Jerry of the Islands / Джерри-островитянин. Книга для чтения на английском языке

And to the Arangi, this hot-white tropic morning, Jerry went on the whaleboat under the arm of his Mister Haggin, while on the beach Biddy moaned her woe, and Michael, not sophisticated, barked the eternal challenge of youth to the Unknown.

Chapter II

From the whaleboat, up the low side of the Arangi, and over her six-inch rail of teak to her teak deck, was but a step, and Tom Haggin made it easily with Jerry still under his arm. The deck was cluttered with an exciting crowd. Exciting the crowd would have been to untravelled humans of civilization, and exciting it was to Jerry; although to Tom Haggin and Captain Van Horn it was a mere commonplace of everyday life.

The deck was small because the Arangi was small. Originally a teak-built, gentleman’s yacht, brass-fitted, copper-fastened, angle-ironed, sheathed in man-of-war copper and with a fin-keel of bronze[21], she had been sold into the Solomon Islands’ trade for the purpose of blackbirding or nigger-running. Under the law, however, this traffic was dignified by being called “recruiting.”

The Arangi was a labour-recruit ship that carried the new-caught cannibal blacks from remote islands to labour on the new plantations where white men turned dank and pestilential swamp and jungle into rich and stately cocoanut groves. The Arangi’s two masts were of Oregon cedar, so scraped and hot-paraffined that they shone like tan opals in the glare of sun. Her excessive sail plan enabled her to sail like a witch, and, on occasion, gave Captain Van Horn, his white mate, and his fifteen black boat’s crew as much as they could handle. She was sixty feet over all, and the cross beams of her crown deck had not been weakened by deck-houses[22]. The only breaks – and no beams had been cut for them – were the main cabin skylight and companionway, the booby hatch for’ard over the tiny forecastle, and the small hatch aft that let down into the store-room.

And 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[23],” 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’[24] 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[25] 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[26]! 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[27],” was the cheerful retort.