"Then, by Jove!" said Graves, "you have certainly come to the right place. There used to be a tree on this island, but the last man who saw it died in 1789--Gra.s.s! The place is all gra.s.s: there are fifty kinds right around my house here."
"I"ve noticed only eighteen," I said, "but that isn"t the point. The point is: when do the Batengo Island gra.s.ses begin to go to seed?" And I smiled.
"You think you"ve got me stumped, don"t you?" he said. "That a mere cable agent wouldn"t notice such things. Well, that gra.s.s there," and he pointed--"beach nut we call it--is the first to ripen seed, and, as far as I know, it does it just six weeks from now."
"Are you just making things up to impress me?"
"No, sir, I am not. I know to the minute. You see, I"m a victim of hay-fever."
"In that case," I said, "expect me back about the time your nose begins to run."
"Really?" And his whole face lighted up. "I"m delighted. Only six weeks. Why, then, if you"ll stay round for only five or six weeks _more_ you"ll be here for the wedding."
"I"ll make it if I possibly can," I said. "I want to see if that girl"s really true."
"Anything I can do to help you while you"re gone? I"ve got loads of spare time----"
"If you knew anything about gra.s.ses----"
"I don"t. But I"ll blow back into the interior and look around. I"ve been meaning to right along, just for fun. But I can never get any of _them_ to go with me."
"The natives?"
"Yes. Poor lot. They"re committing race suicide as fast as they can.
There are more wooden G.o.ds than people in Batengo village, and the superst.i.tion"s so thick you could cut it with a knife. All the manly virtues have perished.... Aloiu!"
The boy who did Graves"s ch.o.r.es for him came lazily out of the house.
"Aloiu," said Graves, "just run back into the island to the top of that hill--see?--that one over there--and fetch a handful of gra.s.s for this gentleman. He"ll give you five dollars for it."
Aloiu grinned sheepishly and shook his head.
"Fifty dollars?"
Aloiu shook his head with even more firmness, and I whistled. Fifty dollars would have made him the Rockefeller-Carnegie-Morgan of those parts.
"All right, coward," said Graves cheerfully. "Run away and play with the other children.... Now, isn"t that curious? Neither love, money, nor insult will drag one of them a mile from the beach. They say that if you go "back there in the gra.s.s" something awful will happen to you."
"As what?" I asked.
"The last man to try it," said Graves, "in the memory of the oldest inhabitant was a woman. When they found her she was all black and swollen--at least that"s what they say. Something had bitten her just above the ankle."
"Nonsense," I said, "there are no snakes in the whole Batengo group."
"They didn"t say it was a snake," said Graves. "They said the marks of the bite were like those that would be made by the teeth of a very little--child."
Graves rose and stretched himself.
"What"s the use of arguing with people that tell yarns like that! All the same, if you"re bent on making expeditions back into the gra.s.s, you"ll make "em alone, unless the cable breaks and I"m free to make "em with you."
Five weeks later I was once more coasting along the wavering hills of Batengo Island, with a sharp eye out for a first sight of the cable station and Graves. Five weeks with no company but Kanakas and a pointer dog makes one white man pretty keen for the society of another.
Furthermore, at our one meeting I had taken a great shine to Graves and to the charming young lady who was to brave a life in the South Seas for his sake. If I was eager to get ash.o.r.e, Don was more so. I had a shot-gun across my knees with which to salute the cable station, and the sight of that weapon, coupled with toothsome memories of a recent big hunt down on Forked Peak, had set the dog quivering from stem to stern, to crouching, wagging his tail till it disappeared, and beating sudden tattoos upon the deck with his forepaws. And when at last we rounded on the cable station and I let off both barrels, he began to bark and race about the schooner like a thing possessed.
The salute brought Graves out of his house. He stood on the porch waving a handkerchief, and I called to him through a megaphone; hoped that he was well, said how glad I was to see him, and asked him to meet me in Batengo village.
Even at that distance I detected a something irresolute in his manner; and a few minutes later when he had fetched a hat out of the house, locked the door, and headed toward the village, he looked more like a soldier marching to battle than a man walking half a mile to greet a friend.
"That"s funny," I said to Don. "He"s coming to meet us in spite of the fact that he"d much rather not. Oh, well!"
I left the schooner while she was still under way, and reached the beach before Graves came up. There were too many strange brown men to suit Don, and he kept very close to my legs. When Graves arrived the natives fell away from him as if he had been a leper. He wore a sort of sickly smile, and when he spoke the dog stiffened his legs and growled menacingly.
"Don!" I exclaimed sternly, and the dog cowered, but the spines along his back bristled and he kept a menacing eye upon Graves. The man"s face looked drawn and rather angry. The frank boyishness was clean out of it.
He had been strained by something or other to the breaking-point--so much was evident.
"My dear fellow," I said, "what the devil is the matter?"
Graves looked to right and left, and the islanders shrank still farther away from him.
"You can see for yourself," he said curtly. "I"m taboo." And then, with a little break in his voice: "Even your dog feels it. Don, good boy!
Come here, sir!"
Don growled quietly.
"You see!"
"Don," I said sharply, "this man is my friend and yours. Pat him, Graves."
Graves reached forward and patted Don"s head and talked to him soothingly.
But although Don did not growl or menace, he shivered under the caress and was unhappy.
"So you"re taboo!" I said cheerfully. "That"s the result of anything, from stringing pink and yellow sh.e.l.ls on the same string to murdering your uncle"s grandmother-in-law. Which have _you_ done?"
"I"ve been back there in the gra.s.s," he said, "and because--because nothing happened to me I"m taboo."
"Is that all?"
"As far as they know--yes."
"Well!" said I, "my business will take me back there for days at a time, so I"ll be taboo, too. Then there"ll be two of us. Did you find any curious gra.s.ses for me?"
"I don"t know about gra.s.ses," he said, "but I found something very curious that I want to show you and ask your advice about. Are you going to share my house?"
"I think I"ll keep head-quarters on the schooner," I said, "but if you"ll put me up now and then for a meal or for the night----"
"I"ll put you up for lunch right now," he said, "if you"ll come. I"m my own cook and bottle-washer since the taboo, but I must say the change isn"t for the worse so far as food goes."
He was looking and speaking more cheerfully.