IV

       Table of Contents

      It is a long traverse from Papeete in the Societies to the Little Coral Sea—from 100 west longitude to 150 east longitude—as the crow flies the equivalent to a voyage across the Atlantic. But the Kittiwake did not go as the crow flies. David Grief’s numerous interests diverted her course many times. He stopped to take a look-in at uninhabited Rose Island with an eye to colonizing and planting cocoa-nuts. Next, he paid his respects to Tui Manua, of Eastern Samoa, and opened an intrigue for a share of the trade monopoly of that dying king’s three islands. From Apia he carried several relief agents and a load of trade goods to the Gilberts. He peeped in at Ontong-Java Atoll, inspected his plantations on Ysabel, and purchased lands from the salt-water chiefs of northwestern Malaita. And all along this devious way he made a man of Aloysius Pankburn.

      That thirster, though he lived aft, was compelled to do the work of a common sailor. And not only did he take his wheel and lookout, and heave on sheets and tackles, but the dirtiest and most arduous tasks were appointed him. Swung aloft in a bosun’s chair, he scraped the masts and slushed down. Holystoning the deck or scrubbing it with fresh limes made his back ache and developed the wasted, flabby muscles. When the Kittiwake lay at anchor and her copper bottom was scrubbed with cocoa-nut husks by the native crew, who dived and did it under water, Pankburn was sent down on his shift and as many times as any on the shift.

      “Look at yourself,” Grief said. “You are twice the man you were when you came on board. You haven’t had one drink, you didn’t die, and the poison is pretty well worked out of you. It’s the work. It beats trained nurses and business managers. Here, if you’re thirsty. Clap your lips to this.”

      With several deft strokes of his heavy-backed sheath-knife, Grief clipped a triangular piece of shell from the end of a husked drinking-cocoa-nut. The thin, cool liquid, slightly milky and effervescent, bubbled to the brim. With a bow, Pankburn took the natural cup, threw his head back, and held it back till the shell was empty. He drank many of these nuts each day. The black steward, a New Hebrides boy sixty years of age, and his assistant, a Lark Islander of eleven, saw to it that he was continually supplied.

      Pankburn did not object to the hard work. He devoured work, never shirking and always beating the native sailors in jumping to obey a command. But his sufferings during the period of driving the alcohol out of his system were truly heroic. Even when the last shred of the poison was exuded, the desire, as an obsession, remained in his head. So it was, when, on his honour, he went ashore at Apia, that he attempted to put the public houses out of business by drinking up their stocks in trade. And so it was, at two in the morning, that David Grief found him in front of the Tivoli, out of which he had been disorderly thrown by Charley Roberts. Aloysius, as of old, was chanting his sorrows to the stars. Also, and more concretely, he was punctuating the rhythm with cobbles of coral stone, which he flung with amazing accuracy through Charley Roberts’s windows.

      David Grief took him away, but not till next morning did he take him in hand. It was on the deck of the Kittiwake, and there was nothing kindergarten about it. Grief struck him, with bare knuckles, punched him and punished him—gave him the worst thrashing he had ever received.

      “For the good of your soul, Pankburn,” was the way he emphasized his blows. “For the good of your mother. For the progeny that will come after. For the good of the world, and the universe, and the whole race of man yet to be. And now, to hammer the lesson home, we’ll do it all over again. That, for the good of your soul; and that, for your mother’s sake; and that, for the little children, undreamed of and unborn, whose mother you’ll love for their sakes, and for love’s sake, in the lease of manhood that will be yours when I am done with you. Come on and take your medicine. I’m not done with you yet. I’ve only begun. There are many other reasons which I shall now proceed to expound.” The brown sailors and the black stewards and cook looked on and grinned. Far from them was the questioning of any of the mysterious and incomprehensible ways of white men. As for Carlsen, the mate, he was grimly in accord with the treatment his employer was administering; while Albright, the supercargo, merely played with his mustache and smiled. They were men of the sea. They lived life in the rough. And alcohol, in themselves as well as in other men, was a problem they had learned to handle in ways not taught in doctors’ schools.

      “Boy! A bucket of fresh water and a towel,” Grief ordered, when he had finished. “Two buckets and two towels,” he added, as he surveyed his own hands.

      “You’re a pretty one,” he said to Pankburn. “You’ve spoiled everything. I had the poison completely out of you. And now you are fairly reeking with it. We’ve got to begin all over again. Mr. Albright! You know that pile of old chain on the beach at the boat-landing. Find the owner, buy it, and fetch it on board. There must be a hundred and fifty fathoms of it. Pankburn! To-morrow morning you start in pounding the rust off of it. When you’ve done that, you’ll sandpaper it. Then you’ll paint it. And nothing else will you do till that chain is as smooth as new.”

      Aloysius Pankburn shook his head.

      “I quit. Francis Island can go to hell for all of me. I’m done with your slave-driving. Kindly put me ashore at once. I’m a white man. You can’t treat me this way.”

      “Mr. Carlsen, you will see that Mr. Pankburn remains on board.”

      “I’ll have you broken for this!” Aloysius screamed. “You can’t stop me.”

      “I can give you another licking,” Grief answered. “And let me tell you one thing, you besotted whelp, I’ll keep on licking you as long as my knuckles hold out or until you yearn to hammer chain rust. I’ve taken you in hand, and I’m going to make a man out of you if I have to kill you to do it. Now go below and change your clothes. Be ready to turn to with a hammer this afternoon. Mr. Albright, get that chain aboard pronto. Mr. Carlsen, send the boats ashore after it. Also, keep your eye on Pankburn. If he shows signs of keeling over or going into the shakes, give him a nip—a small one. He may need it after last night.”