I confess I thought so, too; but I ran on abreast, watching to see
if the line of breakers from one side the entrance did not overlap
the line from the other side. Sure enough, it did. A narrow place
where the sea ran smooth appeared. Charmian put down the wheel and
steadied for the entrance. Martin threw on the engine, while all
hands and the cook sprang to take in sail.
A trader's house showed up in the bight of the bay. A geyser, on
the shore, a hundred yards away; spouted a column of steam. To
port, as we rounded a tiny point, the mission station appeared.
"Three fathoms," cried Wada at the lead-line. "Three fathoms," "two
fathoms," came in quick succession.
Charmian put the wheel down, Martin stopped the engine, and the
Snark rounded to and the anchor rumbled down in three fathoms.
Before we could catch our breaths a swarm of black Tannese was
alongside and aboard - grinning, apelike creatures, with kinky hair
and troubled eyes, wearing safety-pins and clay-pipes in their
slitted ears: and as for the rest, wearing nothing behind and less
than that before. And I don't mind telling that that night, when
everybody was asleep, I sneaked up on deck, looked out over the
quiet scene, and gloated - yes, gloated - over my navigation.
CHAPTER XV - CRUISING IN THE SOLOMONS
"Why not come along now?" said Captain Jansen to us, at Penduffryn,
on the island of Guadalcanar.
Charmian and I looked at each other and debated silently for half a
minute. Then we nodded our heads simultaneously. It is a way we
have of making up our minds to do things; and a very good way it is
when one has no temperamental tears to shed over the last tin-of
condensed milk when it has capsized. (We are living on tinned goods
these days, and since mind is rumoured to be an emanation of matter,
our similes are naturally of the packing-house variety.)
"You'd better bring your revolvers along, and a couple of rifles,"
said Captain Jansen. "I've got five rifles aboard, though the one
Mauser is without ammunition. Have you a few rounds to spare?"
We brought our rifles on board, several handfuls of Mauser
cartridges, and Wada and Nakata, the Snark's cook and cabin-boy
respectively. Wada and Nakata were in a bit of a funk. To say the
least, they were not enthusiastic, though never did Nakata show the
white feather in the face of danger. The Solomon Islands had not
dealt kindly with them. In the first place, both had suffered from
Solomon sores. So had the rest of us (at the time, I was nursing
two fresh ones on a diet of corrosive sublimate); but the two
Japanese had had more than their share. And the sores are not nice.
They may be described as excessively active ulcers. A mosquito
bite, a cut, or the slightest abrasion, serves for lodgment of the
poison with which the air seems to be filled. Immediately the ulcer
commences to eat. It eats in every direction, consuming skin and
muscle with astounding rapidity. The pin-point ulcer of the first
day is the size of a dime by the second day, and by the end of the
week a silver dollar will not cover it.
Worse than the sores, the two Japanese had been afflicted with
Solomon Island fever. Each had been down repeatedly with it, and in
their weak, convalescent moments they were wont to huddle together
on the portion of the Snark that happened to be nearest to faraway
Japan, and to gaze yearningly in that direction.
But worst of all, they were now brought on board the Minota for a
recruiting cruise along the savage coast of Malaita. Wada, who had
the worse funk, was sure that he would never see Japan again, and
with bleak, lack-lustre eyes he watched our rifles and ammunition
going on board the Minota. He knew about the Minota and her Malaita
cruises. He knew that she had been captured six months before on
the Malaita coast, that her captain had been chopped to pieces with
tomahawks, and that, according to the barbarian sense of equity on
that sweet isle, she owed two more heads. Also, a labourer on
Penduffryn Plantation, a Malaita boy, had just died of dysentery,
and Wada knew that Penduffryn had been put in the debt of Malaita by
one more head. Furthermore, in stowing our luggage away in the
skipper's tiny cabin, he saw the axe gashes on the door where the
triumphant bushmen had cut their way in. And, finally, the galley
stove was without a pipe - said pipe having been part of the loot.
The Minota was a teak-built, Australian yacht, ketch-rigged, long
and lean, with a deep fin-keel, and designed for harbour racing
rather than for recruiting blacks. When Charmian and I came on
board, we found her crowded. Her double boat's crew, including
substitutes, was fifteen, and she had a score and more of "return"
boys, whose time on the plantations was served and who were bound
back to their bush villages. To look at, they were certainly true
head-hunting cannibals. Their perforated nostrils were thrust
through with bone and wooden bodkins the size of lead-pencils.
Numbers of them had punctured the extreme meaty point of the nose,
from which protruded, straight out, spikes of turtle-shell or of
beads strung on stiff wire. A few had further punctured their noses
with rows of holes following the curves of the nostrils from lip to
point. Each ear of every man had from two to a dozen holes in it -
holes large enough to carry wooden plugs three inches in diameter
down to tiny holes in which were carried clay-pipes and similar
trifles. In fact, so many holes did they possess that they lacked
ornaments to fill them; and when, the following day, as we neared
Malaita, we tried out our rifles to see that they were in working
order, there was a general scramble for the empty cartridges, which
were thrust forthwith into the many aching voids in our passengers'
ears.
