CHAPTER VI
LEFT IN CHARGE
WITH a curious shiver, Joan put her revolver back into its holster. The danger was over, for the present. She realized now with a faint sense of dismay that she had fired a dozen shots in the hope of killing or at least injuring a fellow mortal. Squeamishness, however, in such a case, was, she realized, foolish. When one is attacked self-defense needs no apology. The adventure had been wildly exciting, especially at the moment when Moniz had seemed to have all the advantage of strategic position, but she was glad the thing was over. The Kestrel was running before the breeze for Tao Tao.
"I must say I take my hat off to you, Miss Trent," Keith said quietly, regarding her with respect. "I didn't once notice your hand shake."
"She's a well plucked 'un," the girl's brother observed. "The longer I live here the more I wish she had better opportunities of showing her grit than when she's up against a lot of niggers."
Joan did not speak. Fighting blacks with firearms was not one of the pursuits to which she was naturally addicted; and moreover she was fully conscious that she had been terribly afraid. Not, however, that she had wanted to scream out or do anything foolish. Quite early in the running fight a small pellet of lead had hit her on the forehead. It was only a tiny fragment, and it had no force behind it, but from that moment onward she had been obsessed with the fear that a bullet would strike her in the face.
"Well, he found he'd bitten off more than he could chew that time," Trent said thoughtfully a few moments later, as he watched the disappearing schooner through narrowed eyes. "I wish I could think that was the last we were likely to see of the brute. Yes, Joan, I know what's in your head, only you're too decent to say 'I told you so.' You sized him up before I did, but even you never guessed he'd try to murder us."
"I certainly never guessed I should ever find myself trying to murder him," the girl replied. "But don't you think he has learned a lesson that may teach him not to try poaching on our preserves again?"
Chester shook his head dubiously.
"He isn't that kind, I'm afraid," he said. "By the way, Keith, we're no end obliged to you. I don't know whether you expected to find that perfect peace which passeth all understanding on our little island, but if you did you were certainly disappointed. This sort of thing doesn't occur every day, though, I can assure you."
Keith smiled; he was thinking of one other exciting time he had already experienced on the remarkable shores of Tao Tao—of five minutes during which he was struggling for his very life under the Trents' roof. The conviction was rapidly growing on him that perfect peace and contentment were not to be the most noticeable features of their lives on the island for some time to come.
There was a subdued air about the party as they reached shore, but this was dispelled by Joan with her cheerful optimism by the time they sat down to breakfast. If the mental strain of being involved in a battle afloat had affected her nerves at all she had regained control over them remarkably quick. The two men discussed the incidents of the shooting contest in detail, until Joan's serious expression arrested her brother's eye.
"You look worried, sis. What's the matter?" he asked.
"I wish, Chester, that you would forget you had ever heard of the existence of pearls," she said with unusual solemnity.
"Why?" the planter asked with a frown, not altogether understanding her point of view. He was vividly conscious of the fact that they had all been risking their lives only a couple of hours before because of the very pearls she was alluding to. Hitherto she had rarely interfered with his plans, especially so far as business was concerned. His judgment, except during recent months when he had been drinking, had always seemed to her admirable. But now she saw him in danger of grasping at a shadow and losing the substance. Moreover, there appeared to be a very real risk to life and limb in grasping at the shadow which had hypnotized him.
"I saw you looking at the damage the storm had done to the trees," the girl said. "Now be reasonable. We both agree, don't we, that the plantation will look like a wilderness in no time after last night's havoc, if some pretty hard work isn't put in on it?"
"It looks as though there had been a good deal of damage, certainly," Chester agreed reluctantly; but plantation work was not uppermost in his thoughts just then.
"Well," Joan persisted, with cold logic, "another storm on the top of that last night would just about reduce Tao Tao to a desert unless we get things straight again before it comes. And in that case you must realize we should be ruined, and we could also reckon that we had wasted all these years of work."
"'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,'" observed Chester, smiling and waving his hand toward his sister.
"Well, let the babe and suckling go on talking for a minute," persisted Joan. "Now, if you fritter away more time and money in the pursuit of pearls, and don't find any, it looks very much to me as though you would fall between two stools, and find yourself in Queer-street, as you say."
Chester bit off the end of a cigar and examined it pensively without replying.
"I hate to butt into other people's affairs, Miss Trent," Keith said, "and there's a deal of common sense in your view, but I certainly think it would be a mistake not to give the pearl fishing a trial before abandoning it."
Chester flung a grateful glance at his newly found supporter.
"You don't find a sort of gold mine at your front door every day in the week, you know, sis," he urged.
"You know perfectly well," the girl said, "that I don't want to stand in your way for an instant. I'm only warning you that you appear to me to be on the threshold of disaster, and I want you to look this thing squarely in the face. To go on as you are doing seems like madness. Chester, you have lost your grip. Your judgment is not as sound as I have known it to be. Perhaps you need a holiday. Perhaps you only need to take greater care of yourself. Anyway, you vacillate where you would have been as firm as a rock a couple of years ago."
Her brother looked up at her reproachfully.
"I know this is hitting you right between the eyes, and you don't like it," she went on. "But the time has just about come when something had to break, Chester."
"I know, Joan. And God knows you're a brick—you're white, clean through. But you don't understand. Making money doesn't just consist of doing the obvious thing under one's nose always. You never had a thing to do with grubbing for cold cash before father died and we had to come to this place. Men have to take risks sometimes—big risks at that, if the reward is promising enough. Only a fool goes on plodding in a rut when he sees a chance to jump out and make very good another way."
"A chance, yes," the girl agreed. "But do you regard this as a reasonable chance?"
Chester frowned. He was willing to humour his sister up to a point, and listen to her arguments, but he was determined, with all the obstinacy in his composition, to have his own way as to the pearl fishing.
"I do regard it as just that—a reasonable chance," Chester replied.
"Exactly why do you think so?" Keith asked.
"Do you know anything about pearls?" Chester queried after a moment's hesitation.
"In a way, yes," Keith replied. "I don't pretend to be an expert, but I have handled a good many in my time. As I was telling your sister the other day, I have had a flutter or two at pearling."
Chester Trent took a small wallet from his pocket, and extracted a folded piece of chamois from it. This he opened with loving care, and held out two pearls in his palm.
"Those," he said, "are my justification for saying there is a reasonable chance. I'm convinced that there ought to be more of the same sort where these came from."
Keith took them into his hand and examined them carefully. They were remarkably perfect white pearls, beautifully spherical and of fine lustre.
"They're fine," commented Keith. "Are these exactly as they came out of the shell?"
"Exactly," replied Chester. "Now do you wonder that I'm keen to see if there are any more round there like 'em?"
"No," Keith said. "It certainly is tempting. Those two ought to fetch a thousand dollars apiece in New York."
"And if my luck was in I might fish up half a dozen of the same kind in a single day."
"But it is all such a gamble, Chester," the girl protested.
"Faint heart never won half a pint of little things like these," Chester replied, squinting at one of the precious objects in the light. "I hate like the deuce to disappoint you, sis, but I certainly am not going to give it up yet."
Keith was thoughtfully biting on the stem of a pipe.
"I don't see any real reason," he observed slowly, "why you should not do the best you can with the plantation and at the same time try out the pearl fishing."
"I may not be a trained business woman," Joan said, "but I do know one cannot fiddle about with two things at once and do either of them properly. Perhaps if one had a white foreman, instead of Taleile—"
"I've got it," exclaimed Chester suddenly. "Keith, you're not in a hurry to get away from here, are you?"
"Why—no," said Keith.
"Then I'll make a suggestion. These niggers need constant watching, and driving, or else they won't earn their salt. You take them in hand for a while. That will leave me free to give a thorough trial to the other business. What do you say?"
There was nothing on earth that would have appealed more to the man from the Four Winds than to stay on the island. He glanced at Joan and for a second their eyes met. It gave him a curious sense of satisfaction to see that the suggestion did not appear to meet with her disapproval.
"I don't know the first thing about plantations," he said, "but I'd like to have a shot at it."
"That's bully," Chester chuckled. "Now, little lady, will that make you feel easier?"
"Providing you don't drown yourself, or get shot, or anything else foolish, Chester," the girl replied.
"The first thing I must do," her brother continued, "is to go off in the ketch for some more divers. I only have one left, thanks to Moniz, and I'm none too sure how dependable he is. I ought to be able to pick up two or three men at Borenda who will suit my purpose."
"How long are you likely to be away?" Keith asked.
"Not more than forty-eight hours if the weather holds good. I must go to-night before the moon comes up. It will be a day or two before that Portuguese blackguard tries any of his tricks on us again, and he'll never know I have gone, anyway."
"By the way," said Joan, "I don't think if I were you I would carry those pearls in my pocket on this trip, Chester. It isn't safe."
"What would you have me do with them? I can't very well deposit them in the strong room of a bank. They are a bit of a nuisance, I admit, though."
"Give them to me, and I'll wear them tied round my neck," Joan suggested.
"And if the string breaks and you lose 'em, you'll be unhappy ever after. No, sis. But I'll tell you what we can do. Come with me."
Joan and Keith followed the planter into his bedroom, where he pointed to a tiny hole in a beam.
"Plugged up in there, they'd be safe as long as the bungalow stood," he said. "Here goes." And a few minutes later the precious little objects were safely hidden from view.
The rest of the day Chester Trent spent with Keith, showing him a hundred and one things about the plantation, and giving him a clear idea what work the gangs of blacks should be kept at to put the place in order. Taleile, the "boss boy," was, moreover, informed that Keith was the new "big white marster," whose orders must be obeyed.
"You'll find him a jewel," Chester observed, "and that's more than you can say for some of the black scum."
The two men were alone, some distance from the bungalow, where Joan was busy superintending household matters.
"There's one of them I still have an account to settle with," Keith said. "I haven't really had a chance to talk to you about it before, because it was no use alarming your sister."
Chester shot a quick glance of enquiry at the other.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Nothing much," Keith replied. "Maybe it won't occur again, but the first night I slept here I had a bit of rough-house with one of the niggers. He crawled into my room in the middle of the night and tried to choke me. I'm pretty strong in the wrist so he didn't succeed. I wasn't worried about myself particularly, though. There's the girl."
Beneath the tan on his face, Chester had changed colour.
"I—I'm tremendously grateful to you, Keith, for what you've done. It makes me feel a skunk. Have you any idea which of the blacks it was?"
"Probably the chap I heaved off the porch that day. Still, it was dark and I couldn't be sure."
Chester Trent's eyes narrowed.
"I've been a fool," he commented bitterly. "Great God, I've been a fool! I never stopped to think that sort of thing was likely to happen. Keith, it was one of two things. Either that devil Baloo wanted to get square with you, or some of them are after the pearls."
"The pearls! But they had no reason to suppose I had the things."
"No, but with you out of the way, my sister and I might have been murdered more easily. They know the pearls are on the island, because the divers talk. And they know, too, that a white man doesn't go to all this trouble to get them out of the sea for the benefit of his health. They're getting too damned educated, these South Sea niggers. I'm glad he didn't get you, Keith," Chester added suddenly, extending a hand which the new overseer grasped. "We'll nab him, yet, whoever it was. It'll all come out in the washing. But we must keep our eyes peeled, or they'll nab the lot of us."
Chester Trent was visibly agitated. His none-too-steady nerves had been jarred by this startling information. He pulled a flask from his hip pocket.
"Is that the way you met trouble when you first came to Tao Tao?" Keith asked him bluntly.
"You on the water wagon?" Chester queried, with a touch of amusement.
"No, but I haven't begun to make an idiot of myself," Keith replied.
Chester laughed, but he put the flask back in his pocket, unopened. The influence of this big, blunt stranger was one which, curiously enough, did not arouse opposition in him. Not another word was said on the subject, but Chester was conscious of having been reined in, firmly and wisely.
After the swift coming of tropic night, the Kestrel quietly slid away from her anchorage; and when the moon arose, bathing the island in its splendour, the man whom prudence had driven over the side of the Four Winds to seek seclusion in the unknown, found himself the guardian of Tao Tao and of every living soul thereon, including this brown-eyed girl to whom, after all, he was little more than a complete stranger.
She knew him only as a man who had fallen off a steamer, and had asked no questions about the thirty or so years that had gone before in his life. He half wished she had been just a mite more curious on the subject.
She found him on the veranda later, and he was surprised at the sense of elation that came to him with the sound of her approaching footsteps. She took the chair he drew toward the rail for her and seated herself in it with a long sigh of relief. The day had been an eventful one, and now that it was at an end her tired nerves were grateful for the calm and quiet of the scene. Before them, beyond the compound, framed between two sentinel cocoa-palms at the edge of the beach, stretched the moon's path across the peaceful sea, while, against a purple sky the moon itself, half-grown, glowed like molten silver. They talked long that night, and far more intimately than either had thought possible. Joan spoke of her life in England before fallen fortunes and the death of their parents had sent her and her brother seeking wealth in the South Seas. Keith's confidences were less frank, possibly, but he, too, found pleasure in recalling old days. When, shortly before midnight, they said good night, it seemed to Keith that the pressure of her firm brown fingers vas a little more kindly and he went to sleep strangely contented in the certain knowledge that the evening had established between them a new and closer sympathy.
When he awoke, just after sunrise, it was with the feeling that life was bigger and finer than ever before, and when, having jumped blithely from bed, he strode to the window and sent his gaze abroad over the world he nodded slowly in hearty approval of nature and all her works. But an instant later his smiling regard changed quickly to concern, for there, just beyond the low purple smudge that was the reef, her masts bare against the eastern sky, lay Moniz's schooner.