THE PEARL-FISHER
About four in the morning as the
captain and Herrick sat together on the rail there
arose from the midst of the night in front of them
the voice of breakers. Each sprang to his feet
and stared and listened. The sound was continuous
like the passing of a train; no rise or fall could
be distinguished; minute by minute the ocean heaved
with an equal potency against the invisible isle;
and as time passed and Herrick waited in vain for
any vicissitude in the volume of that roaring a sense
of the eternal weighed upon his mind. To the expert
eye the isle itself was to be inferred from a certain
string of blots along the starry heaven. And
the schooner was laid to and anxiously observed till
daylight.
There was little or no morning bank.
A brightening came in the east; then a wash of some
ineffable, faint, nameless hue between crimson and
silver; and then coals of fire. These glimmered
a while on the sea-line, and seemed to brighten and
darken and spread out, and still the night and the
stars reigned undisturbed; it was as though a spark
should catch and glow and creep along the foot of
some heavy and almost incombustible wall-hanging,
and the room itself be scarce menaced. Yet a little
after, and the whole east glowed with gold and scarlet,
and the hollow of heaven was filled with the daylight.
The isle the undiscovered,
the scarce-believed in now lay before them
and close aboard; and Herrick thought that never in
his dreams had he beheld anything more strange and
delicate. The beach was excellently white, the
continuous barrier of trees inimitably green; the land
perhaps ten feet high, the trees thirty more.
Every here and there, as the schooner coasted northward,
the wood was intermitted; and he could see clear over
the inconsiderable strip of land (as a man looks over
a wall) to the lagoon within and clear
over that again to where the far side of the atoll
prolonged its pencilling of trees against the morning
sky. He tortured himself to find analogies.
The isle was like the rim of a great vessel sunken
in the waters; it was like the embankment of an annular
railway grown upon with wood: so slender it seemed
amidst the outrageous breakers, so frail and pretty,
he would scarce have wondered to see it sink and disappear
without a sound, and the waves close smoothly over
its descent.
Meanwhile the captain was in the four
cross-trees, glass in hand, his eyes in every quarter,
spying for an entrance, spying for signs of tenancy.
But the isle continued to unfold itself in joints,
and to run out in indeterminate capes, and still there
was neither house nor man, nor the smoke of fire.
Here a multitude of sea-birds soared and twinkled,
and fished in the blue waters; and there, and for miles
together, the fringe of coco-palm and pandanus
extended desolate, and made desirable green bowers
for nobody to visit, and the silence of death was
only broken by the throbbing of the sea.
The airs were very light, their speed
was small; the heat intense. The decks were scorching
underfoot, the sun flamed overhead, brazen, out of
a brazen sky; the pitch bubbled in the seams, and the
brains in the brain-pan. And all the while the
excitement of the three adventurers glowed about their
bones like a fever. They whispered, and nodded,
and pointed, and put mouth to ear, with a singular
instinct of secrecy, approaching that island underhand
like eavesdroppers and thieves; and even Davis from
the cross-trees gave his orders mostly by gestures.
The hands shared in this mute strain, like dogs, without
comprehending it; and through the roar of so many
miles of breakers, it was a silent ship that approached
an empty island.
At last they drew near to the break
in that interminable gangway. A spur of coral
sand stood forth on the one hand; on the other a high
and thick tuft of trees cut off the view; between
was the mouth of the huge laver. Twice a day
the ocean crowded in that narrow entrance and was heaped
between these frail walls; twice a day, with the return
of the ebb, the mighty surplusage of water must struggle
to escape. The hour in which the Farallone
came there was the hour of the flood. The sea
turned (as with the instinct of the homing pigeon)
for the vast receptacle, swept eddying through the
gates, was transmuted, as it did so, into a wonder
of watery and silken hues, and brimmed into the inland
sea beyond. The schooner looked up close-hauled,
and was caught and carried away by the influx like
a toy. She skimmed; she flew; a momentary shadow
touched her decks from the shoreside trees; the bottom
of the channel showed up for a moment and was in a
moment gone; the next, she floated on the bosom of
the lagoon, and below, in the transparent chamber of
waters, a myriad of many-coloured fishes were sporting,
a myriad pale flowers of coral diversified the floor.
Herrick stood transported. In
the gratified lust of his eye he forgot the past and
the present; forgot that he was menaced by a prison
on the one hand and starvation on the other; forgot
that he was come to that island, desperately foraging,
clutching at expedients. A drove of fishes, painted
like the rainbow and billed like parrots, hovered up
in the shadow of the schooner, and passed clear of
it, and glinted in the submarine sun. They were
beautiful, like birds, and their silent passage impressed
him like a strain of song.
Meanwhile, to the eye of Davis in
the cross-trees, the lagoon continued to expand its
empty waters, and the long succession of the shoreside
trees to be paid out like fishing-line off a reel.
And still there was no mark of habitation. The
schooner, immediately on entering, had been kept away
to the nor’ard where the water seemed to be the
most deep; and she was now skimming past the tall
grove of trees, which stood on that side of the channel
and denied further view. Of the whole of the low
shores of the island only this bight remained to be
revealed. And suddenly the curtain was raised;
they began to open out a haven, snugly elbowed there,
and beheld, with an astonishment beyond words, the
roofs of men.
The appearance, thus “instantaneously
disclosed” to those on the deck of the Farallone,
was not that of a city, rather of a substantial country
farm with its attendant hamlet: a long line of
sheds and store-houses; apart, upon the one side,
a deep-verandah’d dwelling-house; on the other,
perhaps a dozen native huts; a building with a belfry
and some rude offer at architectural features that
might be thought to mark it out for a chapel; on the
beach in front some heavy boats drawn up, and a pile
of timber running forth into the burning shallows of
the lagoon. From a flagstaff at the pierhead
the red ensign of England was displayed. Behind,
about, and over, the same tall grove of palms, which
had masked the settlement in the beginning, prolonged
its roof of tumultuous green fans, and turned and
ruffled overhead, and sang its silver song all day
in the wind. The place had the indescribable but
unmistakable appearance of being in commission; yet
there breathed from it a sense of desertion that was
almost poignant, no human figure was to be observed
going to and fro about the houses, and there was no
sound of human industry or enjoyment. Only, on
the top of the beach, and hard by the flagstaff, a
woman of exorbitant stature and as white as snow was
to be seen beckoning with uplifted arm. The second
glance identified her as a piece of naval sculpture,
the flgure-head of a ship that had long hovered and
plunged into so many running billows, and was now brought
ashore to be the ensign and presiding genius of that
empty town.
The Farallone made a soldier’s
breeze of it; the wind, besides, was stronger inside
than without under the lee of the land; and the stolen
schooner opened out successive objects with the swiftness
of a panorama, so that the adventurers stood speechless.
The flag spoke for itself; it was no frayed and weathered
trophy that had beaten itself to pieces on the post,
flying over desolation; and to make assurance stronger,
there was to be descried in the deep shade of the
verandah a glitter of crystal and the fluttering of
white napery. If the figure-head at the pier-end,
with its perpetual gesture and its leprous whiteness,
reigned alone in that hamlet as it seemed to do, it
would not have reigned long. Men’s hands
had been busy, men’s feet stirring there, within
the circuit of the clock. The Farallones
were sure of it; their eyes dug in the deep shadow
of the palms for some one hiding; if intensity of looking
might have prevailed, they would have pierced the walls
of houses; and there came to them, in these pregnant
seconds, a sense of being watched and played with,
and of a blow impending, that was hardly bearable.
The extreme point of palms they had
just passed enclosed a creek, which was thus hidden
up to the last moment from the eyes of those on board;
and from this a boat put suddenly and briskly out,
and a voice hailed.
“Schooner ahoy!” it cried.
“Stand in for the pier! In two cables’
lengths you’ll have twenty fathoms water and
good holding-ground.”
The boat was manned with a couple
of brown oarsmen in scanty kilts of blue. The
speaker, who was steering, wore white clothes, the
full dress of the tropics; a wide hat shaded his face;
but it could be seen that he was of stalwart size,
and his voice sounded like a gentleman’s.
So much could be made out. It was plain, besides,
that the Farallone had been descried some time
before at sea, and the inhabitants were prepared for
its reception.
Mechanically the orders were obeyed,
and the ship berthed; and the three adventurers gathered
aft beside the house and waited, with galloping pulses
and a perfect vacancy of mind, the coming of the stranger
who might mean so much to them. They had no plan,
no story prepared; there was no time to make one;
they were caught red-handed and must stand their chance.
Yet this anxiety was chequered with hope. The
island being undeclared, it was not possible the man
could hold any office or be in a position to demand
their papers. And beyond that, if there was any
truth in Findlay, as it now seemed there should be,
he was the representative of the “private reasons,”
he must see their coming with a profound disappointment;
and perhaps (hope whispered) he would be willing and
able to purchase their silence.
The boat was by that time forging
alongside, and they were able at last to see what
manner of man they had to do with. He was a huge
fellow, six feet four in height, and of a build proportionately
strong, but his sinews seemed to be dissolved in a
listlessness that was more than languor. It was
only the eye that corrected this impression; an eye
of an unusual mingled brilliancy and softness, sombre
as coal and with lights that outshone the topaz; an
eye of unimpaired health and virility; an eye that
bid you beware of the man’s devastating anger.
A complexion, naturally dark, had been tanned in the
island to a hue hardly distinguishable from that of
a Tahitian; only his manners and movements, and the
living force that dwelt in him, like fire in flint,
betrayed the European. He was dressed in white
drill, exquisitely made; his scarf and tie were of
tender-coloured silks; on the thwart beside him there
leaned a Winchester rifle.
“Is the doctor on board?”
he cried as he came up. “Dr. Symonds, I
mean? You never heard of him? Nor yet of
the Trinity Hall? Ah!”
He did not look surprised, seemed
rather to affect it in politeness; but his eye rested
on each of the three white men in succession with a
sudden weight of curiosity that was almost savage.
“Ah, then!” said he, “there
is some small mistake, no doubt, and I must ask you
to what I am indebted for this pleasure?”
He was by this time on the deck, but
he had the art to be quite unapproachable; the friendliest
vulgarian, three parts drunk, would have known better
than take liberties; and not one of the adventurers
so much as offered to shake hands.
“Well,” said Davis, “I
suppose you may call it an accident. We had heard
of your island, and read that thing in the Directory
about the private reasons, you see; so when
we saw the lagoon reflected in the sky, we put her
head for it at once, and so here we are.”
“’Ope we don’t intrude!” said
Huish.
The stranger looked at Huish with
an air of faint surprise, and looked pointedly away
again. It was hard to be more offensive in dumb
show.
“It may suit me, your coming
here,” he said. “My own schooner is
overdue, and I may put something in your way in the
meantime. Are you open to a charter?”
“Well, I guess so,” said Davis; “it
depends.”
“My name is Attwater,”
continued the stranger. “You, I presume,
are the captain?”
“Yes, sir. I am the captain
of this ship: Captain Brown,” was the reply.
“Well, see ’ere!”
said Huish; “better begin fair! ’E’s
skipper on deck right enough, but not below.
Below, we’re all equal, all got a lay in the
adventure; when it comes to business I’m as good
as ’e; and what I say is, let’s go into
the ’ouse and have a lush, and talk it over among
pals. We’ve some prime fizz,” he said,
and winked.
The presence of the gentleman lighted
up like a candle the vulgarity of the clerk; and Herrick
instinctively, as one shields himself from pain, made
haste to interrupt.
“My name is Hay,” said
he, “since introductions are going. We shall
be very glad if you will step inside.”
Attwater leaned to him swiftly.
“University man?” said he.
“Yes, Merton,” said Herrick,
and the next moment blushed scarlet at his indiscretion.
“I am of the other lot,”
said Attwater: “Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
I called my schooner after the old shop. Well!
this is a queer place and company for us to meet in,
Mr. Hay,” he pursued, with easy incivility to
the others. “But do you bear out ...
I beg this gentleman’s pardon, I really did
not catch his name.”
“My name is ’Uish, sir,”
returned the clerk, and blushed in turn.
“Ah!” said Attwater.
And then turning again to Herrick, “Do you bear
out Mr. Whish’s description of your vintage?
or was it only the unaffected poetry of his own nature
bubbling up?”
Herrick was embarrassed; the silken
brutality of their visitor made him blush; that he
should be accepted as an equal, and the others thus
pointedly ignored, pleased him in spite of himself,
and then ran through his veins in a recoil of anger.
“I don’t know,”
he said. “It’s only California; it’s
good enough, I believe.”
Attwater seemed to make up his mind.
“Well, then, I’ll tell you what:
you three gentlemen come ashore this evening and bring
a basket of wine with you; I’ll try and find
the food,” he said. “And by the by,
here is a question I should have asked you when I
came on board: have you had small-pox?”
“Personally, no,” said
Herrick. “But the schooner had it.”
“Deaths?” from Attwater.
“Two,” said Herrick.
“Well, it is a dreadful sickness,” said
Attwater.
“’Ad you any deaths?” asked Huish,
“’ere on the island?”
“Twenty-nine,” said Attwater.
“Twenty-nine deaths and thirty-one cases, out
of thirty-three souls upon the island. That’s
a strange way to calculate, Mr. Hay, is it not?
Souls! I never say it but it startles me.”
“O, so that’s why everything’s deserted?”
said Huish.
“That is why, Mr. Whish,”
said Attwater; “that is why the house is empty
and the graveyard full.”
“Twenty-nine out of thirty-three!”
exclaimed Herrick. “Why, when it came to
burying or did you bother burying?”
“Scarcely,” said Attwater;
“or there was one day at least when we gave
up. There were five of the dead that morning,
and thirteen of the dying, and no one able to go about
except the sexton and myself. We held a council
of war, took the ... empty bottles ... into the lagoon,
and ... buried them.” He looked over his
shoulder, back at the bright water. “Well,
so you’ll come to dinner, then? Shall we
say half-past six? So good of you!”
His voice, in uttering these conventional
phrases, fell at once into the false measure of society;
and Herrick unconsciously followed the example.
“I am sure we shall be very
glad,” he said. “At half-past six?
Thank you so very much.”
“’For my voice has been tuned
to the note of the gun
That startles the deep when
the combat’s begun,’”
quoted Attwater, with a smile, which
instantly gave way to an air of funereal solemnity.
“I shall particularly expect Mr. Whish,”
he continued. “Mr. Whish, I trust
you understand the invitation?”
“I believe you, my boy!” replied the genial
Huish.
“That is right, then; and quite
understood, is it not?” said Attwater.
“Mr. Whish and Captain Brown at six-thirty without
fault and you, Hay, at four sharp.”
And he called his boat.
During all this talk a load of thought
or anxiety had weighed upon the captain. There
was no part for which nature had so liberally endowed
him as that of the genial ship-captain. But to-day
he was silent and abstracted. Those who knew
him could see that he hearkened close to every syllable,
and seemed to ponder and try it in balances. It
would have been hard to say what look there was, cold,
attentive, and sinister, as of a man maturing plans,
which still brooded over the unconscious guest; it
was here, it was there, it was nowhere; it was now
so little that Herrick chid himself for an idle fancy;
and anon it was so gross and palpable that you could
say every hair on the man’s head talked mischief.
He woke up now, as with a start.
“You were talking of a charter,” said
he.
“Was I?” said Attwater.
“Well, let’s talk of it no more at present.”
“Your own schooner is overdue,
I understand?” continued the captain.
“You understand perfectly, Captain
Brown,” said Attwater; “thirty-three days
overdue at noon to-day.”
“She comes and goes, eh? plies
between here and ...?” hinted the captain.
“Exactly; every four months;
three trips in the year,” said Attwater.
“You go in her ever?” asked Davis.
“No; one stops here,” said Attwater; “one
has plenty to attend to.”
“Stop here, do you?” cried Davis.
“Say, how long?”
“How long, O Lord,” said
Attwater, with perfect, stern gravity. “But
it does not seem so,” he added, with a smile.
“No, I daresay not,” said
Davis. “No, I suppose not. Not with
all your gods about you, and in as snug a berth as
this. For it is a pretty snug berth,” said
he, with a sweeping look.
“The spot, as you are good enough
to indicate, is not entirely intolerable,” was
the reply.
“Shell, I suppose?” said Davis.
“Yes, there was shell,” said Attwater.
“This is a considerable big
beast of a lagoon, sir,” said the captain.
“Was there a was the fishing would
you call the fishing anyways good?”
“I don’t know that I would
call it anyways anything,” said Attwater, “if
you put it to me direct.”
“There were pearls, too?” said Davis.
“Pearls too,” said Attwater.
“Well, I give out!” laughed
Davis, and his laughter rang cracked like a false
piece. “If you’re not going to tell,
you’re not going to tell, and there’s
an end to it.”
“There can be no reason why
I should affect the least degree of secrecy about
my island,” returned Attwater; “that came
wholly to an end with your arrival; and I am sure,
at any rate, that gentlemen like you and Mr. Whish
I should have always been charmed to make perfectly
at home. The point on which we are now differing if
you can call it a difference is one of
times and seasons. I have some information which
you think I might impart, and I think not. Well,
we’ll see to-night! By-by, Whish!”
He stepped into his boat and shoved off. “All
understood, then?” said he. “The
captain and Mr. Whish at six-thirty, and you, Hay,
at four precise. You understand that, Hay?
Mind, I take no denial. If you’re not there
by the time named, there will be no banquet; no song,
no supper, Mr. Whish!”
White birds whisked in the air above,
a shoal of parti-coloured fishes in the scarce denser
medium below; between, like Mahomet’s coffin,
the boat drew away briskly on the surface, and its
shadow followed it over the glittering floor of the
lagoon. Attwater looked steadily back over his
shoulders as he sat; he did not once remove his eyes
from the Farallone and the group on her quarter-deck
beside the house, till his boat ground upon the pier.
Thence, with an agile pace, he hurried ashore, and
they saw his white clothes shining in the chequered
dusk of the grove until the house received him.
The captain, with a gesture and a
speaking countenance, called the adventurers into
the cabin.
“Well,” he said to Herrick,
when they were seated, “there’s one good
job at least. He’s taken to you in earnest.”
“Why should that be a good job?” said
Herrick.
“O, you’ll see how it
pans out presently,” returned Davis. “You
go ashore and stand in with him, that’s all!
You’ll get lots of pointers; you can find out
what he has, and what the charter is, and who’s
the fourth man for there’s four of
them, and we’re only three.”
“And suppose I do, what next?”
cried Herrick. “Answer me that!”
“So I will, Robert Herrick,”
said the captain. “But first, let’s
see all clear. I guess you know,” he said,
with imperious solemnity, “I guess you know
the bottom is out of this Farallone speculation?
I guess you know it’s right out? and
if this old island hadn’t been turned up right
when it did, I guess you know where you and I and Huish
would have been?”
“Yes, I know that,” said
Herrick. “No matter who’s to blame,
I know it. And what next?”
“No matter who’s to blame,
you know it, right enough,” said the captain,
“and I’m obliged to you for the reminder.
Now, here’s this Attwater: what do you
think of him?”
“I do not know,” said
Herrick. “I am attracted and repelled.
He was insufferably rude to you.”
“And you, Huish?” said the captain.
Huish sat cleaning a favourite briar-root;
he scarce looked up from that engrossing task.
“Don’t ast me what I think of him!”
he said. “There’s a day comin’,
I pray Gawd, when I can tell it him myself.”
“Huish means the same as what
I do,” said Davis. “When that man
came stepping around, and saying, ’Look here,
I’m Attwater’ and you knew it
was so, by God! I sized him right straight
up. He’s the real article, I said, and
I don’t like it; here’s the real, first-rate,
copper-bottomed aristocrat. ‘Aw! don’t
know ye, do I? God damn ye, did God make ye?’
No, that couldn’t be nothing but genuine; a man’s
got to be born to that; and notice! smart as champagne
and hard as nails; no kind of a fool; no, sir!
not a pound of him! Well, what’s he here
upon this beastly island for? I said. He’s
not here collecting eggs. He’s a palace
at home, and powdered flunkeys; and if he don’t
stay there, you bet he knows the reason why!
Follow?”
“O yes, I ’ear you,” said Huish.
“He’s been doing good
business here, then,” continued the captain.
“For ten years he’s been doing a great
business. It’s pearl and shell, of course;
there couldn’t be nothing else in such a place,
and no doubt the shell goes off regularly by this
Trinity Hall, and the money for it straight
into the bank, so that’s no use to us. But
what else is there? Is there nothing else he
would be likely to keep here? Is there nothing
else he would be bound to keep here? Yes, sir;
the pearls! First, because they’re too
valuable to trust out of his hands. Second, because
pearls want a lot of handling and matching; and the
man who sells his pearls as they come in one here,
one there, instead of hanging back and holding up well,
that man’s a fool, and it’s not Attwater.”
“Likely,” said Huish,
“that’s w’at it is; not proved, but
likely.”
“It’s proved,” said Davis bluntly.
“Suppose it was?” said
Herrick. “Suppose that was all so, and he
had these pearls a ten years’ collection
of them? Suppose he had? There’s
my question.”
The captain drummed with his thick
hands on the board in front of him; he looked steadily
in Herrick’s face, and Herrick as steadily looked
upon the table and the pattering fingers; there was
a gentle oscillation of the anchored ship, and a big
patch of sunlight travelled to and fro between the
one and the other.
“Hear me!” Herrick burst out suddenly.
“No, you better hear me first,”
said Davis. “Hear me and understand me.
We’ve got no use for that fellow, whatever you
may have. He’s your kind, he’s not
ours; he’s took to you, and he’s wiped
his boots on me and Huish. Save him if you can!”
“Save him?” repeated Herrick.
“Save him, if you’re able!”
reiterated Davis, with a blow of his clenched fist.
“Go ashore, and talk him smooth; and if you get
him and his pearls aboard, I’ll spare him.
If you don’t, there’s going to be a funeral.
Is that so, Huish? does that suit you?”
“I ain’t a forgiving man,”
said Huish, “but I’m not the sort to spoil
business neither. Bring the bloke on board and
bring his pearls along with him, and you can have
it your own way; maroon him where you like, I’m
agreeable.”
“Well, and if I can’t?”
cried Herrick, while the sweat streamed upon his face.
“You talk to me as if I was God Almighty, to
do this and that! But if I can’t?”
“My son,” said the captain,
“you better do your level best, or you’ll
see sights!”
“O yes,” said Huish.
“O crikey, yes!” He looked across at Herrick
with a toothless smile that was shocking in its savagery;
and, his ear caught apparently by the trivial expression
he had used, broke into a piece of the chorus of a
comic song which he must have heard twenty years before
in London: meaningless gibberish that, in that
hour and place, seemed hateful as a blasphemy:
“Hikey, pikey, crikey, fikey, chillingawallaba
dory.”
The captain suffered him to finish;
his face was unchanged.
“The way things are, there’s
many a man that wouldn’t let you go ashore,”
he resumed. “But I’m not that kind.
I know you’d never go back on me, Herrick!
Or if you choose to, go, and do it, and
be damned!” he cried, and rose abruptly from
the table.
He walked out of the house; and as
he reached the door turned and called Huish, suddenly
and violently, like the barking of a dog. Huish
followed, and Herrick remained alone in the cabin.
“Now, see here!” whispered
Davis. “I know that man. If you open
your mouth to him again, you’ll ruin all.”