Cobb's Neutrality

by Ralph Stock

COBB'S NEUTRALITY.

By RALPH STOCK

THE three men reached the landing in their usual "steamer day" order—Zwarg, impressive, punctual, perspiring; Cobb, quick of step, eager, virile; Chisholm, slow-moving, amiably nonchalant.

They stood in silence for a while, shading their eyes from the glare and watching a trim white launch slip through the passage in the barrier reef.

Zwarg was the first to speak.

"I do not onderstand," he complained to the sun-bathed universe. "Dree days overdue—dree—und now a launch!"

"We shall soon know, anyway," muttered Cobb.

Chisholm yawned.

"Und I haf two ton dis trip," added the German, with a sidelong glance at Chisholm—"two ton."

He had never forgotten that on three separate and surprising occasions the Englishman had beaten him in copra shipments. But Chisholm refused to bite. For one thing, he considered it too hot to talk, and for another, he was not going to let Zwarg know of his defeat on the present occasion until absolutely necessary.

It was this attitude in Chisholm that particularly annoyed Zwarg. With an appearance of utter indifference, the Englishman sometimes made a shipment of copra that would have sent the German into a perspiration of delight. It was a pose, of course, but none the less aggravating for that. Moreover, by all the canons of South Sea commerce, which Zwarg had absorbed with Teutonic thoroughness, Chisholm should never have succeeded in getting any copra at all. His stock of trade goods was beneath contempt, and, as for the man himself, twice a week he closed his store and took the entire day off to play some absurd game of bat and ball with a neighbouring Bull and his copper-coloured team, to spear fish with the natives on the reef, or attend a kava ceremony.

To Zwarg, this behaviour was so opposed to commercial success that for a time he strongly suspected Chisholm of supplying "grog" to the natives, an unpardonable offence; but when, after painstaking research, he failed to discover either a drunken nigger or a bottle of whisky on the island, he was forced to abandon even this solution to the mystery, and attribute his rival's occasional successes to a distressing element known as Anglo-Saxon lack.

He was not to know, and there was no one to tell him, that in reality Chisholm entertained a tremendous respect for his rival's business ability, often wished that he had it himself, and fought it tooth and nail with the only weapons he possessed—the power of making friends. It was not for the sake of his health that he coached the Bull's wooden-headed team when the thermometer read a hundred in the shade, nor when he tore his boots and temper to ribbons on the reef, spearing fish. He had long since passed the new-comer's joy in such things, but they brought copra.

Apart from this healthy business rivalry, the two traders on Miatu mingled uncommonly well. This was mostly due to Cobb, an American planter. Every evening they met on his spacious verandah, and, lying in cane chairs, smoked or talked with the easy intermittance of old acquaintances. Socially, Zwarg regarded Chisholm as one of the least obnoxious Englishmen he had ever met. Chisholm considered Zwarg "quite a decent sort, for a German." Herein lay the humour, or the tragedy, of the situation; they thought they understood one another, and now the launch that chugged alongside the landing-steps bore proof of their mistake.

In it were a somewhat soiled engineer and a post-office official from Suva.

"Well, well, well?" chirped Cobb, by way of greeting, but there was no response. The usually communicative official seemed hardly to notice the three expectant white figures on the landing.

"Mail!" he snapped, and, flinging ashore a bulky sack, signed to the engineer to get under way.

"Here, what's the game?" bleated Cobb, as the launch slowly drew away from the landing, churning the indigo waters into white froth with its reversed propeller.

"Find it all in there," shouted the official, waving his hand at the mail sack, "and enough, too. Sorry, can't stop. Got to make Mago to-night. S-long!"

The three men on the landing stared at the mail sack, then at one another.

"Well, I'm darned!" muttered Cobb.

"Seems in a deuce of a hurry," commented Chisholm.

Zwarg was stricken into silence.

"All in here, eh?" resumed the American, picking up the sack. "Guess we'd better look into it."

They passed up the beach in a strange silence, and stood round a wicker table on Cobb's verandah while he sorted the mail. It was mostly newspapers, and they gave letters preference, tearing them open and devouring their contents with an avidity only possible to those cut off from the outside world for months on end.

For perhaps five minutes there was no sound on Cobb's verandah but the rending and crackling of paper. Mynah birds strutted about the men's feet unnoticed; Chisholm's mongrel Roko thrashed the floor with his absurd tail in an effort to attract his master's attention, and, failing, gave himself over to the flies; outside, the sun streamed down on the silent bush. Then, as though by some common, subconscious impulse, they shuffled to their customary chairs and sank into them, still reading.

"Owing to the war," ran Chisholm's instructions from his firm's manager, "it is not expected that there will be any shipments for some time to come. Copra is now four pounds on the beach, a drop of nearly twenty pounds. You will be expected to continue collection and storage until further notice. Erect more sheds if necessary——"

He got no further. War! What war? Was it possible—— He snatched up one of the newspapers, a Suva Herald only two days old, but the first he had seen for two months. Headlines in The Suva Herald! War, war, nothing but war! Royal proclamations, cable news from the Front, advances, retreats!

So it had come! Chisholm looked out into the glare with unseeing eyes, trying to grasp the magnitude of this world crisis, and failing utterly. It was impossible here, on Cobb's verandah, where he had lounged in peace every evening for two years, to realise that his country was locked in a death-struggle. He felt a sudden desire for privacy, and, levering himself out of the chair, gathered up his mail.

"I think I'll get along," he said absently, and his glance fell on Zwarg. The German was reading a newspaper, leaning forward with straining eyes, mouth slightly agape, and a dull flush on neck and cheeks.

"Right," said Cobb, without looking up. "See you this evening."

Chisholm walked briskly to his own bungalow, flung the mail in the middle of the floor, and, squatting on the mats native fashion, read it methodically from beginning to end. It took two hours, and when he had finished and strolled out on to the verandah to stretch his cramped limbs, the brief tropical dusk had descended on Miatu.

As he stood looking out into the encroaching darkness, there came to him. a mental picture of Zwarg bending over his newspaper, with mouth agape and eyes feasting on the details of the advance of his country's war-machine on Paris, the hurling back of the Allies. Chisholm could imagine him muttering "Der Tag!" at intervals, and a sudden, unreasoning rage against the man surged up in him. It was nothing less than rage, and it surprised Chisholm himself. He could not remember ever having allowed himself to be so angry with anyone before. The experience was primitive, exhilarating. He went down to the beach and paced back and forth across the hard, wet sand just bared by the receding tide.

"You will be expected to continue collection and storage as usual——"

Chisholm chuckled to himself. The manager was rather good at "expecting," and he was sorry to disappoint, but there was only one thing to be done by an able-bodied man at the present moment, and he intended to do it.

"Gad," he exclaimed, stopping in his stride to seize Roko by the ears and talk to his wise old eyes, "I didn't think they had it in 'em these days! It just shows——" But Roko had caught sight of a sea-bird flying temptingly low, and jerked himself free to give chase. Chisholm laughed aloud at the mongrel's cumbersome efforts to leap twenty-five feet into the air, and returned to the bungalow with a lightness of step that he had not experienced for many a day. No more rotting on a South Sea island for him; there was history to be made.

A mile distant, at the other extremity of the beach, Zwarg sat on his verandah playing the clarionet. It was "The Watch on the Rhine" he played, and played well. When it was finished for the second time, he paused; then, with his usual air of grave concentration, he took down a rifle from its nail on the wall and went through certain evolutions of drill for upwards of half an hour. His proficiency seemed to please him, for when he flung himself perspiring into a chair, it was to sit with the folded hands and serene expression of a man lost in pleasant day-dreams.

"Der Tag!" and the Fatherland was ready. The machine was ready also very ready and now, like a gigantic magnet, attracted even from the corners of the earth the scattered units of its mechanism. Zwarg was one of these units, and he was just wondering how long it would take him to reach German Samoa in his cutter, and from Samoa perhaps Berlin, for he knew that in Suva he would be detained. He felt rather sorry for Chisholm, quite one of the least obnoxious Englishmen he had ever met. No doubt he had his feelings, though he seldom showed them. Zwarg fell to dreaming of Miatu—all Fiji—under German rule, of apathetic Chisholm struggling with the goose-step, and he smiled anew.

The Englishman was already on Cobb's verandah when Zwarg arrived. He seemed unusually animated.

"Oh, it's something to do!" he was saying, as the German nodded to Cobb and took a chair. "Something really worth while at last."

"It's an awful thing," replied Cobb, shaking his head slowly, "awful!"

"Of course it is," admitted Chisholm, flicking his cigarette ash over the railing, "but awful things are wanted once in a while. This was wanted. It was like everlasting thunder and lightning without rain before; now the rain's come, and it'll clear things up."

Zwarg leant forward.

"May I ask of vot you speak?" he inquired, with an admirable show of polite interest.

"The war," said Chisholm bluntly.

"Ach!" The German leant back in his chair.

There followed a rather strained silence.

"War is a return to barbarism," announced Cobb. "It's out of date, like duelling."

"But it remains the final argument of men—and nations," added Chisholm. "Come, you'll agree with me there, Zwarg."

"I agree, absolutely," admitted the German.

"So there you are, Cobb, old man." Chisholm turned triumphantly on the American. "You can come off your perch and talk battle, murder, and sudden death with the rest of us. What do you think of the chances?"

"My President tells me to remain neutral in thought and deed," recited Cobb, with whimsical dignity.

"Your President? Oh, yes! Wilson, isn't it? I should like to see America's efforts at neutrality; they must be rather funny."

"I should tink zo," boomed Zwarg, "wid over one million German people in the United States."

Chisholm leant back, smiling. He was enjoying himself immensely.

"But what's the good of argument," he sighed, "especially when there's nothing to argue about? They've finished with words over there—why shouldn't we? I'm sorry for Zwarg, though."

The German turned in his chair.

"Und may I ask vy?" he suggested.

"Well, you naturally want to go and fight."

"Vot of it?"

"Nothing, except that you can't."

"Can't? I do not know de vord."

"Let me introduce you, then. 'Can't' is an abbreviation of 'cannot,' and in this instance means that you cannot join your regiment because you're on British soil after hostilities have begun. You'll be held in Suva, I expect. Deuced hard luck, but no worse than that of loads of poor beggars of Englishmen in Germany. Cheer up, Zwarg! Your people are doing A 1 up to the present."

A tinge of red crept into the German's face.

"You try to be funny!" he snapped.

"Not a bit," protested Chisholm. "I leave it to our intensely neutral friend here. Isn't it a fact, Cobb?"

The American nodded and grinned.

"I don't quite see how the laws of warfare are to be enforced on Miatu, though," he added. "Who is there to enforce them?"

"Well, there's me," said Chisholm quietly.

Cobb turned on him with the first hint of annoyance he had shown.

"Don't make trouble, Chisholm," he said severely. "How do you know Zwarg has any thought of leaving Miatu, much less going to fight?"

"I don't, but I'm going to see that he doesn't," returned Chisholm, "until they come and take him off my hands."

"And then?"

"Then I'll be free."

"To go and fight?"

"I hope so."

Cobb sighed wearily.

"Of all the——" he began.

"You might just as well come off that perch of yours," interrupted Chisholm. "You know you'd do the same yourself, in my place, you old hypocrite."

"See here," said Cobb, in desperation, "we don't want the harmony of this blessed island torn to bits just because of a war on the other side of the world. Suppose Zwarg gives his parole not to——"

"He won't," snapped Chisholm.

"How do you know that?"

"Ask him."

Cobb turned, but the German was already on his feet, standing at rigid attention.

"Mr. Chisholm iss right," he said, with tremendous dignity. "I gif no parole votever."

"There you are," cried Chisholm, "and small blame to him! What's more, I wouldn't take a German parole."

The veins at Zwarg's temples swelled visibly. His hands were clenched.

"You ——" he began, in a guttural growl.

"See how we love one another at bottom!" grinned Chisholm gleefully. "You're up against it, Cobb."

The American wagged his hands as though dispersing a cloud of mosquitoes.

"For Heaven's sake——" he wailed. "You're not in Belgium yet. Why can't you two come to terms—stay right here on Miatu like civilised beings, and abide by results? it'll probably all be over by the time you get there, and even if it isn't, what difference would you two make?"

"There I think Zwarg and I understand one other better than you understand us," replied Chisholm. "Your suggestions may be well meant, but to us they're nothing less than drivel—aren't they, Zwarg?"

The German inclined his head.

"No, here's the position, and we may as well face it. Zwarg's just as determined to go to the Front as I am that he shan't, and we'll leave it at that, if you don't mind. We don't want to argue about it; we want to fight, so you can look upon your peace efforts as a frost." Chisholm rose and held out his hand. "Thanks all the same, old man. Good night."

"And what do you propose to do now?" Cobb demanded plaintively.

"That's our business," said Chisholm. "So long!" And he passed down the shell pathway and was lost among the palms.

Zwarg seemed to share this opinion, for after a few inconsequent remarks, and an uneasy crossing and recrossing of his plump legs, he took his leave. To tell the truth, Chisholm's attitude worried him more than he cared to admit, not because it in any way altered his plans—nothing would alter them—but because he was not sure how far this surprising Englishman would go in his efforts to thwart them. There was only one way of finding out.

It was high tide at six o'clock the next morning, and, punctual to the minute, Zwarg sent his boys down to prepare his cutter for sea, while he locked the store and made final and methodical preparations for departure. A few minutes later he heard a rifle-shot, and presently his head boy, with hair and sulu streaming in his wake, broke from the bush at a frenzied double.

"Him shoot pop!" he gasped, his eyes rolling in his head.

"Him who?" snapped Zwarg.

"Him Missi Chiso'. Him say no go."

Zwarg left him whimpering at the locked door of the store and hurried down to the beach.

Chisholm was sitting under a palm, with a Winchester across his knees and his mongrel at his side, smoking.

"Sorry to scare 'em," he said, looking up cheerfully at Zwarg's approach, "but there must have been some mistake. They were getting your cutter ready, and didn't seem to savvy when I told them to vamose."

"Und zo you shot at dem?"

Zwarg was standing tense and upright in the sand.

"Well, hardly at them. There was a good yard to spare."

"Und you vould shoot de same if I vent to prepare my cutter?"

"Certainly," beamed Chisholm.

Without a moment's hesitation Zwarg turned and strode down the beach towards the landing, Chisholm waited until his hands were on the throat halyards then emptied his magazine into the ship's side at the water-line.

Zwarg went to the rail and looked over at the damage, then retraced his steps up the beach. He looked neither to right nor left, but passed straight on up the bush track to his bungalow, took his rifle from the wall and loaded it. Chisholm was still sitting under the palm, watching the cutter list to starboard. From the edge of the beach Zwarg took careful aim, shot Roko through the head, and returned to his bungalow.

For a moment Chisholm sat numbed, staring down at the dead body of his friend.

"Poor old man!" he muttered. "Poor old devil!" Then he carried him to the banana patch behind the store and buried him with set lips.

The task was little more than completed when Chisholm's boy Johnnie came swinging down the beach road. He pointed towards the east and grinned broadly. It was enough. In less than five minutes Chisholm was in the saddle, galloping madly round the island. Even then he was only just in time. Hurriedly dismounting, he tied his pony to a palm trunk and flung himself at length in the reed brake that fringed the beach. Zwarg was stepping aboard a native sailing-canoe, manned and ready for sea.

"Come back!" roared Chisholm between his hands.

Zwarg started as though stung, and looked round, but soon recovered himself, and fell to hazing the niggers to set sail. Slowly the great triangle of canvas crept up the mast, bellying as it rose; already the canoe was under way.

"The Buli commands you to come back!" Chisholm shouted in Fijian.

The sail paused in its ascent, but only for an instant—Zwarg had whipped out an automatic, and was threatening the terrified natives. Chisholm heard sharp, guttural oaths and the creaking of blocks, saw the great sail bellying to the wind; he was wondering how to riddle a canoe without hurting its occupants. But he need not have troubled, for he had no sooner opened fire than the Kanakas huddled together amidships like a family of frightened monkeys. Zwarg stood at the steering oar, rapping out unintelligible oaths and brandishing his automatic. The canoe was well under way by the time Chisholm had exhausted his magazine and drilled a clean hole the size of a football through its bows. Then he lowered his rifle and watched the niggers baling, with furtive glances thrown over the gunwale, the sail descending with a squeak and a crash, and the canoe heading slowly for shore.

Zwarg was very angry, very angry. Chisholm rather admired the way he managed his wrath. Dignified contempt was in every movement as he dropped into the knee-deep water, waded ashore, and marched up the beach.

Chisholm lost sight of him at the edge of the cocoanut groves, so it came as rather a shock when he was disturbed in the process of lighting his pipe by the whiz of a bullet that scattered the sand not a yard from his feet. He looked up in time to catch a glint of white against the green background of the groves, then dropped to his knees in the reed brake.

It had come to this, then. He was sorry, because he had hoped they would do without it, but there was no turning back now. Wriggling to the edge of the brake, he could plainly see Zwarg kneeling behind a palm, and let drive. The bullet carried away a fragment of bark, and the German rapidly changed his position, taking advantage of a lantana bush that hid him completely. Exactly what happened after that Chisholm was never sure. He heard another report, realised that his left arm had been suddenly rendered numb from elbow to wrist, and summoned sufficient presence of mind to pull the trigger of his rifle, which pointed directly at the centre of the lantana bush. Then an apparition appeared, a long, lean, white apparition that waved a handkerchief over its head and advanced on him, executing antics that resembled nothing more closely than the Highland fling.

"You fool!" it bellowed. "Quit! D'you hear? Quit! You've shot him!"

"Well, that's what I meant to do," Chisholm remembered muttering.

"But you've killed him, man-killed him!"

Quite suddenly Chisholm realised that the apparition was Cobb—Cobb with a pale, tense face covered with sweat. Then things faded away.

He came to in his own bungalow, with Cobb standing over him and Johnnie somewhere in the background with a palm-leaf fan. The American seemed to take up the conversation where it had left off.

"You've killed him, Chisholm," he said gravely.

"Sorry," mumbled Chisholm, because he had no idea what else he ought to say.

"I should say it was 'sorry.' Can you stand?"

"Stand?" Chisholm swung to the floor and shook himself. "Why not? What's the matter with me?"

"Don't ask me. You seemed to think there was enough the matter to faint."

"Faint? Ah, yes!" Chisholm looked down at his left sleeve the white duck was drenched with blood. "But I say——"

"You don't need to say anything," snapped Cobb. "You've got to get out of here, that's all. It's a murder, nothing less, and you've got to run for it."

"I won't run," grumbled Chisholm. "It isn't murder to shoot a prisoner of war who—who fires on you."

Cobb threw up his hands.

"Perhaps," he suggested, with intense irony, "perhaps if I put it differently—you've killed a man, here on Miatu. I've just come from burying him, if you want to know. Is it asking too much of your loyal Pig-headedness to depart—to the Front, and continue your slaughter where it will be better appreciated?"

A grim smile twisted Chisholm's mouth.

"You're a good sort, Cobb," he said. "Yes, I'll go—now."

He went in his own launch an hour later, and Cobb cantered the length of the beach.

Zwarg was pacing up and down the verandah, clicking his heels in a scrupulously correct right-about-face at either end.

"It's all over," said Cobb, throwing himself into a chair and mopping his perspiring forehead. "Clean through the lungs."

Zwarg stopped in his stride.

"Ach, it iss a pity!" he said. "I vished Mr. Chisholm no harm; he brought it on himself."

"Of course he did," agreed Cobb. "But the point is, you've got to get out, quick and lively."

"I vish noding better," said Zwarg; "it vas to get out dat——"

"That you killed Chisholm—yes, exactly. Well, beat it!"

That night Zwarg plugged the holes in his cutter, and the next morning she was a dim speck on the eastern horizon, heading straight for German Samoa.

Cobb stood on his verandah, watching her melt into the shimmering heat haze, then sank into his favourite chair with an air of ineffable relief.

"Whew!" he sighed to a sizzling highball. "I've been neutral all right, but I wonder if they'll ever meet?"