The Red One
stick. It was the old trick toescape a shark. And she worked it on me, rolling the water so that Icould not see her. And when I came up, she was there ahead of me,clinging to the side of the canoe and laughing.
“Almost I would not be denied. But not for nothing was she a princess.She rested her hand on my arm and compelled me to listen. We should playa game, she said, enter into a competition for which should get the moresquid, the biggest squid, and the smallest squid. Since the wagers werekisses, you can well imagine I went down on the first next dive with soulaflame.
“I got no squid. Never again in all my life have I dived for squid.Perhaps we were five fathoms down and exploring the face of the reefwallfor lurking places of our prey, when it happened. I had found a likelylair and just proved it empty, when I felt or sensed the nearness ofsomething inimical. I turned. There it was, alongside of me, and nomere fish-shark. Fully a dozen feet in length, with the unmistakablephosphorescent cat’s eye gleaming like a drowning star, I knew it forwhat it was, a tiger shark.
“Not ten feet to the right, probing a coral fissure with her squid stick,was the Princess, and the tiger shark was heading directly for her. Mytotality of thought was precipitated to consciousness in a singleall-embracing flash. The man-eater must be deflected from her, and whatwas I, except a mad lover who would gladly fight and die, or more gladlyfight and live, for his beloved? Remember, she was the woman wonderful,and I was aflame for her.
“Knowing fully the peril of my act, I thrust the blunt-sharp end of mysquid-stick into the side of the shark, much as one would attract apassing acquaintance with a thumb-nudge in the ribs. And the man-eaterturned on me. You know the South Seas, and you know that the tigershark, like the bald-face grizzly of Alaska, never gives trail. Thecombat, fathoms deep under the sea, was on—if by combat may be named sucha one-sided struggle.
“The Princess unaware, caught her squid and rose to the surface. Theman-eater rushed me. I fended him off with both hands on his nose abovehis thousand-toothed open mouth, so that he backed me against the sharpcoral. The scars are there to this day. Whenever I tried to rise, herushed me, and I could not remain down there indefinitely without air.Whenever he rushed me, I fended him off with my hands on his nose. And Iwould have escaped unharmed, except for the slip of my right hand. Intohis mouth it went to the elbow. His jaws closed, just below the elbow.You know how a shark’s teeth are. Once in they cannot be released. Theymust go through to complete the bite, but they cannot go through heavybone. So, from just below the elbow he stripped the bone clean to thearticulation of the wrist-joint, where his teeth met and my good righthand became his for an appetizer.
“But while he was doing this, I drove the thumb of my left hand, to thehilt into his eye-orifice and popped out his eye. This did not stop him.The meat had maddened him. He pursued the gushing stump of my wrist.Half a dozen times I fended with my intact arm. Then he got the poormangled arm again, closed down, and stripped the meat off the bone fromthe shoulder down to the elbow-joint, where his teeth met and he was freeof his second mouthful of me. But, at the same time, with my good arm, Ithumbed out his remaining eye.”
Percival Delaney shrugged his shoulders, ere he resumed.
“From above, those in the canoe had beheld the entire happening and wereloud in praise of my deed. To this day they still sing the song of me,and tell the tale of me. And the Princess.” His pause was brief butsignificant. “The Princess married me. . . . Oh, well-a-day andlack-a-day, the whirligig of time and fortune, the topsyturviness ofluck, the wooden shoe going up and the polished heel descending a Frenchgunboat, a conquered island kingdom of Oceania, to-day ruled over by apeasant-born, unlettered, colonial gendarme, and . . . ”
He completed the sentence and the tale by burying his face in thedown-tilted mouth of the condensed milk can and by gurgling the corrosivedrink down his throat in thirsty gulps.
* * * * *
After an appropriate pause, Chauncey Delarouse, otherwise Whiskers, tookup the tale.
“Far be it from me to boast of no matter what place of birth I havedescended from to sit here by this fire with such as . . . as chancealong. I may say, however, that I, too, was once a considerable figureof a man. I may add that it was horses, plus parents too indulgent, thatexiled me out over the world. I may still wonder to query: ‘Are Dover’scliffs still white?’”
“Huh!” Bruce Cadogan Cavendish sneered. “Next you’ll be asking: ‘Howfares the old Lord Warden?’”
“And I took every liberty, and vainly, with a constitution that wasiron,” Whiskers hurried on. “Here I am with my three score and tenbehind me, and back on that long road have I buried many a youngster thatwas as rare and devilish as I, but who could not stand the pace. I knewthe worst too young. And now I know the worst too old. But there was atime, alas all too short, when I knew, the best.
“I, too, kiss my hand to the Princess of my heart. She was truly aprincess, Polynesian, a thousand miles and more away to the eastward andthe south from Delaney’s Isle of Love. The natives of all around thatpart of the South Seas called it the Jolly Island. Their own name, thename of the people who dwelt thereon, translates delicately and justlyinto ‘The Island of Tranquil Laughter.’ On the chart you will find theerroneous name given to it by the old navigators to be Manatomana. Theseafaring gentry the round ocean around called it the Adamless Eden. Andthe missionaries for a time called it God’s Witness—so great had beentheir success at converting the inhabitants. As for me, it was, and evershall be, Paradise.
“It was _my_ Paradise, for it was there my Princess lived. John AsibeliTungi was king. He was full-blooded native, descended out of the oldestand highest chief-stock that traced back to Manua which was the primevalsea home of the race. Also was he known as John the Apostate. He liveda long life and apostasized frequently. First converted by theCatholics, he threw down the idols, broke the tabus, cleaned out thenative priests, executed a few of the recalcitrant ones, and sent all hissubjects to church.
“Next he fell for the traders, who developed in him a champagne thirst,and he shipped off the Catholic priests to New Zealand. The greatmajority of his subjects always followed his lead, and, having noreligion at all, ensued the time of the Great Licentiousness, when by allSouth Seas missionaries his island, in sermons, was spoken of as Babylon.
“But the traders ruined his digestion with too much champagne, and afterseveral years he fell for the Gospel according to the Methodists, senthis people to church, and cleaned up the beach and the trading crowd sospick and span that he would not permit them to smoke a pipe out of doorson Sunday, and, fined one of the chief traders one hundred goldsovereigns for washing his schooner’s decks on the Sabbath morn.
“That was the time of the Blue Laws, but perhaps it was too rigorous forKing John. Off he packed the Methodists, one fine day, exiled severalhundred of his people to Samoa for sticking to Methodism, and, of allthings, invented a religion of his own, with himself the figure-head ofworship. In this he was aided and abetted by a renegade Fijian. Thislasted five years. Maybe he grew tired of being God, or maybe it wasbecause the Fijian decamped with the six thousand pounds in the royaltreasury; but at any rate the Second Reformed Wesleyans got him, and hisentire kingdom went Wesleyan. The pioneer Wesleyan missionary heactually made prime minister, and what he did to the trading crowd was acaution. Why, in the end, King John’s kingdom was blacklisted andboycotted by the traders till the revenues diminished to zero, the peoplewent bankrupt, and King John couldn’t borrow a shilling from his mostpowerful chief.
“By this time he was getting old, and philosophic, and tolerant, andspiritually atavistic. He fired out the Second Reformed Wesleyans,called back the exiles from Samoa, invited in the traders, held a generallove-feast, took the lid off, proclaimed religious liberty and hightariff, and as for himself went back to the worship of his ancestors, dugup the idols, reinstated a few octogenarian priests, and observed thetabus. All of
which was lovely for the traders, and prosperity reigned.Of course, most of his subjects followed him back into heathen worship.Yet quite a sprinkling of Catholics, Methodists and Wesleyans remainedtrue to their beliefs and managed to maintain a few squalid, one-horsechurches. But King John didn’t mind, any more than did he the high timesof the traders along the beach. Everything went, so long as the taxeswere paid. Even when his wife, Queen Mamare, elected to become aBaptist, and invited in a little, weazened, sweet-spirited, club-footedBaptist missionary, King John did not object. All he insisted on wasthat these wandering religions should be self-supporting and not feed apennyworth’s out of the royal coffers.
“And now the threads of my recital draw together in the paragon of femaleexquisiteness—my Princess.”
Whiskers paused, placed carefully on the ground his half-full condensedmilk can with which he had been absently toying, and kissed the fingersof his one hand audibly aloft.
“She was the daughter of Queen Mamare. She was the woman