Hell's Hatches Page 3

  CHAPTER III

  THE GIRL HERSELF

  As for the girl herself, words fail me in trying to picture her, just asmy brush and pencil (save perhaps for that one rough memory sketch, doneat white heat while still gripped in the exaltation that first glimpseof her splashing inside the reef had thrown me into) have always failed.This is, I fancy, because, unbelievably beautiful though she was, therewas still so much of her appeal that was of the spirit rather than theflesh--something intangible which had to be sensed rather than seen. Shewas compact of contradictions, physical as well as mental. So slender asalmost to suggest fragility at a first glance, there was still not astraight line, nor an angle, nor a hint of boniness, from the arch ofher instep to the tips of her ears. Again, pixie-like as she was in thedainty perfection of her modelling, there was yet a fairly feralsuggestion of suppleness and strength underrunning the soft fluency ofcontour. The strength was there, too, held in reserve in the flexibleframe like the power of a coiled spring. I saw her unleash it onemorning when, impatient of the slowness of a clumsy Fijian who waslaunching a very sizable dugout for her, she yanked him aside by thehair of his fuzzy head and did the job herself. I can still see the runof muscles under the olive-silk skin of arm and ankle, and the bent-bowarch of her slender back, as she gave a last push to the crankyoutrigger. Indeed, my mind is full of pictures like that--paddling,swimming, leaning hard against the buffets of a passing squall, with alock of wet hair streaking across her glowing face and her drenchedgarments clinging to her lithe limbs; and yet, as I have said, thebuoyant, flaming spirit of her always escaped my brush and pencil as itnow eludes portrayal by my pen.

  But the most baffling, as it was also the most fascinating, of Rona'scontradictions was the combination she presented of inward intensity andoutward calm. The fire of her was, perhaps, the first thing one wasconscious of. Even I, with my blood thinned and cooled with the ice ofabsinthe, could never watch her movements without a quickening of myjaded pulses; to the sanguine combers of Kai the sight of her (whetherthe rippling undulations of arms and shoulders as she drove a canoethrough the water, or the hawk-like immobility of her as she poised on apinnacle of reef waiting for a chance to cast her little Dyak purse-net)was palpably maddening.

  So much for the flaming appeal of the girl in action, or suspendedaction, which was, of course, about the only way in which she was everrevealed to the "beach." Now picture the same creature (as Bell--andoccasionally myself, his only intimate friend on the island--so oftensaw her) seated cross-legged on a mat, her sloe-eyes, set slightlyslant, fixed dreamily on nothingness, like a sort of reincarnatedgirl-Buddha. The sight of her thus never failed to awaken in my nostrilsthe smell of smouldering _yakka_ sticks, and to set my ears ringing withthe throb of temple bells.

  To my hyper-sophisticated (I will not say degenerate) senses thisOriental side of the girl made a subtle appeal that was like anenchantment. The passion to paint her--always burning within me when Isaw her in action--never assailed me when she fell into one of thosecontemplative calms. Rather the peace of her soothed me like an opiateand made me content to sit and dream myself. It was the one thing (untilI got the habit by the throat years afterward) that ever held my nervessteady when the "absinthe hour" drew near at the end of the afternoon.As long as Rona would continue to "sit Buddha" I had myself completelyin hand, even till well on after sunset. But if she moved, or spoke, oreven showed by her eyes that she was following Bell's words (it washe--less sensitive to this phase of her than I--who did most of thetalking at these times), the spell was broken. The haste of my bolt forhome was almost indecent. I have sometimes thought that a few monthsalone with Rona at this time might have effected very near to a completecure in me--by a sort of involuntary mental therapeutic treatment on herpart, I mean. But perhaps the other side of her--the "unreposeful"one--might have complicated the case.

  Both the fire and the repose of Rona--the passion and the peace ofher--were reflected in the olive oval of her face, the one by the full,sensuous lips and the sensitive nostrils, and the other by the smooth,low brow. The low-lidded blue-black eyes were "debatable territory," nowin the hands of one, now the other. So, too, that infallible "gauge oftemperament," whose dial is the pucker between the eyebrows. With Rona,this "passion-pressure index" was a corrugated knot of intensity or anolive blank according as to whether her inner fires were flaming orbanked.

  Bell knew little of the girl's origin and said less. "Rona's _trousseau_consisted of huh peacock sca'f an' this heah baby _bolo_," he said inhis slow drawl one afternoon when he had borrowed the exquisite littledagger to show me how the Jolo _juramentado_ executed his favouritebelly-ripping stroke; "an' I reckon they'll comprise 'bout the sum totalof huh mo'nin' at mah fun'ral." That, and "I guess Rona knows no mo''bout mah past reco'd than I do 'bout huhs," was all I recollect hisever having said on the subject. He was content to let it rest at that.

  It was old Jackson who told me that he had seen the girl atPonape, where she had been brought by an "owl-eyed" (referring tohorn-spectacles rather than to the almond orbs themselves, I took it)"chink" when he came back to the Carolines after buying bird-of-paradiseskins down New Guinea-way. She was dressed "Java-style" at the time, andwas said to have been picked up at Ternate or Ambon in the Moluccas.Although the wily old Celestial kept the girl practically under lock andkey from the first, customers of his shop occasionally glimpsed her, andshe them, it would seem. Among these was the Yankee skipper of thetrading schooner, _Flying Scud_. The coming together of those two musthave been like the touching off of a _ku-kui_-nut torch, Jackson opined,adding that he supposed I "twigged that thar was no snuffin' uv_ku-kui_, onst aflar."

  Just how the sequel eventuated no one in Ponape save the old Chinamanknew, and he never told. With only half her copra discharged, the _Scud_was heard getting under way at midnight, shortly after which thesilhouette of her, close-reefed, was observed to blot out the moon threeor four times as she beat out of that "hell's craw" of a passage in theteeth of a rising sou'wester. The girl was never seen in the Carolinesagain. Neither was Bell nor the _Scud_, for that matter, as it was but afew days later that he attempted his disastrous short-cut acrossTuka-tuva Reef.

  The next morning the Chinaman waited on his customers with his neckheavily, obscuringly swathed in bandages. He kept these on for afortnight or more, and when they were finally dispensed with replacedhis loose shirt with a close-buttoned jacket having an unusuallyhigh-cut neck. Even the latter, however, could not entirely conceal anumber of parallel red cicatrices which, beginning on his fat jowls, randown, slightly converging, onto his puffy yellow throat. Jackson feltsure that the point where those red furrows came to a focus must havebeen "fairish messed up."

  On the beach of Ponape opinion was fairly divided as to whether the big,close-mouthed Yank had "strong-armed" the Chinaman and carried off thegirl bodily, perhaps against her will, or whether she had made theget-away unaided, going off to the _Scud_ on her own. In Jackson's mindthere were no doubts.

  "I see them welts wi' my own peepers," he said, "an' they wan't themarks uv a man. They wuz _scratches_. That lanky Yank don't scratch ...'e _wallops_. But that gal--s'y, did y'u ever tyke a squint at 'ertaloons? Them's the ans'er. She kum to 'im; an' she's stickin' likaoktypus."

  Again I must credit old "Jack" with handing me pretty near to the"stryght dope."

  Yes, I had indeed noticed Rona's wonderful fingernails; likewise theastonishing amount of care she lavished on them. One could not havehelped noticing them. A quarter to half an inch long, meticulouslymanicured, and stained a maroon-brown (rather darker than the rich _sangdu boeuf_ of _henna_), she was always polishing them--those of one handon the palm of the other--even when "sitting Buddha" with dreaminghalf-closed eyes. I inferred the habit of letting them grow was acquiredin the course of her association with the Chinese. She cut them justshort of where they would begin to curl and be a nuisance. A fraction ofan inch longer, and they would have been
as useless as the tusks of anold boar that had curved back more than a half circle. As they were....

  One man's guess was as good as another's in the matter of Rona's racialorigin. Kai, though agreeing that she came from "somewhere Java-side,"always spoke of her as a Kanaka, just as they did of all the rest of the"beach" women who were not palpably Jap, Chinese or white. I doubt verymuch, however, that she had a drop of real Polynesian blood in herveins. Flaring with temperament though she was, there was still nothingabout her of the happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care sensuousness of theCaroline or Samoan, the only women of the Islands to whom she bore eventhe faintest resemblance in face or figure. If she had come fromMarquesas-way--but no, not even an admixture of old Spanish pirate bloodwould have accounted for either the spirit or the body of Rona.

  The girl's practice of wearing her _sulu_ (Kai used the Fijian name forthe inevitable South Sea waist-cloth which the Samoans call _lava-lava_and the Tahitians _pareo_) Malay-fashion--looped over the breasts andsecured by a hitch under the left arm--indicated that her outdoor lifeat least had been spent somewhere in the Insulinde Archipelago. Her veryconsiderable English vocabulary, however, and especially her fluency in"pidgin," could hardly have been acquired save through some years ofresidence in the Straits Settlements or the Federated Malay States. Iwas inclined to favour Singapore, especially as she had once let slipsomething about a fling at _fan-tan_ at Johore. But even had she beenborn in that amazing island melting pot, her unmistakably Hindu cast offeatures and mould of figure were hardly accounted for. The MadrassiTamils of the Straits were coolies, and Rona radiated _caste_ from herslender pink-tipped toes to her crown of indigo-black hair coils.

  In my own mind I harboured the theory that the girl was a "by-product"of the harem of one of the innumerable petty Sultanates of Malaysia,among which I knew were to be found girls of all the tribes and races ofthe Moslem world. In no other way could I account for the flaming spiritand the physical perfection of her. Not even descent from that strangeHindu remnant of the lovely island of Lombok, just east of Java (atheory which I had also turned over in my mind), quite satisfied on boththese scores. As to what sort of a centrifugal impulse might haveoperated to spin her forth to the clutches of the currents of theoutside world, I had not speculated very deeply. But--well, I knewsomething of the strange currencies in which Malaysian potentates paidtheir debts to Singapore rug and jewel merchants!

  In spite of the increasing warmth of Bell's friendship for me, my way toRona's confidence proved far from easy sledding. This was partly becauseI had got in bad at the outset by starting to sketch that capriciouslady at her reef-side bath in the face of her very outspoken disapprovalof anything so unseemly, and partly because she was slow in making upher mind that I did not necessarily classify with the predatory malesagainst whom her whole life had unquestionably been an unrelieveddefence. Obsessed by the desire to paint her, I had not improved mystanding with the girl by asking Bell (after she had refused mepointblank) to intercede to get her to sit for me. Indeed, that _fauxpas_ on my part seemed to have put an end for good to any chance I mighthave had of getting her to pose. Rona was openly indignant that I shouldhave presumed to regard her own decision as other than final in thematter, while Bell, though perfectly good-natured about it, was no lessdecided in his disapproval.

  "No, sah, I'm not fo' it in the least, ol' man," he drawled decisively."Lil' Rona's 'bout the neahest thing to a true, lovin' an' lawful wife Ievah had, awh evah will have, fo' that mattah. So you must see that itdoan quite jibe with mah sense o' what is right an' propah unda theci'cumstances fo' me to aid an' abet a proceduah that might culminate inhuh appeahin' on the wall o' somun's bathroom as a spo'tin nymph awh awallowin' mumaid. Nothin' doin', ol' man; not with mah blessin'."

  That ended it, of course. From then on I had to content myself with thehopeless "sketches from memory," in not the best of which was I able tocatch more than a suggestion of what I sought. I could not have failedmore utterly had I set myself to do a "character portrait" of the "GreenLady" herself.

  But on the personal side it was not long before I began to make anappreciable gain of ground with Rona. First she ceased avoiding me whenI dropped in for a mid-afternoon yarn with Bell; then she began toassume a sort of "benevolent tolerance" by coming and sitting on the matas we talked; finally she started taking an active interest in theconversation, coming out of her Buddha-like trances every now and thento cut in with some trenchant comment in fluent _beche-de-mer_ jargon,or perhaps a shrewd question phrased in carefully chosen and enunciatedEnglish.

  At last, one memorable afternoon, she came (quite on her own initiative,he assured me) with Bell to call at the little thatch-roofed,woven-walled hut I was calling home at the time, wearing in honour ofthe occasion her most treasured possession, the "peacock" shawl. It wasthis astonishingly fine piece of Cantonese embroidery which Bell hadmentioned as having made up, with the little Malay _kris_, the sum totalof the dower Rona had brought him. It was the first time I had had achance to examine it at close quarters and I saw at a glance that,however it had come into her possession, it had once been a pricelessthing, a real work of art, a treasure fit for the _trousseau_ of aprincess.

  The body of the shawl was amber-coloured silk of so close a weave thatit would have shed water as it stopped light. A rubber blanket would nothave thrown a blacker shadow when held against the sun. Yet so sheer andfine was the fabric that a twist of it streamed from one hand to theother as brandy pours out of a flask. The peacock itself, done in athousand tints and shades of delicate floss, was all of life-size inbody and something more than that in tail. Stitching and matching,stitching and matching--you could almost _see_ the artist growing oldbefore your eyes as you thought of the years he must have bent above hisglacially-growing masterpiece.

  With this rainbow-bright rectangle of shimmering silks worn folded overthe shoulders in the ordinary way the peacock must have beenconsiderably telescoped and distorted. It was doubtless for this reasonthat Rona always wore it Malay-fashion, as the Javanese women wear their_sarongs_. This displayed the jewel-gay bird in all his pride, thebright breast swelling over Rona's own and the coruscant cascade of tail(you could almost hear the rustle of it) falling about her limbs likethe feather mantle of an early Hawaiian queen.

  I have said that this shawl _had been_ a priceless thing. As a matter offact it still was such. So lovingly had it been cared for, not only byRona but by the many owners it may well have had before her (for Cantonhad done no such work as this for half a century at least), that not acorner was frayed, not a one of its countless thousands of stitchesstarted. In texture it was scarcely less perfect than the day it wasfinished. The only thing wrong with it was that the colours were a gooddeal dulled, not by age (for the old Cantonese dyes are as deathless ofhue as ancient Phoenician glass), but by grease. This had happened, Isuspected, largely during Rona's stewardship, for the _tiare_-scentedcoco oil she used so freely as a hair-perfume often found its way to herarms and shoulders--and so to the shawl. All the latter needed torestore it to its pristine freshness and refulgency was a good"dry-cleaning."

  "Even Rona does not dream of the brilliance of colour under thatgrease," I said to myself. "Oh, for a can of naphtha!" Then the factthat my benzine would do the same trick flashed into my mind. I was allbut out of it, I reflected, with replenishment uncertain; but I could atleast contrive to spare enough to make a start with. Pouring a teacupfulof the pungent solvent out of the scant pint I found still on hand, Isaturated a clean rag with it and, without a word of explanation to thegirl, walked up to her and started washing the bird's face and hackle.For an instant she stiffened angrily, evidently under the impressionthat my solicitude for the embroidery was only a thinly veiled excusefor chucking her under the chin. (Indeed, she confessed to me laterthat "gentlemen" could always be counted on to employ such indirectmethods of approach, and that she found them rather more difficult tocombat than the straight cave-man stuff of the less sophisticatedbeach-comber). But as the first glad f
lash of brightening colour caughtthe corner of a suspiciously-lowered eye, the innocence--even thelaudability--of my purpose shot home to her quick mind. With a twirl ofthumbs and a twist of shoulders, she came out of the shawl as a goldenmoth spurns its cocoon, and, leaving it in my hand, darted over to a pegand purloined an old smoking-jacket to take its place.

  "Bath heem good, Whitnee," she chirruped, giving her slipping _sulu_ ahitch with one hand as she thrust the other into an arm of the jacket."Makee heem first-chop clean. He too much dirtee long time."

  That she lapsed thus into "pidgin" was a sure sign of the girl'secstatic excitement. Usually her English--especially when she had timeto ponder and polish it in advance, as when she put questions--was muchbetter than that.

  Sopping gently to avoid pulling the delicate stitches, I managed to"bath heem good" from his saucy crest, down over the royal purplehackle, and well out upon his comparatively sober-coloured breast beforemy benzine came to an end. A slightly more vigorous dabbing beyond theembroidery line "alchemized" a patch of clouded amber to a halo oflucent gold, against which the bird's haughtily-held head stood out likethe profile of a martyred saint on an old stained-glass window. Thus farwould the precious contents of that teacup go, and no farther.

  Rona was in raptures. What though there was a blotchy high- (or ratherlow-) water mark where the dabbing had ceased near the base of theerupting splash of tail-feathers, what though the magic liquid had comeoff second best in its bout with an indurated gob of egg-yolk droolingacross one wing, what though the worst of our Augean labours--thecleansing of the mighty green tail--had yet to be tackled--just look atthe glory already wrought!

  Crooning with pleasure, the girl stroked and petted the renovatediridescence of the lordly neck--until I called her attention to the factthat the still unevaporated benzine was dissolving her finger-nailstain. It was an ill-advised remark on my part, for it turned herattention to the still unreclaimed tail and set her begging for "justnuff fo' one-piecee featha, Whitnee; he need it vehry ba-ad."

  She had her way, of course, and would have finished my benzine then andthere had not Bell come to my rescue. Laughing and muttering somethingabout "thustiness" (not drinking whisky myself, I had none in stock), hetook Rona by the arm and started off on the homeward path. Strutting andpreening she went, the very reincarnation of the royal bird upon herbosom, the very living, breathing spirit of "peacock-iness."

  She might just as well have finished the job--or rather the benzine--atonce, though, for she got it all in the end. Every day or two--sometimeswith Bell, sometimes alone--she began paying calls. Always she was ingala dress and always, after more or less "finessive" preliminaries, shemade the same plea.

  "Just one mo' featha, Whitnee," she would coo ingratiatingly, putting along-nailed finger-tip on the "eye" of the particular quill next in linefor renovation. "Ple-ese, Whitnee.... 'Peakie' has been one veh-ry goodfella bird too-dayee. Pu-retty ple'ese, Whitnee."

  Of course that always got me, and incidentally the benzine--as long asit lasted. I had remarked to Bell once or twice how his soft Southerndrawl was beginning to creep into Rona's English, and how fetching acombination it made with her "pidgin-_beche-de-mer_" blend. Getting windof this, the sly minx played the card to the limit. That "one mo' fetha,Whitnee," had me fated, and she knew it. I was completely out of benzinefor three weeks, and at a time when I was in especial need of it inconnection with my experiments in colour-mixing; but Rona's friendshipwas cheap at the price. When I finally got hold of a five-gallon can ofnaphtha from Suva (sent up to Bougainville by Burns, Phillip packet,where one of Jackson's cutters picked it up), the dry-cleaning the twoof us gave old "Peakie" was the best fun I'd had since I used to scrubmy Newfoundland pup as a kid.