first several days. If it wasn’t one thing thematter with the mill, it was another. On the fourth day, Ferguson, myengineer, had to shut down several hours in order to remedy his owntroubles. I was bothered by the feeder. After having the niggers (whohad been feeding the cane) pour cream of lime on the rollers to keepeverything sweet, I sent them out to join the cane-cutting squads. So Iwas all alone at that end, just as Ferguson started up the mill, just asI discovered what was the matter with the feed-rollers, and just asMotomoe strolled up.
“He stood there, in Norfolk jacket, pigskin puttees, and all the rest ofthe fashionable get-up out of a bandbox, sneering at me covered withfilth and grease to the eyebrows and looking like a navvy. And, therollers now white from the lime, I’d just seen what was wrong. Therollers were not in plumb. One side crushed the cane well, but the otherside was too open. I shoved my fingers in on that side. The big,toothed cogs on the rollers did not touch my fingers. And yet, suddenly,they did. With the grip of ten thousand devils, my finger-tips werecaught, drawn in, and pulped to—well, just pulp. And, like a slick ofcane, I had started on my way. There was no stopping me. Ten thousandhorses could not have pulled me back. There was nothing to stop me.Hand, arm, shoulder, head, and chest, down to the toes of me, I wasdoomed to feed through.
“It did hurt. It hurt so much it did not hurt me at all. Quitedetached, almost may I say, I looked on my hand being ground up, knuckleby knuckle, joint by joint, the back of the hand, the wrist, the forearm,all in order slowly and inevitably feeding in. O engineer hoist by thineown petard! O sugar-maker crushed by thine own cane-crusher!
“Motomoe sprang forward involuntarily, and the sneer was chased from hisface by an expression of solicitude. Then the beauty of the situationdawned on him, and he chuckled and grinned. No, I didn’t expect anythingof him. Hadn’t he tried to knock me on the head? What could he doanyway? He didn’t know anything about engines.
“I yelled at the top of my lungs to Ferguson to shut off the engine, butthe roar of the machinery drowned my voice. And there I stood, up to theelbow and feeding right on in. Yes, it did hurt. There were someastonishing twinges when special nerves were shredded and dragged out bythe roots. But I remember that I was surprised at the time that it didnot hurt worse.
“Motomoe made a movement that attracted my attention. At the same timehe growled out loud, as if he hated himself, ‘I’m a fool.’ What he haddone was to pick up a cane-knife—you know the kind, as big as a macheteand as heavy. And I was grateful to him in advance for putting me out ofmy misery. There wasn’t any sense in slowly feeding in till my head wascrushed, and already my arm was pulped half way from elbow to shoulder,and the pulping was going right on. So I was grateful, as I bent my headto the blow.
“‘Get your head out of the way, you idiot!’ he barked at me.
“And then I understood and obeyed. I was a big man, and he took twohacks to do it; but he hacked my arm off just outside the shoulder anddragged me back and laid me down on the cane.
“Yes, the sugar paid—enormously; and I built for the Princess the churchof her saintly dream, and . . . she married me.”
He partly assuaged his thirst, and uttered his final word.
“Alackaday! Shuttlecock and battle-dore. And this at, the end of itall, lined with boilerplate that even alcohol will not corrode and thatonly alcohol will tickle. Yet have I lived, and I kiss my hand to thedear dust of my Princess long asleep in the great mausoleum of King Johnthat looks across the Vale of Manona to the alien flag that floats overthe bungalow of the British Government House. . . ”
Fatty pledged him sympathetically, and sympathetically drank out of hisown small can. Bruce Cadogan Cavendish glared into the fire withimplacable bitterness. He was a man who preferred to drink by himself.Across the thin lips that composed the cruel slash of his mouth playedtwitches of mockery that caught Fatty’s eye. And Fatty, making surefirst that his rock-chunk was within reach, challenged.
“Well, how about yourself, Bruce Cadogan Cavendish? It’s your turn.”
The other lifted bleak eyes that bored into Fatty’s until he physicallybetrayed uncomfortableness.
“I’ve lived a hard life,” Slim grated harshly. “What do I know aboutlove passages?”
“No man of your build and make-up could have escaped them,” Fattywheedled.
“And what of it?” Slim snarled. “It’s no reason for a gentleman to boastof amorous triumphs.”
“Oh, go on, be a good fellow,” Fatty urged. “The night’s still young.We’ve still some drink left. Delarouse and I have contributed our share.It isn’t often that three real ones like us get together for a telling.Surely you’ve got at least one adventure in love you aren’t ashamed totell about—”
Bruce Cadogan Cavendish pulled forth his iron quoit and seemed to debatewhether or not he should brain the other. He sighed, and put back thequoit.
“Very well, if you will have it,” he surrendered with manifestreluctance. “Like you two, I have had a remarkable constitution. Andright now, speaking of armour-plate lining, I could drink the both of youdown when you were at your prime. Like you two, my beginnings were fardistant and different. That I am marked with the hall-mark of gentlehoodthere is no discussion . . . unless either of you care to discuss thematter now . . . ”
His one hand slipped into his pocket and clutched the quoit. Neither ofhis auditors spoke nor betrayed any awareness of his menace.
“It occurred a thousand miles to the westward of Manatomana, on theisland of Tagalag,” he continued abruptly, with an air of saturninedisappointment in that there had been no discussion. “But first I musttell you of how I got to Tagalag. For reasons I shall not mention, bypaths of descent I shall not describe, in the crown of my manhood and theprime of my devilishness in which Oxford renegades and racing youngersons had nothing on me, I found myself master and owner of a schooner sowell known that she shall remain historically nameless. I was runningblackbird labour from the west South Pacific and the Coral Sea to theplantations of Hawaii and the nitrate mines of Chili—”
“It was you who cleaned out the entire population of—” Fatty exploded,ere he could check his speech.
The one hand of Bruce Cadogan Cavendish flashed pocketward and flashedback with the quoit balanced ripe for business.
“Proceed,” Fatty sighed. “I . . . I have quite forgotten what I wasgoing to say.”
“Beastly funny country over that way,” the narrator drawled with perfectcasualness. “You’ve read this Sea Wolf stuff—”
“You weren’t the Sea Wolf,” Whiskers broke in with involuntarypositiveness.
“No, sir,” was the snarling answer. “The Sea Wolf’s dead, isn’t he? AndI’m still alive, aren’t I?”
“Of course, of course,” Whiskers conceded. “He suffocated head-first inthe mud off a wharf in Victoria a couple of years back.”
“As I was saying—and I don’t like interruptions,” Bruce Cadogan Cavendishproceeded, “it’s a beastly funny country over that way. I was atTaki-Tiki, a low island that politically belongs to the Solomons, butthat geologically doesn’t at all, for the Solomons are high islands.Ethnographically it belongs to Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia,because all the breeds of the South Pacific have gravitated to it bycanoe-drift and intricately, degeneratively, and amazingly interbred.The scum of the scrapings of the bottom of the human pit, biologicallyspeaking, resides in Taka-Tiki. And I know the bottom and whereof Ispeak.
“It was a beastly funny time of it I had, diving out shell, fishingbeche-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 washaving a hard time of it and the chiefs still eating long-pig. To thewestward it was fierce—funny little black kinky-heads, man-eaters thelast 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’shead. They decorate the canoe-houses and devil-devil houses with them.Each village runs a jack-pot, and everybody antes. Whoever brings in awhite 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 Iwin a pot myself? It was this way. We were lying at Lango-lui at thetime. I never let on, and arranged the affair with Johnny, myboat-steerer. He was a kinky-head himself from Port Moresby. He cut thedead mate’s head off and sneaked ashore in the night, while I whangedaway with my rifle as if I were trying to get him. He opened the potwith the mate’s head, and got it, too. Of course, next day I sent in alanding boat, with two covering boats, and fetched him off with theloot.”
“How big was the pot?” Whiskers asked. “I heard of a pot at Orla wortheighty quid.”
“To commence with,” Slim answered, “there were forty fat pigs, each