched hand.

"The pleasure isn't mutual, blarst you, Mr Motley," he said coldly, and he put his hand in his pocket.

The supercargo took a step nearer to him with a savage glare in his blue eyes. "What do you mean by this, Captain Warren?"

"Mean?" and the imperturbable Warren seated himself on a corner of the table, and gazed stolidly first at the handsome Motley and then at the heavy, vicious features of Riedermann. "Oh, anything you like. Perhaps it's because it's not pleasant to see white men landing at a quiet island like this with revolvers slung to their waists under their pyjamas; looks a bit too much like Bully Hayes' style for me," and then his tone of cool banter suddenly changed to that of studied insolence.

"I say, Motley, I was talking about you just now to Taplin AND Nerida.

Do you want to know what I was saying? Perhaps I had better tell you. I was talking about t.i.ta Raymond--and yourself."

Motley put his right hand under his pyjama jacket, but Taplin sprang forward, seized his wrist in a grip of iron, and drew him aside.

"The man who draws a pistol in my house, Mr Motley, does a foolish thing," he said, in quiet, contemptuous tones, as he threw the supercargo's revolver into a corner.

With set teeth and clenched hands Motley flung himself into a chair, unable to speak.

Warren, still seated on the table, swung his foot nonchalantly to and fro, and then began at Riedermann.

"Why, how's this, Captain Riedermann? Don't you back up your supercargo's little quarrels, or have you left your pistol on board?

Ah, no, you haven't. I can see it there right enough. Modesty forbids you putting a bullet into a man in the presence of a lady, eh?" Then slewing round again, he addressed Motley: "By G.o.d! sir, it is well for you that we are in a white man's house, and that that man is my friend and took away that pistol from your treacherous hand. If you had fired at me I would have booted you from one end of Funafuti beach to the other--and I've a d.a.m.ned good mind to do it now, but won't, as Taplin has to do some business with you."

"That will do, Warren," I said. "We don't want to make a scene in Taplin's house. Let us go away and allow him to finish his business."

Still glaring angrily at Riedermann and Motley, Warren got down slowly from the table. Then we bade Taplin and Nerida good-bye and went aboard.

At daylight we saw Taplin and his wife go off in the ALIDA'S boat. They waved their hands to us in farewell as the boat pulled past the brig, and then the schooner hove-up anchor, and with all sail set, stood away down to the north-west pa.s.sage of the lagoon.

A year or so afterward we were on a trading voyage to the islands of the Tubuai Group, and were lying becalmed, in company with a New Bedford whaler. Her skipper came on board the brig, and we started talking of Taplin, whom the whale-ship captain knew.

"Didn't you hear?" he said. "The ALIDA never showed up again. 'Turned turtle,' I suppose, somewhere in the islands, like all those slashing, over-masted, 'Fris...o...b..ilt schooners do, sooner or later."

"Poor Taplin," said Warren, "I thought somehow we would never see him again."

Five years had pa.s.sed. Honest old Warren, fiery-tempered and true-hearted, had long since died of fever in the Solomons, and I was supercargo with a smart young American skipper in the brigantine PALESTINE, when we one day sailed along the weather-side of a tiny little atoll in the Caroline Islands.

The PALESTINE was leaking, and Packenham, tempted by the easy pa.s.sage into the beautiful lagoon, decided to run inside and discharge our cargo of copra to get at the leak.