CHAPTER I.
"TYPICAL TROPICAL TRAMP!"
Bob Stanton walked along the main street of Suva, painfully conscious that people looked at him as if he was a beach comber. He was not quite that—yet—though he was not many degrees removed from it, he told himself. His ducks and his linen, if they were frayed, were clean; he managed, with old blades and the horrible soap supplied by his landlady, to keep shaved; the soles of his shoes were broken, but the uppers were carefully pipe-clayed. He was still respectable, but his hair needed cutting and his browned features were beginning to wear an expression that made even the kilted native police look at him askance.
Not to mention the tourists. A steamer was in. Men and women were strolling or driving, tropic clad, agog for entertainment, planning luncheon. Some had lei garlands about their necks placed there by welcoming friends. Friends! There were certainly times when a fellow needed one, Stanton reflected. There might be Americans in that laughing crowd intent upon enjoyment. Perhaps if they knew the plight he was in, from no fault of his own—
He shoved his hands deeper in his empty pockets, crossing over from the row of stores with plate glass fronts, hotels and clubs, to the shore side of the street. He walked in the checkered, changing shadow of the palms and poincianas, which patterned the path with purple and gold.
Across the stretch of seagrass lawn the Goro Sea showed incredibly blue, blue as laundry blueing. The sky was hardly less vivid. Cliffs of pearly trade wind clouds lifted on the horizon. The breeze raised the banners of bananas, rustled in the fronds of coconut and royal palms, sent down a drift of scarlet poinciana blossoms like carnival confetti. A glorious, gorgeous mockery of a day.
He had the makings of two cigarettes, perhaps three thin ones, and that was all. No tobacco, no money to buy any. He was three weeks in debt to his half-caste landlady, three weeks in board-arrears to Cheung Li. Broke. Stony broke.
They hadn't said a thing about it yet, but they would not, could not trust him forever.
There was the sting of it; they had trusted him. He had not lied to them about coming remittances, but had frankly said he was flat, and they had smiled and said he was an American and they knew he would pay them when he could. That seemed a long way off right now.
A girl was coming toward him, from the steamer, unaccompanied. She was simply dressed, she was slender, but walked with a certain agile vigor that distinguished her. Stanton almost bumped into her on the narrow path in his absorption. He got a glimpse of a pair of dark blue eyes, large, clear, but not carefree; a short nose, red lips that drooped a little, a hint of coppery hair under the close-fitting hat.
He raised his own, in apology, and the girl bowed. She did not smile, but looked at him curiously, sympathetically. He did not analyze that look for a few minutes. Then he realized that her face, like his own, must have betrayed worriment, was not in accord with the gorgeous day. She was in trouble of some sort, even as he was, and she had recognized the latter fact.
About ten paces behind the girl a man was walking with a curious ease of gait, pantherish, slightly furtive for all his swagger, for all his linen tunic and pants, his silk shirt and cummerbund, the smart puggaree on his hat of woven palm fiber, the short gold-tipped malacca cane, the silken socks and shoes of buckskin and tan leather.
His skin was the color of saddle leather, splotched by darker blots, like freckles. His eyes were jet-black, set aslant, the lids smooth and unwrinkled, the mouth full-lipped, cruel. A cunning, sensual "breed," half Chinese and half native, swaggering along with a knife under his cummerbund, and gambler's gold in his pockets, Stanton fancied.
The American suddenly wondered, with a hunch that flashed into his mind, whether the man was following the girl. For a moment Stanton halted, rolling his cigarette, looking back. The girl had crossed the street, the half-breed kept straight on. He might be following her, but he did not seem inclined to annoy her. Too careful of his own skin, Stanton decided. He would behave himself in the open, but he was no more to be trusted in the shadows than a roving shark in a lagoon.
Stanton knew him by name—Loo Fong—and by his reputation, or lack of it, along the waterfront where Stanton had his cheap but clean room with Panakaloa, the stout half-white widow of a trading skipper.
Loo Fong, petty pirate, smuggler, gambler, half Malay, half Manchu, and treacherous as a snake, was just back from one of his occasional disappearances. He had given Stanton a look, tinged with a sneer of derision on his twisting mouth, that made the American's fists double automatically.
He crossed the street himself, caught sight of his reflection in a store window as he checked to let a jovial group pass out of the car that had brought them from the ship and enter the Victoria Hotel.
A woman glanced at him and said something in a whisper to her escort. The man was less tactful of tone in his answer.
"T.T.T.," he replied. "Eh, what? Typical Tropical Tramp! Beach bum! Never has worked, can't get work, and doesn't want to." The woman looked at him again and shrank a little. It was then the plate glass revealed to Stanton his mask of a face, grim, almost haggard, the long hair covering the collar of his coat, the set jaws and smoldering eyes.
"Got to snap out of that," he told himself. "You're nursing a grouch. It won't get you a thing, not a damn' thing, Bob Stanton! It's the grin that wins."
He was not so sure of that. He had been grinning a long time, but the grin had frayed, like the bottoms of his pants and the cuffs of his coat and shirts. There was no job in Suva, in all the Fijis, for a "Yank." It was fair enough, perhaps. Jobs seemed to be scarce and anything that a self-respecting white man would do was held out for a Britisher.
He had come out to join a man he had known in the States. They had been comrades in the Argonne, as a matter of fact. It was after an Armistice Day dinner that Raymond had told him of his plan to log and ship the valuable hardwoods of the Fijis to American cabinet-makers. The islands off the north and west of Viti Levu were crammed with such trees, it appeared. Stanton had put in his share for preliminaries and had left for Fiji after the jubilant letter saying that the lease was secured and the prospects rosy. It had taken almost all he had by the time he reached Suva and, while he was en route, the bubble had been pricked.
The British commissioner had received word from the colonial secretary that no leases or concessions were to be granted on Fijian products to other than bona-fide British concerns. The bill had passed "as of" a date before that of Raymond's concessions. It was a washout. The commissioner was polite, bored, and his expressed sorrow was tinged with a suggestion that Americans had better stick to their own possessions.
There were hardwoods, the commissioner believed, in the Philippines. Whether or not he knew the Washington policies that protected the countrymen of Aguinaldo to the exclusion of all outside capital, they did not learn.
Raymond cursed heartily and ingeniously, outside the commissioner's stately residence. He offered Stanton his fare back, but Stanton knew his friend had little enough left for himself. The lure of the tropics had gripped Stanton, and he had no doubt but that he could get along. He had, for twelve weeks of enforced loafing, on fifty dollars.
It looked like the bush or the beach for him, living on fruit and fish, a down-and-outer. It was getting hard to be philosophical, to believe in such platitudes as "It is always darkest before the dawn," and "Every cloud has a silver lining."
Nevertheless, after that self-revealing glance at the grim mask that was his face, Bob Stanton mentally girded up his loins and marched on, resolved to borrow a pair of scissors from Panakaloa to trim the frayed edges of his garments and essay a haircut. He was getting morbid. He whistled as he marched along and looked a sergeant of police squarely in the eyes. Lately he had been bothering a bit about deportation, or a request to move on.
Confound that fellow with his T.T.T. What did he know about them? T.T.T.'s were the salt of the earth, often prosperous, always efficient, cursed or blessed with the roving heel. The chap had said Stanton didn't want to work, whereas he had been hunting it high and low until he could feel the grit working through his shoes at every step. He whistled the swinging march song:
Lots of craft in the harbor, freight steamers, sailing ships, the big passenger boat, native craft, launches shuttling back and forth. Usually they made him restless, emphasized his marooned condition. Now he grinned at them. Much magic in a grin, after all. But he didn't get his haircut.
He reached the wharf and swung south to where Panakaloa's little house was set among scrubs and papaia trees on the limits of white residency. A topsail schooner was moored to bollards, her cargo of copra and turtle shell being discharged.
A black man lay on a bale, shivering in the sun. He was almost a dwarf, a Melanesian, not a Fijian. His frizzy hair was dull red from lime bleaching, his dark skin showed tribal weals and other scars. His only clothing was a scanty loin-cloth. The lobes of his ears were stretched to flaps of torn leather, a short clap pipe thrust through one of the convenient holes. A South Sea savage, sick and shuddering, ugly, ill-shaped, dirty. His ribs showed like those of a starved dog. His eyes were closed and his limbs were huddled about his emaciated body.
Any blackbirder would have despised him. Stanton wondered how he had come to Suva, derelict and unhappy as a mangy cur.
A man in a peaked cap, dressed in dungarees and a grimy pyjama top was directing the last of the unloading, chewing and spitting tobacco between curses in beach-English. As the file-closer of the Kanakas he had been bossing disappeared into the warehouse shed, the man, apparently mate of the schooner, turned and saw the wretched figure on the bale. He had a rope's end tucked in his belt, a length of coil ending in a turkshead knot, symbol of authority over his Solomon Island crew.
He swung it aloft and brought it down on the cowering creature who woke to his shouted oaths. It curled with a vicious hiss and sounded like a drum-stroke as it raised a blistering mark.
"You walk along damn' quick out of this, you blasted stowaway monkey, before I flay you," he cried and swung up his arm again as the man leaped from the bale and crouched, long apelike arms wrapped about his head, jabbering something inarticulate. The rope's end writhed around his ribs with the same hideous strum. The third blow did not fall. The mate's arm remained aloft as he gazed in astonishment at the sudden appearance of Stanton between him and his victim.
"Git out of here, you lousy beach bum!" the mate yelled. He started to say more, but Stanton's fist muzzled him.
Indignation at the wanton cruelty had caused Stanton to interfere, but all the resentment he had swallowed in the sneer of Loo Fong and the words of the woman's escort outside the hotel, went into that wallop when the mate called him a bum. He had been hard up, but, thanks to Cheung and Panakaloa, he had not starved or lacked decent quarters. He was husky and he knew how to use his fists. The mate didn't. He was a bucko, a good brawler, and he was tough, inside and out, but he made a serious first mistake in underestimating his adversary, and rushing him.
Stanton ducked neatly and smote him hard over the liver as the mate's haymaker swung overhead and the mate swung with it, off balance, staggering sidewise with a clip on the side of the jaw. He went to one knee and hand, and Stanton let him up, which was chivalrous but wasted.
"Get up, you coward, and take a licking from a 'bum!'" Stanton snapped, while the mate spat blood and tobacco from his battered lips, uttered a roar and rushed again. The seaman got a straight left to his face which checked him, but he closed in, bellowing and bludgeoning. The Kanakas had come out of the warehouse and were looking on, eyes rolling, grinning. The cook came out of the schooner's galley and stood with folded arms, another spectator who seemed not opposed to the prospects of the mate's getting trimmed.
They clinched and Stanton appreciated what a bucko might do at close quarters. The mate got his arms about his ribs and nearly cracked them as he forged on with the advantage of his weight, using his knee, trying to trip, cursing constantly, threatening, putting out his full strength. Stanton beat a tattoo on his kidneys and he didn't like it. They struck the stringpiece and went down together, rolling over and over, rebounding as the side of the schooner saved them from the water.
As they rolled the mate made another mistake. Every time Stanton was on top he slogged at the bucko's head and jaws, and hurt him badly enough to make the mate try the same tactics. The bucko got home more than once, but it gave Stanton the chance to get up and away. He intended to keep away. The mate was as hard as an automobile tire, strong as a gorilla; he had the weight and superior strength. Stanton had the science and the better wind. The other was blowing as he got to his feet and, before he got set, Stanton got in a jolt to the belly and a second smash over the mouth.
The combination settled it, together with the quid the mate had neglected to eject. The force of the blow sent it into his windpipe, choking and half strangling him. Upset muscular control juggled it into his gullet and Stanton's third and final blow in that rally drove it deep. His disturbed stomach received and ejected it. His tanned face turned a sickly green. He heaved violently and was distressingly and unpleasantly sick, teetering up the gangway, using the scupperway, weaving down the companionway to his cabin.
Stanton straightened his clothes, felt gingerly a fiery ear and a bruised cheek, looking for the cause of his interference.
"You did 'm in proper, mister. You 'andled your dukes pretty. It served the bloody blighter right," said the cook. "I'm quittin' 'ere. 'E ain't got no idea of decency, 'e ain't. Called my grub 'stinkin' 'ash.' I 'ope the beggar 'eaves up his spotted soul."
The miserable black was clasping Stanton's knees, jabbering at him, his eyes moist with gratitude. It embarrassed the American. The Kanakas were gathered in an uncertain knot, but the cook shouted at them and they went aboard.
"Looks like you 'ad 'im on your 'ands, mister," the cook said to Stanton. "All syme stray dorg. You'll 'ave a 'ard time gittin' rid of 'im."
"Where did he come from? What's the matter with him?"
"We figger 'e must 'ave swum off and 'id aboard, the time we watered at Tuimoto. Probably was in wrong with 'is wizard. Thought the ship 'u'd be better than the ovens. I'll bet 'e's changed 'is mind more'n once. We was glad enough to git clear without trouble. Tuimoto is no picnic-ground. The skipper was sick—island fever—an' mate run things. 'E kicked the daylights out of that boy. Come night throwin' 'im overboard to the sharks. 'E ain't 'ad too much to eat. Don't like white man's kaikai an' the Kanakas wouldn't share theirs with 'im. That's part of what's the matter with 'im. And 'e's got yaws. You better tyke my tip and 'and 'im over to the police, mister. 'E belongs in the 'orsepittle, 'e does. Croak on your 'ands if you don't. 'Is nyme's Tiki and I bet 'e's full of 'em."
A muffled roar came from below and the cook winked at Stanton.
"That's the mate," he said. "Wants a nurse. I'll nurse 'im!" He sauntered aft.
The miserable devil who seemed to have been wished on Stanton, ill-treated and frightened by his surroundings, groveled at his feet. He shivered like a frightened dog when Stanton put a hand on his skinny shoulder. He didn't quite know what to do with the wretch—he'd die in the hospital from sheer loneliness. Turn his face to the wall and let his soul leach out of him.
Stanton could put a meal into him, let him know he had a friend. His own plight was pleasant compared to that of this spiritless remnant of humanity. Perhaps Panakaloa would let him stay, give him something he could assimilate.
"You come with me," he said. "We get kaikai."
Tiki understood the meaning and followed him like a black dog, his eyes shining. Panakaloa was a bit difficult. She wanted no black fellows, she declared, but at last Stanton persuaded her to let Tiki—who stood on one bow leg, scratching with the toes of the other at his yaws while they discussed him—stay in a shed in the little garden on some old matting. He lay down, curled up, sacking over him and presently Panakaloa set down beside him a bowl of native poi and some dried fish. His eyes glittered. His spirit revived. He was in the house of friends and he ate avidly. Stanton went off to his own meal.