Maehoe

Henderson laughed at that idea. He had a houseboy, one Maehoe, who had told him truthfully that Sunaku had a tabu laid upon his ever passing Cape Kini on a war-party. A tabu, you know, is a sort of ceremonial prohibition, a jinx, a talismanic warning against ever having anything to do with the thing tabued. It differs for every man; it is laid upon him by the devil-devil doctor; and it may range from a totemic prohibition against eating the flesh of his name-animal--this sort of tabu is given a new-born infant on those mornings when the devil-devil doctor is feeling low and devoid of originality--to warnings of dire disaster if he ever happens to speak to one of his maternal second cousins when the moon is new. Not very reasonable things, those tabus, but absolutely binding and frequently convenient--as in this case.

Henderson had picked out his island as a site for a copra plantation after learning about Sunaku’s tabu. It made him safe, because nobody else wanted to poach on Sunaku’s territory and Sunaku wouldn’t raid himself. Henderson was as safe as, he felt, so seeing Gleason full of terror he tried to laugh him out of it.

“The wicked flee when no man pursueth,” he would quote maliciously. “Your boys sweated blood for a good ten miles after Sunaku gave up the chase. One of them is likely to run up his toes, by the way, Gleason. I give him rum and he gets better. I stop it, and he gets worse. Dammit, I wish he’d make up his mind before he drinks all the trade-rum in stock.” To which Gleason replied unpleasantly that he did not give a hoot in hell whether the boy died or not. Gleason was still weak, though growing stronger, and Henderson didn’t see that he was crazy with envy of a man who was safe and prosperous and ought to turn out rich when his newly planted coconut trees came into bearing.

“Your nerves are bad, Gleason,” Henderson would tell him tolerantly, and add, grinning, “The wicked flee when no man pursueth. But there’s no use staying in a blue funk. Cheer up!”

He would march on his way, whistling, while Gleason ground his teeth. Henderson had a kid back in school in England, and he had it figured out that he would be a rich man just about the time a lot of money would mean a great deal to a girl. He had it all planned out how he’d spend his money and have a wonderful time buying frocks for her and so on, and taking her about the Continent.

But that hasn’t anything to do with Gleason and Maehoe and Fear.

Maehoe was the head houseboy at Henderson’s--the boy who’d found out about Sunaku’s personal and private tabu. He rather attached himself to Gleason while Gleason was getting well. His costume consisted of an immaculate, rather short white jacket and a gee-string, and he had at some time past discarded a nose-plug and several ear-ornaments in token of his ambition to become a member of the Native Constabulary of the Solomon Islands Protectorate. If Gleason had been otherwise he might have been amused by Maehoe.

A round and frizzy head of hair would appear above the flooring of the veranda. It would be followed by a not particularly high forehead, the dark-brown and invincibly sad eyes of the Malaita bushboy, and then a wide, flat, very black nose with a dangling strip of cartilage where the nose-plug had been removed on Maehoe’s adoption of civilization. There would follow, then, in quick succession a wide and beaming grin, a thick and corded neck, an absolutely immaculate white drill jacket, and lean and gnarly brown legs--astoundingly long and very naked-looking--with many scars from the scratches of thorns and underbrush. Last of all, wide, splay feet, with each and every toe prehensile, would step up on the veranda, and Maehoe would beam more widely still and say in a hushed voice:

“I fetch’m one-fella peg, Sar?”

Gleason generally took the peg. But he did not humor Maehoe by listening to a description of the glories of the Native Constabulary Force of the Solomon Islands Protectorate, delivered with a vast gusto in an amazing beche-de-mer agglomeration of supposedly English syllables. Maehoe had been refused for the constabulary for some reason he could never fathom, but hopefully anticipated a reversal of the refusal at some future time. Henderson had promised to speak in his favor, and Henderson listened to him now and again, wherefore he worshipped Henderson and served him with an honesty that in a Malaita bushboy was superhuman.

But Gleason hated him cordially, especially after a certain morning when he felt a little stronger and tried to walk about a bit. Henderson was inland, swearing at a labor gang that was clearing more land for the planting of yet more coconut trees. Gleason walked down to the beach, looked nervously at Cape Kini--he was always a little nervous about Sunaku--and went aimlessly over toward the barrack sheds, and there he suddenly heard a voice talking in English behind a bush.

Gleason moved suspiciously to where he could look. He saw Maehoe going through apparently aimless evolutions--now here, saying something, and now there, replying. It was seconds before he realized that Maehoe was practising. He was imitating his master and Gleason with great solemnity and for his own personal pleasure.

“The wicked flee when no man pursueth,” announced Maehoe solemnly, maltreating the words in a fashion no possible print could reproduce. “Your boys sweated blood for good ten miles after Sunaku gave up chase. One them likely turn up toes, Gleason--”

He went on with a vast solemnity duplicating Henderson’s speech and even his intonation with a surprising fidelity. Gleason watched suspiciously. Maehoe finished with Henderson’s lines, his face shining with pleasure, and went over to a spot from where he solemnly swore in Gleason’s own terms that he did not give a hoot in hell whether the boy died or not. And then he returned and solemnly repeated, “Your nerves bad, Gleason. The wicked flee when no man pursueth. But no use staying in blue funk. Cherrup.”

He beamed at his own exactitude and wiped the sweat off his face, happy. He considered, and set about going soberly over the whole business again.

Gleason walked away, shaking with the fretful sort of rage that a white man sometimes feels in the Solomons. It comes of too much fever, too many pegs, and too much brooding. Gleason should have laughed, instead of thinking savagely of innumerable forms of insult Maehoe’s private diversion seemed to him to constitute. Or he could have done as Henderson did when he told him about it. Henderson chuckled for half an hour and devised a speech full of incredible words and involved phrases, which he repeated after that whenever he could be sure Maehoe was listening. And Henderson tried to eavesdrop and discover Maehoe struggling with the new and to him unpronounceable words.

He did not succeed. Henderson came down with black-water fever about three days later, and in a week he was dead.

While he was ill, though, Gleason saw one other side of Maehoe that eventually led to the triangular drama of Gleason and Maehoe and Fear.

It was the plantation boys, of course. Gleason should have taken them in hand when Henderson went flat on his back, and kept the vice sweated out of them. Idleness is not good for anybody, and especially for recruited laborers on a Solomon Island plantation. These boys were bushboys, from salt water villages, and two days of idleness gave them time to remember much devilment and speculate hopefully on more.

Two days after Henderson developed black-water fever, Gleason’s four paddlers came shivering to the house and begged to be allowed to stay there. They were To Ba’ita boys, and the labor gangs were south Malaita men.

“’M fella boy talk too damn much Pau talk,” their leader explained fearfully to Gleason. “I think’m kai-kai ’m To Ba’ita boy plenty damn quick.”

Gleason chewed at his nails. The thing to do, of course, was strap on an extra revolver and go over to the barrack sheds and fill each several and separate man with an unholy fear. It could be done especially with the four paddlers to guard his back. Three of them were strong enough to fight, anyhow.

Gleason did not. He assigned sleeping quarters to his men underneath the house, and went and took a peg. During the next hour or so he took several more. And he fretfully stopped Maehoe, who was about to give Henderson quinine. Quinine is almost a specific for ordinary fevers, but it is rank poison in black-water.

Next day--three days after Henderson went down--there was a tumult down at the store-shed. A houseboy fired off a rifle and fled. A knot of scared figures plunged for the bush and vanished. They’d tried to loot the store.