The Rat (Stock)

by Ralph Stock

THE RAT

By RALPH STOCK

THERE were close on fifty pearls in the section of bamboo Sneddon kept spliced to his belt day and night. A number of them were practically valueless, because, for some reason as obscure as many another in the Islands, the natives had the notion firmly wedged in their wooden heads that a pearl meant five shillings, whether it was worth nothing or a young fortune.

This was annoying, but, with a substantial balance still on the right side of the scales, it is a pity to shatter cherished illusions, even when they belong to a South Sea Kanaka.

At all events, some of the pearls were worth anything from five to fifty pounds, and the whole represented four months of a blood-sweating, heart-breaking nightmare to Ellis.

This was because Sneddon had run coolies most of his life, and had won the reputation of being the best nigger-driver in "the group." He spared neither himself nor his "labour," and now that he had retired from the sugar estates to "make money out of other people instead of for them," as he put it, he seemed to have overlooked the fact that he was no longer running coolies.

Ellis had told himself this not less than ten times daily, and the thought of finally correcting his partner's error was all that bad kept him alive for the past four months.

When, as a steerage steward, he had deserted the steamer at Nomi, Ellis was an undersized denizen of city wharves, with a pallid face, a weak mouth, and cunning eyes; and now he was a wreck, and the last four months had done it—Sneddon had done it.

He sat now on a bollard, staring at the mud bank that had gripped the bows of the Saluka for twelve mortal hours of mosquitoes, wilting heat, indescribable smells, and again mosquitoes. But these things meant nothing to Ellis. He was too anæmic to attract mosquitoes or render heat unduly trying, and, as for smells, he had lived amongst a varied assortment from infancy. Only one thing mattered, and that was Sneddon.

The eternal sun rose out of the mangroves, and in answer to ominious sounds of movement below, Ellis darted to the bulwarks and pretended to be studying the prospects of getting the motor-boat off the mud. A moment later Sneddon's bullet head appeared over the hatch coaming.

"Still fast?" he jerked out.

"Yes," said Ellis; "but I think——"

"There's a sight too much thinking aboard here," boomed Sneddon. "Why don't you get on with it?"

"But what can we do?"

"It's always 'What can we do?'" mimicked the other. "Ease her off." He yawned, stretched his enormous arms, and proceeded to divest himself of his trousers. "Get over the side, up to your neck in stinking mud, that's what—and lively!"

Ellis lowered himself into the warm ooze and sank to his thighs.

"Now!" prompted Sneddon at his side.

"She moves!" squealed Ellis excitedly.

"And no thanks to you," grunted his partner. "Put a bit of beef into it. Keep her going, keep her——"

The Saluka slid clear, and the two men clambered aboard, caked with mud. Sneddon fell to scraping himself with a marline-spike.

"What's that?" he demanded suddenly.

It was the Saluka's lugsail, that Ellis had unearthed from the hold with the vague idea of using it instead of the broken-down engine. He stared at it foolishly, without answering.

"What's it for?" pursued the inexorable Sheddon.

"I thought——" began Ellis, but Sheddon cut him short. The sight of the sail seemed to fill him with cold rage.

"See here," he threatened, shaking the marline-spike in Ellis's face, "you came in with me to run the engine, didn't you? Said you could run any old thing, didn't you?"

Ellis moistened his lips and nodded.

"And I believed you. You looked dirty enough, to me. Why have I dragged you along, nursed you like your own mother, when I could have had a man who can work his weight? Because you could run an engine. Well, run it. D'you get me?"

"The magneto——"

"Mag nothing!" Sheddon pointed the marline-spike accusingly at the lugsail. "And get that rag out of my sight. We're a motor-boat—savvy? A motor-boat, not a wind-jammer!"

He ceased abruptly. Sheddon had a disconcerting habit of cutting himself short at unexpected moments and reducing his conversation to bare essentials.

"You go below," he ordered with unnatural quietness, "and if that junk pile ain't running in half an hour from now, you'll hear about it."

There was nothing to be said. There never was when Sheddon spoke like that. Ellis went aft and vanished down the grimy hatch. Beside the engine he sank on his knees, and for a moment remained rigid, with a spanner tightly grasped in his hand and his teeth clenched.

"I'll fix 'im!" be muttered. "I'll fix 'im, see if I don't!"

The engine was a terrible affair of greasy iron held together with wire, sinnet, and rags. All Ellis knew about it was that if one dried the plugs, turned on petrol, and wrestled long enough with the crank-handle, risking a broken wrist from a backfire in the process, it went. It rocked and trembled on its bed, it threw off choking, blinding fumes, it made a noise like dumped scrap-iron, but it bad the surprising effect of propelling the Saluka through calm water at five knots. And now it bad broken down, and Sheddon paced the deck with the marline-spike in his hand.

Ellis fell to tinkering feebly with nuts and castings, more to keep the wild beast on deck at bay than with any hope of repairing the damage.

The pacing overhead slowed down and finally ceased. Ellis filled in the awkward silence by tapping the fly-wheel with a spanner, to give the impression that he was doing something.

Promptly at the end of the stipulated half-hour Sheddon appeared on the top step of the companion. Ellis flattened himself against the bulkhead, his eyes darting this way and that in search of a loophole of escape, though be knew there was none. Lightning thoughts flashed through his brain! Had he the pluck? Sheddon was coming down backwards. It was unlikely that he would turn until he reached the floor-boards. The heaviest spanner, held so! Had he the pluck? Ellis raised it above his head. It was not sure; nothing was sure with Sheddon. And if he missed—— Suddenly the glint faded out of his pale eyes; he lowered the spanner and shrank back against the bulkhead.

Sheddon turned.

"Well, what about it?"

Ellis was incapable of speech. Sheddon stood looking down on him.

"Get out of here!" he exploded. "Why I don't twist your neck is a caution to me. Get out of here!"

Ellis made a dart for the companion, but not so fast as to escape a swinging blow with the marline-spike.

He sat on the bulwarks, nursing his bruised arm and listening.

An indescribable medley of noises proceeded from the engine-room—the ruthless hammering of iron, half-formed oaths, violent turning of the fly-wheel, heavy breathing, and presently, out of it all, emerged a feeble chugging. The motor was actually firing—firing and missing. Then, in the inexplicable way of motor marine engines, it ran.

Sheddon climbed on deck, took the tiller under his arm, and lit a saluka. Presently, as the boat gained way and slid out of the foulsome river into the clean spaces of the Pacific, he smiled.

A great wave of relief swept over Ellis. Sheddon had smiled!

"I can run 'em!" he affirmed, with child-like pride of accomplishment.

"You bet!" murmured Ellis.

"If they don't go, fetch the magneto a swipe with a hammer," he informed his partner with an air of profundity. "Shakes em up, I guess."

"I'll remember that," said Ellis, and crept below to investigate the marline-spike bruise. It was one of many. There was quite a lot to remember, one way and another.

Sheddon was in high good humour for the rest of the day. His newly-acquired accomplishment of engineering pleased him immensely. He sat on the stern horse, bawling age-old chanties to the accompaniment of the clamouring atrocity below.

That afternoon the two men went ashore on Tanuva. Sheddon was in the humour for chicken roasted in banana leaf, and after a satisfying meal he waxed positively beatific. But his change of mood bad no effect on Ellis. Even now, when the worst was over, his frail body stiffened at thought of what this man had done and said to him back there in the steaming bush. At the time he had said nothing, suffered every blow and insult with an indifference born of fever and the knowledge of his own impotence; but here, only two days from Nomi and freedom, it took all his cunning to prevent the pent-up resentment of those nightmare months from betraying him.

"You love me, don't you, Fred?"

Ellis started perceptibly. Until that dreaded voice broke the silence of the beach, he had no idea that he had been looking in Sheddon's direction, much less that something of his feelings had shown itself in his face. The knowledge—the possibility, even—of such a lapse came as a shock. His thin face relaxed into a sheepish grin, and his eyes dropped before Sheddon's direct gaze.

"No," he said, with a feeble attempt at banter, "I don't love yer. Why?"

"Not for lambasting you through the Colo mangroves with a bamboo?" Sneddon leant back against the palm trunk and smiled reminiscently at a wisp of smoke from his saluka that hovered on the still air above his head. "Nor for kicking you through the Theba bush, and pulling your nose at Vinassa?"

Ellis still grinned and shook his head, burrowing his naked, unlovely toes deeper in the sand.

"No?" Sheddon looked across at him whimsically. "Well, you're a queer thing, Fred. There may be something in you somewhere, but I haven't noticed it. You're not a man, that's sure, and you're not a boy. You're—well, the nearest I can get to it is a rat."

Ellis squirmed in the sand. The grin had become a fixture, even as it had been a fixture back there in the bush. Sneddon continued in a speculative, emotionless drawl, unconscious—and uncaring if he had been conscious—that his every word seared like fire. He had lived in a world of men, and be was used to taking thorn as he found them. He had found Ellis to be a rat, and he was just telling him about it, that was all.

"I suppose mosquitoes are good for something. They can bite, anyway; but you——" Sheddon yawned and stroked his beard. "Gum, it's a queer world!"

A land-crab scuttled by over the sand, and Ellis flung a stone after it—anything to relieve the tension of mind and muscle.

"There's one thing gets me," Sheddon went on presently, "and that's myself. Why in thunder didn't I take you by the neck, wring it like that—see?—and chuck you into the mangroves? But, no, I must save your life three times a day, on an average, and bring you safe back to Nomi."

Sheddon gazed upward, apparently lost in wonderment at his own forbearance. "And then, to cap all, you'll get your whack." He tapped the section of bamboo at his belt. "I can feel it in my bones that, although you've been as much good to me as a sick headache, you'll get your whack. You take it from me, Fred, it's a wonderful world!"

Ellis still grinned.

"There must be more in me than meets the eye," mused Sheddon drowsily, and leant back against the palm trunk with his battered solar topee over his eyes.

Ellis sat staring at him for a space.

"More in Sheddon than met the eye!" There was everything—everything that Ellis felt so acutely he lacked—health, strength, manliness. Yes, he was forced to admit this. Moreover, Sheddon had spoken nothing but the truth. Ellis knew that he would get his "whack." And the saving of his life—that was true, too—but—a rat! And that's what he was—a rat. The thought brought him to his feet, green with venom.

In the guest-house his glance travelled instinctively to Sheddon's Winchester. His hand trembled as he took it down from its nail on the wall and examined the magazine. It was loaded. Sheddon slept peacefully under the palm, twenty yards distant, breathing heavily into the crown of his solar topee. Ellis lay along the floor, with his elbows on the threshold of the doorway, his eye trained along the gleaming barrel. It was impossible to miss. The pearls would be his—all his. George Street on a Saturday night, with money in your pocket! "Even mosquitoes can bite"—why not a rat? He felt his hands trembling, but his finger pressed the trigger.

The report pierced the silence like a knife. Sheddon sprang to his feet with an oath, but already Ellis had seen in one terrified, incredulous glance that he had missed—that a piece of palm bark hung louse perhaps three inches above Sheddon's head. With a silly, excited cry he ran towards the bush.

"I hit 'im!" he yelled. "Cripes, I hit 'im!"

When he emerged again on to the beach, Sheddon was waiting for him.

"Well, what is it you've hit?" he sneered.

"Bush pig," panted Ellis, "a big one. Stuck his nose out."

Sheddon stood looking down on him contemptuously.

"And yet you missed?"

"I tell you I hit 'im," Ellis protested, with an admirable show of indignation. "But I can't find 'im."

He felt the other's eyes fastened steadily upon him, but, like most of his kind, Ellis was a consummate actor.

"Come and have a look," he urged, glancing up with well-simulated eagerness. "He went in here."

"Oh, go to blazes!" Sheddon turned on his heel, and a sweat of relief broke out on Ellis's forehead.

That night be stuck the piece of palm bark back into its place with mud, and strolled up the beach by moonlight, to quieten his nerves. They needed soothing. He wondered now what had possessed him to be so reckless when there were so many other ways—surer, safer. To him his recent attack on a sleeping man with a rifle at twenty yards savoured of positive daring.

Up the coast some native women were spearing fish in the rock pools by torchlight. It was a pretty sight—the moving yellow lights, the inky waters, and the garish figures wading knee-deep with poised spears. Ellis watched them for some time. Then he noticed that some of the speared fish were being thrown back into the water, and he asked the reason of it. They were burotu, one of the women told him, and at certain seasons of the year burotu is poisonous. Deadly? Eo, at this season they caused a man to crumple up with pain and "take the long road" in two hours, perhaps less.

Ellis knew this to be true, and when the women had moved further up the coast, he waded into a knee-deep rock pool and thrust a stick through the gills of three dead fish.

Sheddon ate heartily that night. He always ate heartily. Ellis sat in the doorway of the guest-house, looking out to sea, every nerve in his body strung to snapping-point.

"Off your kai-kai?" bellowed Sheddon, washing down a mouthful of taro with another of "trade" whisky.

"Yes," said Ellis.

"Getting a bit sick of fish and bananas, myself," Sheddon admitted, "but a man must live. It's a corker to me how you keep alive, Fred; but that's your look-out."

"Yes," said Ellis.

Sheddon rose slowly from the mats.

"You and your 'Yeses' make me sick!" he burst out.

Ellis shrank against the door-jamb, but the other flung past him out on to the beach. There he stretched, shook himself like a mastiff, and turned up the bush track towards the village.

"It's me for a little diversion," Ellis heard him say, then a robust but tuneless whistling growing fainter and finally dying away.

Where—when would it take him? The rat sat huddled, staring out to sea.

It was about two hours later that something came crashing down the bush track. Ellis sat fascinated as it came nearer and nearer, uttering strange sounds that were neither groans nor oaths, but a mingling of both.

Presently it stumbled out into the full moonlight of the beach, and Ellis watched its writhings like one petrified. It was trying to reach him, but it never would! Ellis's lips parted in an apeish grin at the thought. Its face, twisted with pain, was turned towards him. It was trying to speak, bat it never would! There he was mistaken.

"It—was you—you—rat you!" it jerked out, then lay quite still.

It was some time before Ellis could bring himself to go near it. Somehow it seemed as terrible in death as it had been in life. At last he dared the strip of moonlit beach and, kneeling, felt the forehead—it was cold and wet; the heart—it had ceased to beat. Frenziedly he tugged loose the section of bamboo, and, rowing put to the Saluka, wrestled with the fly-wheel like a thing possessed.

Owing to the eccentric behaviour of the Saluka's engine, and his ignorance of the Islands, it was a full month before Ellis boarded the Sydney-bound steamer at Nomi. His clothes were heavily padded at the shoulders, but they failed to disguise the fact that he was as pinched and ill as ever—if not worse.

Ever since that moonlit night on Tanuva be had realised that even the makings of a murderer were not his. He was too much given to imaginings, introspection—whatever it was that caused Sheddon's face, twisted with pain, to haunt him at every turn.

Throughout the day he sat in the smoking-room, consuming countless cheap cigarettes, and trying to converse with his fellow-passengers, but finding it impossible—partly because he had nothing to say, and partly because no one seemed inclined to listen when he had.

At night, when it was hot, he carried his mattress on deck, and lay staring at the stars. A doctor at Nomi had told him to "sleep in the open air, if possible." He had not said why, but Ellis had a vague suspicion, and it filled him with a new alarm. He dreaded death with all the intensity of a weakling.

He had many companions at night. The deck and a hose at five o'clock in the morning are preferable to a cabin like an oven.

One night an extraordinary thing happened. There was a ventilator directly opposite the corner where Ellis lay, and the glow of a wired light shone upon the opening. Framed in that opening was Sneddon's face—white, moist, as it had been on the beach of Taouva. Ellis buried his head in the blankets and groaned.

"That?" said a steward the next morning. "Oh, that goes down into the hold."

Ellis took a stiff brandy, and smoked cheap cigarettes with added aridity the rest of the day. He hardly dared to think about it. It did occur to him to choose another place for his mattress, but when bed-time came—as it must to those who sleep or not—he fought the inclination desperately. If he were to be driven from pillar to post by—a face, then the end was not far off; and there were the remaining pearls, and George Street on a Saturday night—— He decided that he must draw a line somewhere, and, flinging down his mattress with a defiance born of the last brandy, he lay staring—at the ventilator.

He must have closed his eyes, for suddenly it was there, framed in the opening.

"Cripes!" breathed Ellis, and lay rigid, with creeping scalp. This was the end. It would never leave him now. Always, everywhere, it would be with him. Something seemed to snap in his head. Fear was gone, ousted by set purpose. He flung back the blankets and sat up. It was good to know of a certain way out. He grinned defiance at the face in the ventilator and scrambled to his feet. For a moment he stood in the full glare of the wired light, then walked deliberately to the ship's rail, climbed it, and plunged head foremost into the seething darkness.

*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*

But during that brief moment under the wired light Sheddon had recognised him.

A man—even a man sufficiently tough to survive burotu in the off-season—must breathe God's air occasionally, and it was only a matter of drawing himself up by the ventilator shaft cross-pieces. Thus argued Sheddon. His friend the A.B. who kept him alive, sometimes with dry hash from the steerage, sometimes with roast fowl from the saloon, had distinctly told him not to do it; but Sheddon was not in the habit of obeying others, even when they kept him alive, and towards night the stench of copra became unendurable.

He had been fully determined to run Ellis to earth, if it took a lifetime and necessitated far worse ordeals than a ship's hold, and now—the luck of it—the blind, bull-headed luck!

Sheddon wormed himself head foremost out of the ventilator and slid to the deck. With naked feet he passed noiselessly down the line of sleeping passengers, and knelt beside Ellis's mattress. If only his tuck would hold! If only—— Under the pillow his groping fingers closed on a section of bamboo.

"It's a wonderful world!" mused Sheddon, leaning back on his copra couch and staring into the odorous darkness.