第36章 THE PRINCESS(9)

"It was a beastly funny time of it I had, diving out shell, fishing beche- de-mer, trading hoop-iron and hatchets for copra and ivory- nuts, running niggers and all the rest of it.Why, even in Fiji the Lotu was having a hard time of it and the chiefs still eating long-pig.To the westward itwas fierce - funny little black kinky-heads, man-eaters the last Jack of them, and the jackpot fat and spilling over with wealth - ""Jack-pots?" Fatty queried.At sight of an irritable movement, he added: "You see, I never got over to the West like Delarouse and you.""They're all head-hunters.Heads are valuable, especially a white man's head.They decorate the canoe-houses and devil-devil houses with them.Each village runs a jack-pot, and everybody antes.Whoever brings in a white man's head takes the pot.If there aren't openers for a long time, the pot grows to tremendous proportions.Beastly funny, isn't it?

"I know.Didn't a Holland mate die on me of blackwater? And didn't I win a pot myself? It was this way.We were lying at Lango-lui at the time.I never let on, and arranged the affair with Johnny, my boat- steerer.He was a kinky-head himself from Port Moresby.He cut the dead mate's head off and sneaked ashore in the might, while I whanged away with my rifle as if I were trying to get him.He opened the pot with the mate's head, and got it, too.Of course, next day I sent in a landing boat, with two covering boats, and fetched him off with the loot.""How big was the pot?" Whiskers asked."I heard of a pot at Orla worth eighty quid.""To commence with," Slim answered, "there were forty fat pigs, each worth a fathom of prime shell-money, and shell-money worth a quid a fathom.That was two hundred dollars right there.There were ninety- eight fathoms of shell-money, which is pretty close to five hundred in itself.And there were twenty-two gold sovereigns.I split it four ways: one-fourth to Johnny, one-fourth to the ship, one-fourth to me as owner, and one-fourth to me as skipper.Johnny never complained.He'd never had so much wealth all at one time in his life.Besides, I gave him a couple of the mate's old shirts.And I fancy the mate's head is still there decorating the canoe- house.""Not exactly Christian burial of a Christian," Whiskers observed.

"But a lucrative burial," Slim retorted."I had to feed the rest of the mate over-side to the sharks for nothing.Think of feeding an eight- hundred-dollar head along with it.It would have been criminal wasteand stark lunacy.

"Well, anyway, it was all beastly funny, over there to the westward.And, without telling you the scrape I got into at Taki- Tiki, except that I sailed away with two hundred kinky-heads for Queensland labour, and for my manner of collecting them had two British ships of war combing the Pacific for me, I changed my course and ran to the westward thinking to dispose of the lot to the Spanish plantations on Bangar.

"Typhoon season.We caught it.The MERRY MIST was my schooner's name, and I had thought she was stoutly built until she hit that typhoon.I never saw such seas.They pounded that stout craft to pieces, literally so.The sticks were jerked out of her, deckhouses splintered to match-wood, rails ripped off, and, after the worst had passed, the covering boards began to go.We just managed to repair what was left of one boat and keep the schooner afloat only till the sea went down barely enough to get away.And we outfitted that boat in a hurry.The carpenter and I were the last, and we had to jump for it as he went down.There were only four of us - ""Lost all the niggers?" Whiskers inquired.

"Some of them swam for some time," Slim replied."But I don't fancy they made the land.We were ten days' in doing it.And we had a spanking breeze most of the way.And what do you think we had in the boat with us? Cases of square-face gin and cases of dynamite.Funny, wasn't it? Well, it got funnier later on.Oh, there was a small beaker of water, a little salt horse, and some salt-water-soaked sea biscuit - enough to keep us alive to Tagalag.

"Now Tagalag is the disappointingest island I've ever beheld.It shows up out of the sea so as you can make its fall twenty miles off.It is a volcano cone thrust up out of deep sea, with a segment of the crater wall broken out.This gives sea entrance to the crater itself, and makes a fine sheltered harbour.And that's all.Nothing lives there.The outside and the inside of the crater are too steep.At one place, inside, is a patch of about a thousand coconut palms.And that's all, as I said, saving a few insects.No four-legged thing, even a rat, inhabits the place.And it's funny, most awful funny, with all those coconuts, not even a coconut crab.

The only meat-food living was schools of mullet in the harbour - fattest, finest, biggest mullet I ever laid eyes on.