Chapter 3

It was one month to the day since Captain West and the good ship Salvation had been deposited on the shores of Chase Island. The day started with Gash severely beating one of the men who had loaned him a wife. He had left the man with a scar like the one that had earned him his name. Afterwards, he ran down to the boat to get away from the injured man’s relatives. Retribution was sure to follow.

The Englishman and the other two crewmen were putting the finishing touches on the yawl in preparation for their departure. They had loaded breadfruit, bananas, and coconuts aboard and filled the water casks themselves, since the boat was still taboo to the natives. West was aware of raised voices that carried from the village and a number of belligerent looking men, who were carrying war spears.

They were addressing the elders, and Ooma was trying to quiet them down. Yani sat with the men who were not involved and listened to the arguments. It was quite simple: it was clear the Witmen were getting ready to leave the island, but they had not cleared up their accounts. The sailors had had sex with the wives of these men numerous times. All they had received in return was some tobacco, and a small amount of whiskey that was left in some of the bottles that were stored on board.

“What is it you want from the Witmen?” Ooma asked.

“We have decided that we should each receive one pig,” one of the self-appointed spokesmen said. “It is only fair. They have used our women for their pleasure for a full turn of the moon.”

“They have no pigs,” Ooma pointed out. “They had nothing when they came here, and are leaving with food we have provided. We are better off with them out of our village.”

The same young warrior that made a similar suggestion when they arrived, again proposed “I am pooja. I must not be dishonored by ‘trash men.’ I say we should take their heads.”

This time the reaction of the crowd indicated that they liked the idea. “We have not had a battle with an enemy in many years,” an older warrior said loudly. “We have been dishonored, and their spirits deserve to be ours.”

“I agree. Let’s take their heads in payment.”

“Then Kilibob’s boat will become ours. We can go to their island and bring back all their gifts,” said a man who had heard the story Ooma now told on a regular basis during kava sessions.

“They have a rifle,” Ooma cautioned. “You have seen what it can do to coconuts. I have seen what it can do to a man.”

“I have whispered my secret protection into the paint that covers my shield,” one of the men said. “Their rifle will be useless against my spirit protection.”

“Manup told me in a dream that we should kill them,” still another voice said.

Yani got up and slipped away from the heated discussion. He headed down to the boat and went directly to West. “You owe men pigs. You not have pigs. They take your heads,” he told him in Pidgin. “They will be here in a short time.”

“Let them come,” West boasted, slapping a cartridge into the chamber of the rifle propped against the side of the boat. “I’ll shoot any bloody spear-chucker that has the guts to come out to the beach.”

Gash, Shim-shi and Bano looked worried. They did not share West’s confidence. “We only have a few minutes to get clear of the reef while the tide is high enough,” Shim-shi said. “We go chop-chop.”

Bano and Gash jumped down from the deck where they had been running up the main sail. They started shoving the hull of the boat up and out of the sand that held it. Shim-shi was waist-high in shallow waves and pulling on a rope in an effort to get the sailboat into deeper water.

West watched the edge of the jungle and saw the pooja were lining up with their spears and shields at the ready. A charge was about to be mounted.

“Yani! Get up here on deck with me,” West yelled.

“Boat taboo. No can touch boat,” Yani replied.

“Fuck the taboo. I said get up here.” He fired a round into the sand next to where Yani stood. In fear, he fell to the ground, and from the jungle, it looked as though West had shot him.

Ooma was shocked. He regarded Yani as a son. “Pooja! Pooja! Pooja!” he shrieked.

The warriors let loose a flight of spears that gave the impression of a flock of birds taking off from the jungle. They all fell short by a couple yards.

Pointing to the fallen Yani, West called out, “Gash, drag him over here to the boat. We’ll use him as a hostage. We’ll use him for a shield.”

Gash was a large and strong man. He literally picked Yani up by the thick mop of red hair on the top of his head and handed the frightened youth to West. The Captain dragged him up on deck by the hair and forced him to his feet. He held the young islander in front of him as he fired a shot at the line of dark-skinned men slowly advancing toward the lagoon. One fell. They all stopped momentarily and looked. It was the man whose shield was covered with the bulletproof paint.

West kicked Yani’s feet out from under him, and gave him a quick butt stroke with the rifle, knocking him out. This freed his hands so he could reload his rifle again. His second shot found a second victim.

However, it was also the signal for another hail of spears. Gash was just clamoring aboard when a slender, barbed spear pierced his arm and he lost his grip. But, at the same moment, a breeze magically billowed the mainsail, and the Salvation briskly pulled out into the deeper water, and headed for the flooded reef. Shim-shi climbed up the rope on to the deck, where he found Bano already frantically working the tiller. In a surprising display of seamanship and luck, West headed his craft toward the shallow opening in the reef. He cleared it with only inches to spare.

The salt spray splashed on Yani’s face, restoring him to consciousness. When he figured out where he was, he looked over the gunnels toward the shore. He could see Ooma waving something at the departing Witmen. It was Gash’s head.

***

For most of his first day on the small boat, Yani just sat on the deck and looked at the water. He had been off the island on an outrigger, but never out of sight of land. He knew that to the south of Chase were islands with other people. They came on occasion to trade, and then paddled out of sight again. Being out on this magnificent, endless blue sea with no land on the horizon was frightening. He also knew they weren’t going south; they were going toward the setting sun.

J.R. West paid little attention to Yani and when he did, no doubt gave thought to throwing him overboard to save on food and water. Shim-shi offered him a cup of water and a banana in the middle of the afternoon. Of his three shipmates, the Korean was the friendliest. He put his hand on the islander’s shoulder and said things in his native language that had a reassuring tone.

“If you plan to keep him as a pet,” West said sarcastically, you better teach him to do some useful tricks. This is too big a boat for just the three of us.” Short of an emergency, the Englishman was too busy being Captain to do any physical labor himself. Bano was the helmsman, and Shim-shi wrestled with the ragged sails. Nothing had been done to improve the condition of the boat while they were on the island. For one thing, there was no usable material on the island to work with. From their conversations, Yani had determined that they had run out of water two days before he found the boat drifting into Chase Island’s lagoon. Like fools, they had drunk large amounts of gin and whiskey with the net result of dehydration and heat stroke. The liquor had come from their last port of call where (Gash had boasted) they had killed a trading post operator and two native employees. In their hasty departure, they took all the food and liquor they could carry, but no water. Then, as now, they set sail for wherever the wind might take them.

At first, the Chase islander did not understand the theory or principles of sailing, but worked the ropes as Shim-shi showed him. In a matter of a few days, he was quite at home and resigned to the new adventure that lay before him. Bano taught him how to open the cans of food from the storage locker in the galley, which he did whenever he had the chance. He was disappointed to find that some of them contained vegetables and usually left those uneaten.

Aside from keeping the boat heading westward, there was little to do but talk. Yani liked his new-found language, a sing-song mélange of words from everywhere. He had a very strange introduction to the ways of the Witmen, and he found that he could convey ideas that were foreign to his native dialect.

For five days, the little boat corrected its course each evening by steering into the setting sun. With its four-man crew it went from one small, uninhabited atoll to another. They were looking for anyone who could tell them where they were, and were ready to beg, trade, or preferably steal what they wanted.

Late in the afternoon, they spotted a fairly large island on the horizon, and the crew members cheered. One that size had to have people on it — hopefully white people.