Chapter VII--A Hard-Bitten Gang

by Jack London

　　Joan took hold of the household with no uncertain grip,revolutionizing things till Sheldon hardly recognized the place.For the first time the bungalow was clean and orderly. No longerthe house-boys loafed and did as little as they could; while thecook complained that "head belong him walk about too much," fromthe strenuous course in cookery which she put him through. Nor didSheldon escape being roundly lectured for his laziness in eatingnothing but tinned provisions. She called him a muddler and aslouch, and other invidious names, for his slackness and hisdisregard of healthful food.

　　She sent her whale-boat down the coast twenty miles for limes andoranges, and wanted to know scathingly why said fruits had not longsince been planted at Berande, while he was beneath contemptbecause there was no kitchen garden. Mummy apples, which he hadregarded as weeds, under her guidance appeared as appetizingbreakfast fruit, and, at dinner, were metamorphosed into puddingsthat elicited his unqualified admiration. Bananas, foraged fromthe bush, were served, cooked and raw, a dozen different ways, eachone of which he declared was better than any other. She or hersailors dynamited fish daily, while the Balesuna natives were paidtobacco for bringing in oysters from the mangrove swamps. Herachievements with cocoanuts were a revelation. She taught the cookhow to make yeast from the milk, that, in turn, raised light andairy bread. From the tip-top heart of the tree she concocted adelicious salad. From the milk and the meat of the nut she madevarious sauces and dressings, sweet and sour, that were served,according to preparation, with dishes that ranged from fish topudding. She taught Sheldon the superiority of cocoanut cream overcondensed cream, for use in coffee. From the old and sproutingnuts she took the solid, spongy centres and turned them intosalads. Her forte seemed to be salads, and she astonished him withthe deliciousness of a salad made from young bamboo shoots. Wildtomatoes, which had gone to seed or been remorselessly hoed outfrom the beginning of Berande, were foraged for salads, soups, andsauces. The chickens, which had always gone into the bush andhidden their eggs, were given laying-bins, and Joan went outherself to shoot wild duck and wild pigeons for the table.

　　"Not that I like to do this sort of work," she explained, inreference to the cookery; "but because I can't get away from Dad'straining."

　　Among other things, she burned the pestilential hospital,quarrelled with Sheldon over the dead, and, in anger, set her ownmen to work building a new, and what she called a decent, hospital.She robbed the windows of their lawn and muslin curtains, replacingthem with gaudy calico from the trade-store, and made herselfseveral gowns. When she wrote out a list of goods and clothing forherself, to be sent down to Sydney by the first steamer, Sheldonwondered how long she had made up her mind to stay.

　　She was certainly unlike any woman he had ever known or dreamed of.So far as he was concerned she was not a woman at all. She neitherlanguished nor blandished. No feminine lures were wasted on him.He might have been her brother, or she his brother, for all sex hadto do with the strange situation. Any mere polite gallantry on hispart was ignored or snubbed, and he had very early given upoffering his hand to her in getting into a boat or climbing over alog, and he had to acknowledge to himself that she was eminentlyfitted to take care of herself. Despite his warnings aboutcrocodiles and sharks, she persisted in swimming in deep water offthe beach; nor could he persuade her, when she was in the boat, tolet one of the sailors throw the dynamite when shooting fish. Sheargued that she was at least a little bit more intelligent thanthey, and that, therefore, there was less liability of an accidentif she did the shooting. She was to him the most masculine and atthe same time the most feminine woman he had ever met.

　　A source of continual trouble between them was the disagreementover methods of handling the black boys. She ruled by sternkindness, rarely rewarding, never punishing, and he had to confessthat her own sailors worshipped her, while the house-boys were herslaves, and did three times as much work for her as he had ever gotout of them. She quickly saw the unrest of the contract labourers,and was not blind to the danger, always imminent, that both she andSheldon ran. Neither of them ever ventured out without a revolver,and the sailors who stood the night watches by Joan's grass housewere armed with rifles. But Joan insisted that this reign ofterror had been caused by the reign of fear practised by the whitemen. She had been brought up with the gentle Hawaiians, who neverwere ill-treated nor roughly handled, and she generalized that theSolomon Islanders, under kind treatment, would grow gentle.

　　One evening a terrific uproar arose in the barracks, and Sheldon,aided by Joan's sailors, succeeded in rescuing two women whom theblacks were beating to death. To save them from the vengeance ofthe blacks, they were guarded in the cook-house for the night.They were the two women who did the cooking for the labourers, andtheir offence had consisted of one of them taking a bath in the bigcauldron in which the potatoes were boiled. The blacks were notoutraged from the standpoint of cleanliness; they often took bathsin the cauldrons themselves. The trouble lay in that the batherhad been a low, degraded, wretched female; for to the SolomonIslander all females are low, degraded, and wretched.

　　Next morning, Joan and Sheldon, at breakfast, were aroused by aswelling murmur of angry voices. The first rule of Berande hadbeen broken. The compound had been entered without permission orcommand, and all the two hundred labourers, with the exception ofthe boss-boys, were guilty of the offence. They crowded up,threatening and shouting, close under the front veranda. Sheldonleaned over the veranda railing, looking down upon them, while Joanstood slightly back. When the uproar was stilled, two brothersstood forth. They were large men, splendidly muscled, and withfaces unusually ferocious, even for Solomon Islanders. One wasCarin-Jama, otherwise The Silent; and the other was Bellin-Jama,The Boaster. Both had served on the Queensland plantations in theold days, and they were known as evil characters wherever white menmet and gammed.

　　"We fella boy we want 'm them dam two black fella Mary," saidBellin-Jama.

　　"What you do along black fella Mary?" Sheldon asked.

　　"Kill 'm," said Bellin-Jama.

　　"What name you fella boy talk along me?" Sheldon demanded, with ashow of rising anger. "Big bell he ring. You no belong alonghere. You belong along field. Bime by, big fella bell he ring,you stop along kai-kai, you come talk along me about two fellaMary. Now all you boy get along out of here."

　　The gang waited to see what Bellin-Jama would do, and Bellin-Jamastood still.

　　"Me no go," he said.

　　"You watch out, Bellin-Jama," Sheldon said sharply, "or I send youalong Tulagi one big fella lashing. My word, you catch 'm strongfella."

　　Bellin-Jama glared up belligerently.

　　"You want 'm fight," he said, putting up his fists in approved,returned-Queenslander style.

　　Now, in the Solomons, where whites are few and blacks are many, andwhere the whites do the ruling, such an offer to fight is thedeadliest insult. Blacks are not supposed to dare so highly as tooffer to fight a white man. At the best, all they can look for isto be beaten by the white man.

　　A murmur of admiration at Bellin-Jama's bravery went up from thelistening blacks. But Bellin-Jama's voice was still ringing in theair, and the murmuring was just beginning, when Sheldon cleared therail, leaping straight downward. From the top of the railing tothe ground it was fifteen feet, and Bellin-Jama was directlybeneath. Sheldon's flying body struck him and crushed him toearth. No blows were needed to be struck. The black had beenknocked helpless. Joan, startled by the unexpected leap, sawCarin-Jama, The Silent, reach out and seize Sheldon by the throatas he was half-way to his feet, while the five-score blacks surgedforward for the killing. Her revolver was out, and Carin-Jama letgo his grip, reeling backward with a bullet in his shoulder. Inthat fleeting instant of action she had thought to shoot him in thearm, which, at that short distance, might reasonably have beenachieved. But the wave of savages leaping forward had changed hershot to the shoulder. It was a moment when not the slightestchance could be taken.

　　The instant his throat was released, Sheldon struck out with hisfist, and Carin-Jama joined his brother on the ground. The mutinywas quelled, and five minutes more saw the brothers being carriedto the hospital, and the mutineers, marshalled by the gang-bosses,on the way to the fields.

　　When Sheldon came up on the veranda, he found Joan collapsed on thesteamer-chair and in tears. The sight unnerved him as the row justover could not possibly have done. A woman in tears was to him anembarrassing situation; and when that woman was Joan Lackland, fromwhom he had grown to expect anything unexpected, he was reallyfrightened. He glanced down at her helplessly, and moistened hislips.

　　"I want to thank you," he began. "There isn't a doubt but what yousaved my life, and I must say--"

　　She abruptly removed her hands, showing a wrathful and tear-stainedface.

　　"You brute! You coward!" she cried. "You have made me shoot aman, and I never shot a man in my life before."

　　"It's only a flesh-wound, and he isn't going to die," Sheldonmanaged to interpolate.

　　"What of that? I shot him just the same. There was no need foryou to jump down there that way. It was brutal and cowardly."

　　"Oh, now I say--" he began soothingly.

　　"Go away. Don't you see I hate you! hate you! Oh, won't you goaway!"

　　Sheldon was white with anger.

　　"Then why in the name of common sense did you shoot?" he demanded.

　　"Be-be-because you were a white man," she sobbed. "And Dad wouldnever have left any white man in the lurch. But it was your fault.You had no right to get yourself in such a position. Besides, itwasn't necessary."

　　"I am afraid I don't understand," he said shortly, turning away."We will talk it over later on."

　　"Look how I get on with the boys," she said, while he paused in thedoorway, stiffly polite, to listen. "There's those two sick boys Iam nursing. They will do anything for me when they get well, and Iwon't have to keep them in fear of their life all the time. It isnot necessary, I tell you, all this harshness and brutality. Whatif they are cannibals? They are human beings, just like you andme, and they are amenable to reason. That is what distinguishesall of us from the lower animals."

　　He nodded and went out.

　　"I suppose I've been unforgivably foolish," was her greeting, whenhe returned several hours later from a round of the plantation."I've been to the hospital, and the man is getting along all right.It is not a serious hurt."

　　Sheldon felt unaccountably pleased and happy at the changed aspectof her mood.

　　"You see, you don't understand the situation," he began. "In thefirst place, the blacks have to be ruled sternly. Kindness is allvery well, but you can't rule them by kindness only. I accept allthat you say about the Hawaiians and the Tahitians. You say thatthey can be handled that way, and I believe you. I have had noexperience with them. But you have had no experience with theblacks, and I ask you to believe me. They are different from yournatives. You are used to Polynesians. These boys are Melanesians.They're blacks. They're niggers--look at their kinky hair. Andthey're a whole lot lower than the African niggers. Really, youknow, there is a vast difference."

　　"They possess no gratitude, no sympathy, no kindliness. If you arekind to them, they think you are a fool. If you are gentle withthem they think you are afraid. And when they think you areafraid, watch out, for they will get you. Just to show you, let mestate the one invariable process in a black man's brain when, onhis native heath, he encounters a stranger. His first thought isone of fear. Will the stranger kill him? His next thought, seeingthat he is not killed, is: Can he kill the stranger? There wasPackard, a Colonial trader, some twelve miles down the coast. Heboasted that he ruled by kindness and never struck a blow. Theresult was that he did not rule at all. He used to come down inhis whale-boat to visit Hughie and me. When his boat's crewdecided to go home, he had to cut his visit short to accompanythem. I remember one Sunday afternoon when Packard had acceptedour invitation to stop to dinner. The soup was just served, whenHughie saw a nigger peering in through the door. He went out tohim, for it was a violation of Berande custom. Any nigger has tosend in word by the house-boys, and to keep outside the compound.This man, who was one of Packard's boat's-crew, was on the veranda.And he knew better, too. 'What name?' said Hughie. 'You tell 'mwhite man close up we fella boat's-crew go along. He no come now,we fella boy no wait. We go.' And just then Hughie fetched him aclout that knocked him clean down the stairs and off the veranda."

　　"But it was needlessly cruel," Joan objected. "You wouldn't treata white man that way."

　　"And that's just the point. He wasn't a white man. He was a lowblack nigger, and he was deliberately insulting, not alone his ownwhite master, but every white master in the Solomons. He insultedme. He insulted Hughie. He insulted Berande."

　　"Of course, according to your lights, to your formula of the ruleof the strong--"

　　"Yes," Sheldon interrupted, "but it was according to the formula ofthe rule of the weak that Packard ruled. And what was the result?I am still alive. Packard is dead. He was unswervingly kind andgentle to his boys, and his boys waited till one day he was downwith fever. His head is over on Malaita now. They carried awaytwo whale-boats as well, filled with the loot of the store. Thenthere was Captain Mackenzie of the ketch Minota. He believed inkindness. He also contended that better confidence was establishedby carrying no weapons. On his second trip to Malaita, recruiting,he ran into Bina, which is near Langa Langa. The rifles with whichthe boat's-crew should have been armed, were locked up in hiscabin. When the whale-boat went ashore after recruits, he paradedaround the deck without even a revolver on him. He was tomahawked.His head remains in Malaita. It was suicide. So was Packard'sfinish suicide."

　　"I grant that precaution is necessary in dealing with them," Joanagreed; "but I believe that more satisfactory results can beobtained by treating them with discreet kindness and gentleness."

　　"And there I agree with you, but you must understand one thing.Berande, bar none, is by far the worst plantation in the Solomonsso far as the labour is concerned. And how it came to be so provesyour point. The previous owners of Berande were not discreetlykind. They were a pair of unadulterated brutes. One was a down-east Yankee, as I believe they are called, and the other was aguzzling German. They were slave-drivers. To begin with, theybought their labour from Johnny Be-blowed, the most notoriousrecruiter in the Solomons. He is working out a ten years' sentencein Fiji now, for the wanton killing of a black boy. During hislast days here he had made himself so obnoxious that the natives onMalaita would have nothing to do with him. The only way he couldget recruits was by hurrying to the spot whenever a murder orseries of murders occurred. The murderers were usually only toowilling to sign on and get away to escape vengeance. Down herethey call such escapes, 'pier-head jumps.' There is suddenly aroar from the beach, and a nigger runs down to the water pursued byclouds of spears and arrows. Of course, Johnny Be-blowed's whale-boat is lying ready to pick him up. In his last days Johnny gotnothing but pier-head jumps.

　　"And the first owners of Berande bought his recruits--a hard-bittengang of murderers. They were all five-year boys. You see, therecruiter has the advantage over a boy when he makes a pier-headjump. He could sign him on for ten years did the law permit.Well, that's the gang of murderers we've got on our hands now. Ofcourse some are dead, some have been killed, and there are othersserving sentences at Tulagi. Very little clearing did those firstowners do, and less planting. It was war all the time. They hadone manager killed. One of the partners had his shoulder slashednearly off by a cane-knife. The other was speared on two differentoccasions. Both were bullies, wherefore there was a streak ofcowardice in them, and in the end they had to give up. They werechased away--literally chased away--by their own niggers. Andalong came poor Hughie and me, two new chums, to take hold of thathard-bitten gang. We did not know the situation, and we had boughtBerande, and there was nothing to do but hang on and muddle throughsomehow.

　　"At first we made the mistake of indiscreet kindness. We tried torule by persuasion and fair treatment. The niggers concluded thatwe were afraid. I blush to think of what fools we were in thosefirst days. We were imposed on, and threatened and insulted; andwe put up with it, hoping our square-dealing would soon mendthings. Instead of which everything went from bad to worse. Thencame the day when Hughie reprimanded one of the boys and was nearlykilled by the gang. The only thing that saved him was the numberon top of him, which enabled me to reach the spot in time.

　　"Then began the rule of the strong hand. It was either that orquit, and we had sunk about all our money into the venture, and wecould not quit. And besides, our pride was involved. We hadstarted out to do something, and we were so made that we just hadto go on with it. It has been a hard fight, for we were, and areto this day, considered the worst plantation in the Solomons fromthe standpoint of labour. Do you know, we have been unable to getwhite men in. We've offered the managership to half a dozen. Iwon't say they were afraid, for they were not. But they did notconsider it healthy--at least that is the way it was put by thelast one who declined our offer. So Hughie and I did the managingourselves."

　　"And when he died you were prepared to go on all alone!" Joancried, with shining eyes.

　　"I thought I'd muddle through. And now, Miss Lackland, please becharitable when I seem harsh, and remember that the situation isunparalleled down here. We've got a bad crowd, and we're makingthem work. You've been over the plantation and you ought to know.And I assure you that there are no better three-and-four-years-oldtrees on any other plantation in the Solomons. We have workedsteadily to change matters for the better. We've been slowlygetting in new labour. That is why we bought the Jessie. Wewanted to select our own labour. In another year the time will beup for most of the original gang. You see, they were recruitedduring the first year of Berande, and their contracts expire ondifferent months. Naturally, they have contaminated the new boysto a certain extent; but that can soon be remedied, and thenBerande will be a respectable plantation."

　　Joan nodded but remained silent. She was too occupied in glimpsingthe vision of the one lone white man as she had first seen him,helpless from fever, a collapsed wraith in a steamer-chair, who, upto the last heart-beat, by some strange alchemy of race, waspledged to mastery.

　　"It is a pity," she said. "But the white man has to rule, Isuppose."

　　"I don't like it," Sheldon assured her. "To save my life I can'timagine how I ever came here. But here I am, and I can't runaway."

　　"Blind destiny of race," she said, faintly smiling. "We whiteshave been land robbers and sea robbers from remotest time. It isin our blood, I guess, and we can't get away from it."

　　"I never thought about it so abstractly," he confessed. "I've beentoo busy puzzling over why I came here."