Part 13 (1/2)

”I'm going to maintain it, Jessamine, maintain it.”

”I say, I got the authority of the States of Missouri and California.”

”I asks you, what authority they've got here? First place, you want extradition papers. You can't have 'em. I won't give 'em to you. Trouble with you, Jessamine, is you're narrow. You're small, there ain't any vastness about you, Jessamine.”

”J. R.,” says Jessamine, remonstrating, ”this isn't right, and you know it.”

”You don't expand, Jessamine,” says Craney. ”You don't permeate. You ain't got on to large ideas.”

Craney here distributed cigars, lit a fat one himself, pushed back from the table, crossed his legs, stuck a thumb in the arm-hole of his plush vest, and went on unfolding his mind.

”It ain't the king's pleasure to leave this island, nor it ain't the ways of monarchs, as I take it, to apologise. But putting aside all that, and supposing you was expanded enough to take that in, I'm going on to state the way it appears. You says, 'J.R., how'd you come to take the cash of parties that trusted you?' I answers, 'It comes from being romantic.' You ain't romantic, Jessamine? That's too bad. You don't see it. You don't expand to my circ.u.mference. You don't permeate my orbit.

You don't get on to me. It was this way. I got up and looked out on the world. I says: 'J. R., it's clear you haven't enough cash for your ambitions. But you've got a opportunity. Throw it in. Be bold. If your conscience squirms, let it squirm. If it wriggles, let it wriggle.

Take the risk. Expand to large ideas.' I took it. Say, I made parties unwilling investors in me. Now, then, there they are, as delegated in you. Here's me, Julius R., monarch by purchase and election of the sovereign state of Lua. You asks, 'What next?' I says: 'This. I'll pay.

I'll settle the claims with interest on investment' But I've got to have time. Pay with what? Now there's the point. I've been investigating the produce of this island, the pearl-fis.h.i.+ng, the coral, the hardwood. The pearl-fis.h.i.+ng is good. As a business man, I tell you it can be done.”

Jessamine shook his head. ”I haven't any authority to settle the case.

I'm told to go and bring you. I've got to do it. It's a painful duty.”

The king smoked a while silently, then said something to his warriors, who got up and marched away around the corner. ”Mighty, Jessamine!” he says, ”you're slow. Most mulish man I ever saw. Well, let it go. You can't do it. Recollect, attempting the person of the king is a capital crime. That's the law of this land. It's decided and it don't change.

We'll drop it.”

So nothing more was said of the matter, and we talked agreeably. Whether Craney's account of his motives was accurate I couldn't say. It didn't seem likely he ever expected to settle, when he started, or he took all the chances that he never would. Maybe he cooked up the theory to suit things as they stood. Maybe not. I don't defend him, and I'm not clear where he lied or where he fancied. But it seemed to me if he'd made a long calculation, his luck was standing by him at that point.

When the king left us we went for a walk through the village, talking it over. Breen said they'd better take the offer, and I thought they'd have to, but Jessamine wasn't satisfied. He says:

”We haven't the authority. How do you know we wouldn't get into trouble at home? We've got to take him back. But you see, that isn't the point.

The point is, here's where we make a hit. It's professional with me.

It's reputation. It's the chance of a lifetime.”

I say: ”But where's the chance?”

”We'll see. But J. R.'s been the one white man so far. Now we're three to one. If he can usurp a crown, I don't see but what we can get up an insurrection.”

The village was a long row of huts built of bamboo and big brown leaves, and stretched up and down the valley. There was a large hut with two doors opposite us, and sitting on mats in front was a fat man with little bones stuck at angles in his grizzled hair. He wore a pink s.h.i.+rt with studs and a pair of carpet slippers, and around his neck a lot of gla.s.s pendants from a chandelier, and he looked surly and sleepy. I says:

”You can leave me out. I think you ought to take the offer. If you slip up, the king'll hang you for treason. If he's the government here, he's got a right to say what the law is. I'm going back to the s.h.i.+p. You needn't ask me for backing, for you won't get it.”

We stopped beside the fat man, and I asked him if he hadn't been one of the rival candidates, thinking it might be the old one with the chicken bones that spoke English; and he set to work swearing, so I knew it was; and I judged from the style he swore in he'd been intimate one time with seamen, and I judged; too, he felt dissatisfied. He said he was rightly chief of the island, and that man, all of whose grandfathers were low and disgusting, meaning Julius R., was living in his house, and, moreover, had given him only three pink s.h.i.+rts. Jessamine sat down by him, and said nothing, but listened, and I went and found some of the beach natives, and came back with them to the _Good Sister_.

That night pa.s.sed, and it came the morning of the next day, and I heard nothing from them. I went ash.o.r.e, but found no one about the huts there but children and a few old women. The old women jabbered at us excitedly.

I took six of the men and started inland through the hot woods, where the green and red parrots screamed overhead. When we came out to look up the valley to the open country, we saw no signs of fighting, nor any one moving about. Through the valley, as we went up it, there was no smoke from the huts, no women bruising nuts and ground roots into meal, no fat man before the hut with two doors sitting on his mats, not a soul in the village.

But coming near the palace we could see all the red flower shrubs were trampled and smashed. Then we came on a dead body by the path; then more bodies, b.l.o.o.d.y and spitted with spears; and one man, who was wounded, lifted himself, and glared, and dropped again among the red flowers.

Through the palm stems we saw the roofs of the palace, and the piazza with the bamboo pillars. The line of the bodyguard was squatted on the piazza, with their spears upright before them. Everything was still.