A Son Of The Sun

He wrote steadily and rapidly for some minutes, then proceeded to read the matter aloud:

“I must always remember that one man is as good as another, save and except when he thinks he is better.

“No matter how drunk I am I must not fail to be a gentleman. A gentleman is a man who is gentle. Note: It would be better not to get drunk.

“When I play a man’s game with men, I must play like a man.

“A good curse, rightly used and rarely, is an efficient thing. Too many curses spoil the cursing. Note: A curse cannot change a card seguence nor cause the wind to blow.

“There is no license for a man to be less than a man. Ten thousand pounds cannot purchase such a license.”

At the beginning of the reading Deacon’s face had gone white with anger. Then had arisen, from neck to forehead, a slow and terrible flush that deepened to the end of the reading.

“There, that will be all,” Grief said, as he folded the paper and tossed it to the centre of the table. “Are you still ready to play the game?”

“I deserve it,” Deacon muttered brokenly. “I’ve been an ass. Mr. Gee, before I know whether I win or lose, I want to apologize. Maybe it was the whiskey, I don’t know, but I’m an ass, a cad, a bounder – everything that’s rotten.”

He held out his hand, and the half-caste took it beamingly.

“I say, Grief,” he blurted out, “the boy’s all right. Call the whole thing off, and let’s forget it in a final nightcap.”

Grief showed signs of debating, but Deacon cried:

“No; I won’t permit it. I’m not a quitter. If it’s Karo-Karo, it’s Karo-Karo. There’s nothing more to it.”

“Right,” said Grief, as he began the shuffle. “If he’s the right stuff to go to Karo-Karo, Karo-Karo won’t do him any harm.”

The game was close and hard. Three times they divided the deck between them and “cards” was not scored. At the beginning of the fifth and last deal, Deacon needed three points to go out, and Grief needed four. “Cards” alone would put Deacon out, and he played for “cards”. He no longer muttered or cursed, and played his best game of the evening. Incidentally he gathered in the two black aces and the ace of hearts.

“I suppose you can name the four cards I hold,” he challenged, as the last of the deal was exhausted and he picked up his hand.

Grief nodded.

“Then name them.”

“The knave of spades, the deuce of spades, the tray of hearts, and the ace of diamonds,” Grief answered.

Those behind Deacon and looking at his hand made no sign. Yet the naming had been correct.

“I fancy you play casino better than I,” Deacon acknowledged. “I can name only three of yours, a knave, an ace, and big casino.”

“Wrong. There aren’t five aces in the deck. You’ve taken in three and you hold the fourth in your hand now.”

“By Jove, you’re right,” Deacon admitted. “I did scoop in three. Anyway, I’ll make ‘cards’ on you. That’s all I need.”

“I’ll let you save little casino – ” Grief paused to calculate. “Yes, and the ace as well, and still I’ll make ‘cards’ and go out with big casino. Play.”

“No ‘cards’ and I win!” Deacon exulted as the last of the hand was played. “I go out on little casino and the four aces. ‘Big casino’ and ‘spades’ only bring you to twenty.”

Grief shook his head. “Some mistake, I’m afraid.”

“No,” Deacon declared positively. “I counted every card I took in. That’s the one thing I was correct on. I’ve twenty-six, and you’ve twenty-six.”

“Count again,” Grief said.

Carefully and slowly, with trembling fingers, Deacon counted the cards he had taken. There were twenty-five. He reached over to the corner of the table, took up the rules Grief had written, folded them, and put them in his pocket. Then he emptied his glass, and stood up. Captain Donovan looked at his watch, yawned, and also arose.

“Going aboard, Captain?” Deacon asked.

“Yes,” was the answer. “What time shall I send the whaleboat for you?”

“I’ll go with you now. We’ll pick up my luggage from the Billy as we go by, I was sailing on her for Babo in the morning.”

Deacon shook hands all around, after receiving a final pledge of good luck on Karo-Karo.

“Does Tom Butler play cards?” he asked Grief.

“Solitaire,” was the answer.

“Then I’ll teach him double solitaire.” Deacon turned toward the door, where Captain Donovan waited, and added with a sigh, “And I fancy he’ll skin me, too, if he plays like the rest of you island men.”

Chapter Seven – THE FEATHERS OF THE SUN

I

It was the island of Fitu-Iva – the last independent Polynesian stronghold in the South Seas. Three factors conduced to Fitu-Iva’s independence. The first and second were its isolation and the warlikeness of its population. But these would not have saved it in the end had it not been for the fact that Japan, France, Great Britain, Germany, and the United States discovered its desirableness simultaneously. It was like gamins scrambling for a penny. They got in one another’s way. The war vessels of the five Powers cluttered Fitu-Iva’s one small harbour. There were rumours of war and threats of war. Over its morning toast all the world read columns about Fitu-Iva. As a Yankee blue jacket epitomized it at the time, they all got their feet in the trough at once.

So it was that Fitu-Iva escaped even a joint protectorate, and King Tulifau, otherwise Tui Tulifau, continued to dispense the high justice and the low in the frame-house palace built for him by a Sydney trader out of California redwood. Not only was Tui Tulifau every inch a king, but he was every second a king. When he had ruled fifty-eight years and five months, he was only fifty-eight years and three months old. That is to say, he had ruled over five million seconds more than he had breathed, having been crowned two months before he was born.

He was a kingly king, a royal figure of a man, standing six feet and a half, and, without being excessively fat, weighing three hundred and twenty pounds. But this was not unusual for Polynesian “chief stock.” Sepeli, his queen, was six feet three inches and weighed two hundred and sixty, while her brother, Uiliami, who commanded the army in the intervals of resignation from the premiership, topped her by an inch and notched her an even half-hundredweight. Tui Tulifau was a merry soul, a great feaster and drinker. So were all his people merry souls, save in anger, when, on occasion, they could be guilty even of throwing dead pigs at those who made them wroth. Nevertheless, on occasion, they could fight like Maoris, as piratical sandalwood traders and Blackbirders in the old days learned to their cost.

II

Grief’s schooner, the Cantani, had passed the Pillar Rocks at the entrance two hours before and crept up the harbour to the whispering flutters of a breeze that could not make up its mind to blow. It was a cool, starlight evening, and they lolled about the poop waiting till their snail’s pace would bring them to the anchorage. Willie Smee, the supercargo, emerged from the cabin, conspicuous in his shore clothes. The mate glanced at his shirt, of the finest and whitest silk, and giggled significantly.

“Dance, to-night, I suppose?” Grief observed.

“No,” said the mate. “It’s Taitua. Willie’s stuck on her.”

“Catch me,” the supercargo disclaimed.

“Then she’s stuck on you, and it’s all the same,” the mate went on. “You won’t be ashore half an hour before you’ll have a flower behind your ear, a wreath on your head, and your arm around Taitua.”

“Simple jealousy,” Willie Smee sniffed. “You’d like to have her yourself, only you can’t.”

“I can’t find shirts like that, that’s why. I’ll bet you half a crown you won’t sail from Fitu-Iva with that shirt.”

“And if Taitua doesn’t get it, it’s an even break Tui Tulifau does,” Grief warned. “Better not let him spot that shirt, or it’s all day with it.”

“That’s right,” Captain Boig agreed, turning his head from watching the house lights on the shore. “Last voyage he fined one of my Kanakas out of a fancy belt and sheath-knife.” He turned to the mate. “You can let go any time, Mr. Marsh. Don’t give too much slack. There’s no sign of wind, and in the morning we may shift opposite the copra-sheds.”

A minute later the anchor rumbled down. The whaleboat, already hoisted out, lay alongside, and the shore-going party dropped into it. Save for the Kanakas, who were all bent for shore, only Grief and the supercargo were in the boat. At the head of the little coral-stone pier Willie Smee, with an apologetic gurgle, separated from his employer and disappeared down an avenue of palms. Grief turned in the opposite direction past the front of the old mission church. Here, among the graves on the beach, lightly clad in ahu’s and lava-lavas, flower-crowned and garlanded, with great phosphorescent hibiscus blossoms in their hair, youths and maidens were dancing. Farther on, Grief passed the long, grass-built himine house, where a few score of the elders sat in long rows chanting the old hymns taught them by forgotten missionaries. He passed also the palace of Tui Tulifau, where, by the lights and sounds, he knew the customary revelry was going on. For of the happy South Sea isles, Fitu-Iva was the happiest. They feasted and frolicked at births and deaths, and the dead and the unborn were likewise feasted.

Grief held steadily along the Broom Road, which curved and twisted through a lush growth of flowers and fern-like algarobas. The warm air was rich with perfume, and overhead, outlined against the stars, were fruit-burdened mangoes, stately avocado trees, and slender-tufted palms. Every here and there were grass houses. Voices and laughter rippled through the darkness. Out on the water flickering lights and soft-voiced choruses marked the fishers returning from the reef.

At last Grief stepped aside from the road, stumbling over a pig that grunted indignantly. Looking through an open door, he saw a stout and elderly native sitting on a heap of mats a dozen deep. From time to time, automatically, he brushed his naked legs with a cocoa-nut-fibre fly-flicker. He wore glasses, and was reading methodically in what Grief knew to be an English Bible. For this was Ieremia, his trader, so named from the prophet Jeremiah.

Ieremia was lighter-skinned than the Fitu-Ivans, as was natural in a full-blooded Samoan. Educated by the missionaries, as lay teacher he had served their cause well over in the cannibal atolls to the westward. As a reward, he had been sent to the paradise of Fitu-Iva, where all were or had been good converts, to gather in the backsliders. Unfortunately, Ieremia had become too well educated. A stray volume of Darwin, a nagging wife, and a pretty Fitu-Ivan widow had driven him into the ranks of the backsliders. It was not a case of apostasy. The effect of Darwin had been one of intellectual fatigue. What was the use of trying to understand this vastly complicated and enigmatical world, especially when one was married to a nagging woman? As Ieremia slackened in his labours, the mission board threatened louder and louder to send him back to the atolls, while his wife’s tongue grew correspondingly sharper. Tui Tulifau was a sympathetic monarch, whose queen, on occasions when he was particularly drunk, was known to beat him. For political reasons – the queen belonging to as royal stock as himself and her brother commanding the army – Tui Tulifau could not divorce her, but he could and did divorce Ieremia, who promptly took up with commercial life and the lady of his choice. As an independent trader he had failed, chiefly because of the disastrous patronage of Tui Tulifau. To refuse credit to that merry monarch was to invite confiscation; to grant him credit was certain bankruptcy. After a year’s idleness on the beach, leremia had become David Grief’s trader, and for a dozen years his service had been honourable and efficient, for Grief had proven the first man who successfully refused credit to the king or who collected when it had been accorded.

Ieremia looked gravely over the rims of his glasses when his employer entered, gravely marked the place in the Bible and set it aside, and gravely shook hands.

“I am glad you came in person,” he said.

“How else could I come?” Grief laughed.

But Ieremia had no sense of humour, and he ignored the remark.

“The commercial situation on the island is damn bad,” he said with great solemnity and an unctuous mouthing of the many-syllabled words. “My ledger account is shocking.”

“Trade bad?”

“On the contrary. It has been excellent. The shelves are empty, exceedingly empty. But – ” His eyes glistened proudly. “But there are many goods remaining in the storehouse; I have kept it carefully locked.”

“Been allowing Tui Tulifau too much credit?”

“On the contrary. There has been no credit at all. And every old account has been settled up.”

“I don’t follow you, Ieremia,” Grief confessed. “What’s the joke? – shelves empty, no credit, old accounts all square, storehouse carefully locked – what’s the answer?”

Ieremia did not reply immediately. Reaching under the rear corner of the mats, he drew forth a large cash-box. Grief noted and wondered that it was not locked. The Samoan had always been fastidiously cautious in guarding cash. The box seemed filled with paper money. He skinned off the top note and passed it over.

“There is the answer.”

Grief glanced at a fairly well executed banknote. “The First Royal Bank of Fitu-Iva will pay to bearer on demand one pound sterling,” he read. In the centre was the smudged likeness of a native face. At the bottom was the signature of Tui Tulifau, and the signature of Fulualea, with the printed information appended, “Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

“Who the deuce is Fulualea?” Grief demanded. “It’s Fijian, isn’t it? – meaning the feathers of the sun?”

“Just so. It means the feathers of the sun. Thus does this base interloper caption himself. He has come up from Fiji to turn Fitu-Iva upside down – that is, commercially.”

“Some one of those smart Levuka boys, I suppose?”

Ieremia shook his head sadly. “No, this low fellow is a white man and a scoundrel. He has taken a noble and high-sounding Fijian name and dragged it in the dirt to suit his nefarious purposes. He has made Tui Tulifau drunk. He has made him very drunk. He has kept him very drunk all the time. In return, he has been made Chancellor of the Exchequer and other things. He has issued this false paper and compelled the people to receive it. He has levied a store tax, a copra tax, and a tobacco tax. There are harbour dues and regulations, and other taxes. But the people are not taxed – only the traders. When the copra tax was levied, I lowered the purchasing price accordingly. Then the people began to grumble, and Feathers of the Sun passed a new law, setting the old price back and forbidding any man to lower it. Me he fined two pounds and five pigs, it being well known that I possessed five pigs. You will find them entered in the ledger. Hawkins, who is trader for the Fulcrum Company, was fined first pigs, then gin, and, because he continued to make loud conversation, the army came and burned his store. When I declined to sell, this Feathers of the Sun fined me once more and promised to burn the store if again I offended. So I sold all that was on the shelves, and there is the box full of worthless paper. I shall be chagrined if you pay me my salary in paper, but it would be just, no more than just. Now, what is to be done?”

Grief shrugged his shoulders. “I must first see this Feathers of the Sun and size up the situation.”

“Then you must see him soon,” Ieremia advised. “Else he will have an accumulation of many fines against you. Thus does he absorb all the coin of the realm. He has it all now, save what has been buried in the ground.”

III

On his way back along the Broom Road, under the lighted lamps that marked the entrance to the palace grounds, Grief encountered a short, rotund gentleman, in unstarched ducks, smooth-shaven and of florid complexion, who was just emerging. Something about his tentative, saturated gait was familiar. Grief knew it on the instant. On the beaches of a dozen South Sea ports had he seen it before.

“Of all men, Cornelius Deasy!” he cried.

“If it ain’t Grief himself, the old devil,” was the return greeting, as they shook hands.

“If you’ll come on board I’ve some choice smoky Irish,” Grief invited.

Cornelius threw back his shoulders and stiffened.

“Nothing doin’, Mr. Grief. ‘Tis Fulualea I am now. No blarneyin’ of old times for me. Also, and by the leave of his gracious Majesty King Tulifau, ‘tis Chancellor of the Exchequer I am, an’ Chief Justice I am, save in moments of royal sport when the king himself chooses to toy with the wheels of justice.”

Grief whistled his amazement. “So you’re Feathers of the Sun!”

“I prefer the native idiom,” was the correction. “Fulualea, an’ it please you. Not forgettin’ old times, Mr. Grief, it sorrows the heart of me to break you the news. You’ll have to pay your legitimate import duties same as any other trader with mind intent on robbin’ the gentle Polynesian savage on coral isles implanted. – Where was I? Ah! I remember. You’ve violated the regulations. With malice intent have you entered the port of Fitu-Iva after sunset without sidelights burnin’. Don’t interrupt. With my own eyes did I see you. For which offence are you fined the sum of five pounds. Have you any gin? ‘Tis a serious offence. Not lightly are the lives of the mariners of our commodious port to be risked for the savin’ of a penny’orth of oil. Did I ask: have you any gin? Tis the harbour master that asks.”

“You’ve taken a lot on your shoulders,” Grief grinned.

“‘Tis the white man’s burden. These rapscallion traders have been puttin’ it all over poor Tui Tulif, the best-hearted old monarch that ever sat a South Sea throne an’ mopped grog-root from the imperial calabash. ‘Tis I, Cornelius – Fulualea, rather – that am here to see justice done. Much as I dislike the doin’ of it, as harbour master ‘tis my duty to find you guilty of breach of quarantine.”

“Quarantine?”

“‘Tis the rulin’ of the port doctor. No intercourse with the shore till the ship is passed. What dire calamity to the confidin’ native if chicken pox or whoopin’ cough was aboard of you! Who is there to protect the gentle, confidin’ Polynesian? I, Fulualea, the Feathers of the Sun, on my high mission.”

“Who in hell is the port doctor?” Grief queried.

“‘Tis me, Fulualea. Your offence is serious. Consider yourself fined five cases of first-quality Holland gin.”

Grief laughed heartily. “We’ll compromise, Cornelius. Come aboard and have a drink.”

The Feathers of the Sun waved the proffer aside grandly. “‘Tis bribery. I’ll have none of it – me faithful to my salt. And wherefore did you not present your ship’s papers? As chief of the custom house you are fined five pounds and two more cases of gin.”

“Look here, Cornelius. A joke’s a joke, but this one has gone far enough. This is not Levuka. I’ve half a mind to pull your nose for you. You can’t buck me.”

The Feathers of the Sun retreated unsteadily and in alarm.

“Lay no violence on me,” he threatened. “You’re right. This is not Levuka. And by the same token, with Tui Tulifau and the royal army behind me, buck you is just the thing I can and will. You’ll pay them fines promptly, or I’ll confiscate your vessel. You’re not the first. What does that Chink pearl-buyer, Peter Gee, do but slip into harbour, violatin’ all regulations an’ makin’ rough house for the matter of a few paltry fines. No; he wouldn’t pay ‘em, and he’s on the beach now thinkin’ it over.”

“You don’t mean to say – ”

“Sure an’ I do. In the high exercise of office I seized his schooner. A fifth of the loyal army is now in charge on board of her. She’ll be sold this day week. Some ten tons of shell in the hold, and I’m wonderin’ if I can trade it to you for gin. I can promise you a rare bargain. How much gin did you say you had?”

“Still more gin, eh?”

“An’ why not? ‘Tis a royal souse is Tui Tulifau. Sure it keeps my wits workin’ overtime to supply him, he’s that amazin’ liberal with it. The whole gang of hanger-on chiefs is perpetually loaded to the guards. It’s disgraceful. Are you goin’ to pay them fines, Mr. Grief, or is it to harsher measures I’ll be forced?”

Grief turned impatiently on his heel.

“Cornelius, you’re drunk. Think it over and come to your senses. The old rollicking South Sea days are gone. You can’t play tricks like that now.”

“If you think you’re goin’ on board, Mr. Grief, I’ll save you the trouble. I know your kind, I foresaw your stiff-necked stubbornness. An’ it’s forestalled you are. ‘Tis on the beach you’ll find your crew. The vessel’s seized.”

Grief turned back on him in the half-belief still that he was joking. Fulualea again retreated in alarm. The form of a large man loomed beside him in the darkness.

“Is it you, Uiliami?” Fulualea crooned. “Here is another sea pirate. Stand by me with the strength of thy arm, O Herculean brother.”

“Greeting, Uiliami,” Grief said. “Since when has Fitu-Iva come to be run by a Levuka beachcomber? He says my schooner has been seized. Is it true?”

“It is true,” Uiliami boomed from his deep chest. “Have you any more silk shirts like Willie Smee’s? Tui Tulifau would like such a shirt. He has heard of it.”

“‘Tis all the same,” Fulualea interrupted. “Shirts or schooners, the king shall have them.”

“Rather high-handed, Cornelius,” Grief murmured. “It’s rank piracy. You seized my vessel without giving me a chance.”

“A chance is it? As we stood here, not five minutes gone, didn’t you refuse to pay your fines?”

“But she was already seized.”

“Sure, an’ why not? Didn’t I know you’d refuse? ‘Tis all fair, an’ no injustice done – Justice, the bright, particular star at whose shining altar Cornelius Deasy – or Fulualea, ‘tis the same thing – ever worships. Get thee gone, Mr. Trader, or I’ll set the palace guards on you. Uiliami, ‘tis a desperate character, this trader man. Call the guards.”

Uiliami blew the whistle suspended on his broad bare chest by a cord of cocoanut sennit. Grief reached out an angry hand for Cornelius, who titubated into safety behind Uiliami’s massive bulk. A dozen strapping Polynesians, not one under six feet, ran down the palace walk and ranged behind their commander.

“Get thee gone, Mr. Trader,” Cornelius ordered. “The interview is terminated. We’ll try your several cases in the mornin’. Appear promptly at the palace at ten o’clock to answer to the followin’ charges, to wit: breach of the peace; seditious and treasonable utterance; violent assault on the chief magistrate with intent to cut, wound, maim, an’ bruise; breach of quarantine; violation of harbour regulations; and gross breakage of custom house rules. In the mornin’, fellow, in the mornin’, justice shall be done while the breadfruit falls. And the Lord have mercy on your soul.”

III

Before the hour set for the trial Grief, accompanied by Peter Gee, won access to Tui Tulifau. The king, surrounded by half a dozen chiefs, lay on mats under the shade of the avocados in the palace compound. Early as was the hour, palace maids were industriously serving squarefaces of gin. The king was glad to see his old friend Davida, and regretful that he had run foul of the new regulations. Beyond that he steadfastly avoided discussion of the matter in hand. All protests of the expropriated traders were washed away in proffers of gin. “Have a drink,” was his invariable reply, though once he unbosomed himself enough to say that Feathers of the Sun was a wonderful man. Never had palace affairs been so prosperous. Never had there been so much money in the treasury, nor so much gin in circulation. “Well pleased am I with Fulualea,” he concluded. “Have a drink.”

“We’ve got to get out of this pronto,” Grief whispered to Peter Gee a few minutes later, “or we’ll be a pair of boiled owls. Also, I am to be tried for arson, or heresy, or leprosy, or something, in a few minutes, and I must control my wits.”

As they withdrew from the royal presence, Grief caught a glimpse of Sepeli, the queen. She was peering out at her royal spouse and his fellow tipplers, and the frown on her face gave Grief his cue. Whatever was to be accomplished must be through her.

In another shady corner of the big compound Cornelius was holding court. He had been at it early, for when Grief arrived the case of Willie Smee was being settled. The entire royal army, save that portion in charge of the seized vessels, was in attendance.