King o' the Beach Part 36

"And cook and eat us afterwards without salt?" said the boy, merrily.

"You laugh," replied the doctor, "but it is a horrible fact, my boy; and if we knew all that has taken place in connection with this man's rule over them, we should have some blood-curdling things to dwell upon."

"I don't feel afraid," said Carey, coolly. "Of course, I should if it came to such a state of affairs as you hint at. But if it came to the worst, I should jump overboard and try to swim ash.o.r.e."

"To be taken by a shark or a crocodile?"

"Well, that would be a more natural way of coming to one's end, sir.

But, pooh! we're not going to be beaten, doctor. We must get Mr Dan Mallam--Old King Cole, Bob calls him--shut up below somewhere and out of sight of the blacks. They'd obey us then, and we should be all right.

Why, we're not going to be afraid of one man."

"One man?" said the doctor.

"Yes, one man. He's only one man when he's alone. I felt yesterday that we had twenty-one enemies. Now I feel that we've only one. Bob says we must wait."

"Yes, it is good advice," replied the doctor, "and we will wait. Carey, my lad, we must bend to circ.u.mstances till our chance comes. There, I have been behaving in a poor, cowardly way."

"Oh, nonsense, sir!"

"I have, Carey, and there is no disguising it; but I am going to pluck up now. Let the scoundrel go on thinking we are submitting and are as much his servant as the blacks are."

"Till the right time comes, sir, and he wakes up to the fact that he's our prisoner. I say, if a ship came in sight and saw us we could hand him over and he'd be taken right off and treated as a criminal."

"Exactly. It seemed very galling to see him seize the pearls."

"Yes," said Carey, "but let him think they're his, and the ship, and all below. We know better."

This was a trifling bit of conversation, but from that hour hope grew stronger in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the three oddly made prisoners and slaves of such a king. Their semi-captivity seemed more bearable, and it showed in their looks and actions, the beachcomber noting it and showing a grim kind of satisfaction.

"That's right," he said. "Glad to see you are all settling down and making the best of it. It's no use to go kicking against stone walls or rocks. Be good boys, and I won't be very hard on you. You'll eat and drink your food better, and instead o' grizzling you'll enjoy yourselves and get nice and fat. My pack, too, will like you all the better. I don't think I shall let 'em have that ugly chap Bostock, though; he cooks too well."

But Carey took matters, according to the doctor's ideas, too easily--too freely. He did not shrink from speaking out and taking liberties with his position. It was as if he had forgotten that he was a prisoner, and he pretty well did as he liked.

"Here, what are you after, youngster? Where are you going?"

"Along with the pack to get cocoanuts," said Carey, coolly.

"I never told you," growled the old fellow, fiercely.

"No, but I want to see them get the nuts down," said Carey, nonchalantly, and he went.

It was the same when a party of the blacks went fishing, which was nearly every day, so that there was always an ample supply, and the boy returned flushed and brown, full of the adventures he had had.

Black Jack now took to heading the fishing expeditions, and always looked after Carey at starting time, grinning and making signs suggestive of hauling up the fish and hitting them over the heads with a nulla-nulla, while the crew of the outrigger canoe always greeted the boy with a grin of satisfaction.

"They are all awfully civil to me now," said Carey to Bostock, "but I think it's a good deal due to the ticky-ticky. I say, Bob, how long will the mola.s.ses last?"

"Oh, some time yet, sir."

"But when the last jar's eaten?"

"Then you must try the pickles, sir. And when that's done, as it used to say on a big picture on the walls in London, 'If you like the pickles, try the sauce.' There's no end o' bottles o' sauce."

"Are there? Are you sure?"

"Yes, sir. There's a big consignment, as they call it, sent from London to Brisbane. One part o' the hold's chock full o' cases. Why, there's a lot o' sugar things too. Oh, we shall find enough to keep them beggars going for a long time yet."

Meantime the great tubs had all been emptied with more or less satisfactory results, and re-filling began with the accompanying stacking of the sh.e.l.ls. The pearls were stowed away in cigar boxes, which were emptied for the purpose, the beachcomber now taking to smoking some of those turned out, and giving an abundance to Carey, who took them eagerly, always carrying several in his pocket.

"Surely you are not going to smoke those, my boy?" said the doctor, who looked quite aghast. "Wait a few years before you try anything of that kind."

"Why?" said the boy, with an arch look. "Because if you begin now you will most likely be laying up a store of trouble for the future in the shape of a disordered digestion, which may hang about you all your life."

"I'm not going to smoke them," said Carey, laughing. "Look here, I roll each one up tight in a bit of paper, and then cut it with a sharp knife into six, ready to give the black fellows if they behave themselves.

They'll do anything for me for a bit of tobacco."

"But don't they ever try to take it away from you?"

"Not now. They tried s.n.a.t.c.hing once or twice, but I gave the one who did a good sharp crack, and they left it off, for I'm always fair to them."

"A dangerous game to play."

"Oh, no. The others always laugh at the one who's. .h.i.t. They don't seem to mind taking a crack from me."

Those fishing trips were an intense pleasure to Carey, for there was so much that was novel. Now fish with scales as brilliant as the feathers of humming-birds would be caught; now the blacks would be warning their companions to beware of the black and yellow or yellow snakes.

"Mumkull--kill a fellow," Black Jack said, and to emphasise his meaning he put out a hand in the water towards one of the basking serpents, s.n.a.t.c.hed it back as if bitten, and went through a regular pantomime indicative of his sufferings. First he drew up one leg, then the other, threw himself on his back in the bottom of the canoe, kicked out, threw his arms in the air, straightened himself out, rolled over, and then, with a wonderful display of strength, curved his spine and sprang over back again, repeating the performance, which was wonderfully like the flopping of a freshly caught roach in a punt, even to the beating of the tail, which was here represented by the man's legs. By degrees this grew more slow; then there was a flap at intervals, finishing with one heavy rap, and he lay quite still as if dead.

"Dat a way," he cried, raising his head and grinning hugely. "Mumkull-- kill a fellow."

But Carey's greatest treats were upon the hunting expeditions made by the beachcomber's blacks ash.o.r.e to obtain fresh meat in the way of a delicacy or two for their chief and something substantial for themselves.

One day Carey was gazing rather disconsolately at the sh.o.r.e and wondering when the time would come for him and his companions to be free again, when Black Jack bounded to his side, making the boy start round, to find the man in a menacing att.i.tude, his teeth bare, eyes wide open displaying scarcely anything but the whites, for he was squinting so horribly that his pupils had disappeared behind his thick nose, while the club he held was quivering as if he were about to strike. The suddenness of the approach startled Carey for the moment, and he leaped back, but the reaction came as quickly, and with doubled fist he rushed at the black; but the latter was too quick, leaping aside, and Carey's second attack, which took the form of a flying kick, was also unsuccessful.

Black Jack's face was now covered with a series of good-tempered wrinkles.

"Come 'long," he cried. "Kedge bird--wallaby. Be ticky-ticky, up a tree."

"Be ticky-ticky?" said the boy, wonderingly.

"Ess. Come 'long; be ticky-ticky. Buzz-zz-uzz," he went, with a wonderfully good imitation of the whirr of an insect's wings, while he made his hand describe the dartings to and fro.

"Big fly so," he cried, and drawing his boomerang from the hair girdle, he took a few steps, whirled it a moment or two, and then hurled it towards the sh.o.r.e. "Buzz--hum!" he cried, and then he stood grinning with delight at the boy's admiration of the gyrations made by the curious implement.

At the first throw it seemed to Carey that it would drop as soon as the force was exhausted into the sea, where the hard wood must cause it to sink. But nothing of the kind; it went skimming over the water like some gigantic insect, and at last made a graceful curve, rose up on high quivering and fluttering, and came back till it was over the deck, and then came twirling down.

"Big tree, ticky-ticky, fly dat how."