02 South Sea Adventure (11 page)

‘If you will stand up,’ Hal said evenly, ‘I’ll tell you how it sounds.’

The big man rose. Although Hal was six feet tall, Kaggs loomed over him like a Kodiak bear standing on its hind feet. Hal swung his right fist with all his might into the oyster-slippery face above him.

Kaggs staggered backwards a few steps. He did not return the blow. His right hand crept upward under his jacket to his left shoulder and came out holding a gun.

‘You know so much about me,’ Kaggs said thickly. ‘Perhaps you don’t know I’ve killed a man for less than that.’

‘There’s nothing to stop you from repeating the performance.’

Kaggs’ eyes blazed. ‘Any more lip from you and I will. Sit down with your back to that palm log. Be quick about it! And your brother beside you. Snap into it!’

Roger looked doubtfully at his brother. Hal did not move. But both of them came suddenly to life when the gun roared. Kaggs fired two shots, one of them barely missing Hal and the other coming within a few inches of Roger. The bullets ricocheted on the rocks and went spinning off towards the ocean. The report echoed back from the reef across the lagoon. A lone gull rose from a palm stump and flew off.

The two boys thought it best to sit where they were told.

‘You wouldn’t consider putting down that gun and fighting this out man to man?’ Hal suggested.

‘Man to boy.’ sneered Kaggs. ‘I could break you apart with my two hands. But why take the trouble? I use my brains, not my muscles. If you had sense enough to do the same you’d come in with me on this deal. But since you won’t, I know who will. Omo, come over here.’

‘You won’t make any deal with Omo,’ Hal said.

Kaggs laughed harshly. ‘I never knew a native yet who couldn’t be bought. Omo, I want you to dive for me. Right now. I’ll pay you better than you were ever paid in your life. All right, get moving! Into the water!’

A slow smile came over Omo’s handsome face. ‘You are making a mistake, Mr. Kaggs,’ he said politely. ‘Perhaps your New Guinea savages can be bought, but not a man of Raiatea.’

‘You’ll do what this gun tells you to do. Get going or I’ll smear you all over the rocks.’

Omo glanced at Hal, then back at Kaggs.

‘How much will you pay me?’

‘Now you’re talking sense. I’ll pay you a fifth of all you bring up, shell or pearls.’

Omo nodded thoughtfully. ‘My gloves,’ he said. ‘They’re on that rock behind you, Mr Kaggs.’

Kaggs turned to get the gloves and Hal half-rose. Kaggs swung back to cover him with the gun.

‘Get them yourself,’ he told Omo.

Omo passed behind him. Kaggs turned sidewise and kept a watchful eye on all three of his antagonists.

Hal made a quick move that attracted Kaggs’ attention and at the same instant Omo bounded like a tiger upon the big man’s shoulders. He locked an arm about his neck. As Kaggs’ gun hand came up Omo seized the wrist and tried to squeeze the gun loose. Hal and Roger were attacking from in front.

Kaggs, straining every nerve, kept his grip on the gun and turned its muzzle to bear upon Hal.

‘Look out! The gun!’ Omo cried. He vainly struggled to twist the arm that held it. The gun blazed. The pearl trader’s previous shots had been warnings only, but this time he meant business. Only the Polynesian’s tugging on his wrist prevented the shot from reaching its mark.

Again he brought the gun to bear on Hal whose fists were methodically crashing into his face.

Omo despaired of controlling that powerful arm. But there was one thing left that he could do. He swung around his opponent’s shoulder so that he came between the gun and Hal. There was a shot and Omo fell to the ground.

Hal immediately dropped beside his friend. Vividly he remembered the night on the beach at Bikini when they had sworn loyalty to each other and had exchanged names. Omo had been true to his pledge.

Roger quit his pummelling of the giant’s solar plexus to see what had happened to Omo. Kaggs promptly disappeared.

‘Let him go,’ Hal said. He wouldn’t leave Omo now. ‘We’ll deal with him later.’

Omo lay with eyes closed. Hal felt his pulse. It was still beating. Blood trickled from his right leg some ten inches above the knee.

Hal examined the wound. There were two holes, one where the bullet had gone in, one where it had come out. The skin about the first hole was scorched with powder burns because of the close range of the firing.

The bullet had probably gone through a muscle. Luckily it had missed the artery. The wound was bleeding, but not profusely.

Hal stripped off his shirt, soaked it in the lagoon, and bathed the wound.

‘Wish we had some penicillin,’ he said, ‘or some sulfa powder.’

‘We’ve got both on the boat,’ Roger said. ‘Shall I go and get them?’

‘We could take care of him better on board. Put him in his bunk. But it would be pretty hard to carry him over this rough ground. Suppose you run the boat over here. No,

wait a minute. I think I hear the motor now.’

Sure enough, across the lagoon came the gug-gug-gug of the Kiku’s engine.

‘Kaggs is bringing it. The fellow must have a white streak in him after all.’

Out from behind an elbow of the reef came the Kiku and plodded its way across the lagoon and into the bay of pearls. Hal in the meantime had turned his shirt into a tourniquet and applied it just above the wound. He must remember to loosen it every fifteen minutes.

He could almost forgive Kaggs. Evidently the big fellow was sorry for what he had done.

‘Show him where to bring the boat up against the rocks,’ Hal called to Roger.

Then he looked up, surprised, for the motor had quit. The boat was still a hundred feet away from shore. She had almost lost momentum.

‘You’ll have to give her a little more to bring her up,’ Hal called.

Kaggs’ reply was a lazy laugh. He spun the wheel. The boat slowly turned and came to a standstill with her bow headed out towards the lagoon.

‘You’re making a slight mistake,’ Kaggs chuckled. ‘I wasn’t planning to come ashore. Just wanted to exchange a few compliments with you before I leave.’

Hal and Roger stared, unbelieving.

‘What do you mean, leave?’ demanded Hal, uneasiness crawling like a snake along his backbone.

‘Just what I say. You won’t take me up on my proposition, so I’ll have to go alone. I’ll toddle down to Ponape and get a pearling lugger and divers. Then I’ll be back.’

‘You can’t do it,’ Hal said. ‘You know you can’t navigate.’

‘What of it? Ponape is a big island. If I keep her headed south I’m pretty sure to strike it.’

‘But Omo should be taken to a doctor. He may die here. Doesn’t that concern you?’

‘Why should it?’

‘And this place…’ Hal looked about him at the hurricane-ruined island and panic shook him. ‘You can’t leave us here. We couldn’t last until you got back. There’s no food. I haven’t even seen a crab. There’s no shade, nothing to make a hut out of. There’s no water. We’d die of thirst. And you’ll go to prison.’

‘I’ve been to prison,’ Kaggs said. ‘I don’t plan to go again. That’s why I didn’t shoot all three of you dead. If anybody asks me - and I don’t suppose anybody will - I’ll just say you decided to stay on the island till I come back. If you can’t stick it out it’ll be no hair off my hide.’ His hand reached for the throttle.

‘Wait!’ called Hal. ‘At least you can do this. Reach into the first-aid kit and fling us that tube of penicillin and the can of sulfa.’

Kaggs laughed. ‘Might need them myself, old man. No telling what might happen on the perilous deep you know.’ The light breeze had been drifting the boat a little closer to shore. Suddenly Roger made a running dive into the cove and swam for the boat with swift powerful strokes. In a flash Hal was after him. If the motor failed to start at the first touch they might just make it. Exactly what they could do against an armed man when they got there they did not stop to consider.

Kaggs supped the throttle. The engine roared into life. The propeller churned. The heavy boat got under way slowly and it seemed for a moment that the boys would overtake it. Then it began to pull away faster than they could swim.

They stopped swimming and, treading water, watched the boat chug away across the lagoon. Just before it rounded the spur of rock that hid the channel to the ocean, Kaggs waved his hand.

Then there was nothing to be seen but the wake of the boat across the lagoon. And nothing to be heard but the cry

of the lone gull left by the hurricane.

‘That’s that,’ said Hal, thus mildly expressing the despair that iced his heart. They wearily swam back to the shore, crawled out onto the hot rocks, and dropped beside Omo.

Hal and Roger stared at each other in silence. It was still hard to realize what had happened to them. Their eyes travelled over the bare piles of coral blocks.

Roger began to laugh weakly. ‘I’ve always wanted to be cast away on a desert island. But I never meant it to be quite as much of a desert as this!’

Omo stirred and groaned. A wrinkle of pain went across his forehead; He opened Ms eyes. He looked up at Hal and Roger. Slowly he remembered what had happened.

‘Sorry I passed out on you.’ He tried to get up but sank back, making a wry face.

‘Better lie still,’ Hal said. Omo managed a grin. ‘What’s been going on while I’ve been snoozing? Have I missed something?’ ‘Not much. We’ve just been saying goodbye to Kaggs.’ ‘Goodbye?’

‘He’s gone - with the boat. To Ponape to get a lugger and divers.’

Now Omo’s eyes opened wide. ‘No! He must be bluffing - just trying to scare yon into making a deal with him. He’ll be back before night. He wouldn’t leave us on this reef.’

‘Wish I could think so.’

‘But it would take him at least three days to get to Ponape. He might have to stay there a week or even two before he could get a lugger and divers - they’re hard to come by. Then three or four days to come back. Does he realize what could happen to us in three weeks?’

‘I think he does. But that doesn’t worry him.’

‘Or even one week,’ said Omo, looking about at the desolation of white rocks under the blinding sun. ‘Do you know why this island is uninhabited?’

‘No - why?’

‘Because men can’t live here. Or, at least, none have been willing to try. There could never have been enough to support life here - and what little there was was smashed by the hurricane. Even the birds have no use for the place. I haven’t seen any fish in the lagoon. Roger called it Starvation Island. That’s a good name for it. Or Dead Man’s Reef.’

He closed his eyes and wrestled for a while with pain. Then he looked up and smiled.

‘I shouldn’t talk that way. Guess it was just because I felt weak. Of course we can make a go of it - somehow. But there’s a lot to do. I can’t lie here taking my ease.’ He struggled to a sitting position.

‘You lie down!’ said Hal sharply. ‘Now see what you’ve done - started it bleeding again. And we don’t have any medicine.’

‘Luckily that’s where you’re wrong,’ Omo said weakly. ‘This is a medicine chest that I have my head on.’ His head rested on a palm log.

‘What can we do with that?’

‘Take your knife, Hal, and scrape the bark. Scrape it fine so as to make a powder. Then put it on. It’s astringent. It will stop the bleeding.’

‘But is it antiseptic?’

‘Oh yes. The sun has sterilized it.’

Hal had often heard of the skilful use the Polynesians make of herbs, grasses, roots, and trees for medical purposes, but had not expected to find a medicine chest under his patient’s head.

He scraped until he had a plentiful supply of the powdered bark of the coconut palm and then applied it to the wound, binding it in place with a strip torn from his shirt which was serving as a tourniquet.

Hal put his hand on Omo’s forehead. It was hot. Omo was tossing feverishly.

‘We’ve got to get him into the shade,’ Hal told Roger. Squinting to protect their eyes from the glare they scanned the island. The blazing rocks laughed back at them.

There was a band of shade cast by a palm stump. They laid Omo in it. It was better than nothing, although as the sun travelled across the sky they would have to keep shifting the patient. ‘Somehow we’ll have to build a shelter,’ Hal said. Roger laughed bitterly. ‘Fat chance!’ But he got up at once and began to search the island for building materials. Omo was muttering and Hal bent down to hear what he was saying.

1 hope that what I said didn’t worry you, Hal. We can manage all right. After all, it won’t be long. A week or two, or three, and he’ll be back. He can find it okay - he’s got the log to go by. It isn’t as if he weren’t coming back. That would be tough. No ships ever come by here. We could rot. But there’s no need to worry about that - he’ll be back.’

‘Yes, Omo,’ Hal said- ‘Now see if you can snatch some sleep.’

A terrible chill settled upon Hal’s heart. He alone knew that Kaggs would never come back.

Kaggs had the log to go by. What a bitter joke that was! Hal had intended it to be a joke on Kaggs. It had turned into a joke on himself and his two companions. A joke that might cost them their lives.

The bearings in the log were a hundred miles off. Finding no island there, Kaggs would not have the slightest idea in what direction to sail. The chances would be a thousand to one, perhaps a million to one, against his finding Pearl Lagoon. He might hunt for it for months, or years, without success. He could come within a few miles of it without seeing it. Nowhere did the reef rise more than ten feet above sea level and there was not a tree left standing. At a short distance the white reef might be mistaken for a wind ripple on the ocean’s surface.

And even if Kaggs did by a miracle come upon the island after perhaps a year of search, what good would it do them ? He would find their white bones among the rocks. Perhaps Kaggs had not actually meant them to die here.

Perhaps he had intended to get back before they perished. But Hal had fixed it so that he would not get back.

Would Roger and Omo blame him when they knew that he had signed their death warrants? They would try not to, but could they help it as they lay dying of starvation and thirst on this horrible white skeleton of coral rock?