"Yah! Yah! Yah!"

by Jack London

He was a whiskey-guzzling Scotchman, and he downed his whiskey neat, beginningwith his first tot punctually at six in the morning, and thereafter repeatingit at regular intervals throughout the day till bedtime, which was usuallymidnight. He slept but five hours out of the twenty-four, and for theremaining nineteen hours he was quietly and decently drunk. During the eightweeks I spent with him on Oolong Atoll, I never saw him draw a sober breath.In fact, his sleep was so short that he never had time to sober up. It was themost beautiful and orderly perennial drunk I have ever observed.McAllister was his name. He was an old man, and very shaky on his pins. Hishand trembled as with a palsy, especially noticeable when he poured hiswhiskey, though I never knew him to spill a drop. He had been twenty-eightyears in Melanesia, ranging from German New Guinea to the German Solomons, andso thoroughly had he become identified with that portion of the world, that hehabitually spoke in that bastard lingo called "bech-de-mer." Thus, inconversation with me, sun he come up meant sunrise; kai-kai he stop meant thatdinner was served; and belly belong me walk about meant that he was sick athis stomach. He was a small man, and a withered one, burned inside and outsideby ardent spirits and ardent sun. He was a cinder, a bit of a clinker of aman, a little animated clinker, not yet quite cold, that moved stiffly and bystarts and jerks like an automaton. A gust of wind would have blown him away.He weighed ninety pounds.But the immense thing about him was the power with which he ruled. OolongAtoll was one hundred and forty miles in circumference. One steered by compasscourse in its lagoon. It was populated by five thousand Polynesians, allstrapping men and women, many of them standing six feet in height and weighinga couple of hundred pounds. Oolong was two hundred and fifty miles from thenearest land. Twice a year a little schooner called to collect copra. The onewhite man on Oolong was McAllister, petty trader and unintermittent guzzler;and he ruled Oolong and its six thousand savages with an iron hand. He saidcome, and they came, go, and they went. They never questioned his will norjudgment. He was cantankerous as only an aged Scotchman can be, and interferedcontinually in their personal affairs. When Nugu, the king's daughter, wantedto marry Haunau from the other end of the atoll, her father said yes; butMcAllister said no, and the marriage never came off. When the king wanted tobuy a certain islet in the lagoon from the chief priest, McAllister said no.The king was in debt to the Company to the tune of 180,000 cocoanuts, anduntil that was paid he was not to spend a single cocoanut on anything else.And yet the king and his people did not love McAllister. In truth, they hatedhim horribly, and, to my knowledge, the whole population, with the priests atthe head, tried vainly for three months to pray him to death. The devil-devilsthey sent after him were awe-inspiring, but since McAllister did not believein devil-devils, they were without power over him. With drunken Scotchmen allsigns fail. They gathered up scraps of food which had touched his lips, anempty whiskey bottle, a cocoanut from which he had drunk, and even hisspittle, and performed all kinds of deviltries over them. But McAllister livedon. His health was superb. He never caught fever; nor coughs nor colds;dysentery passed him by; and the malignant ulcers and vile skin diseases thatattack blacks and whites alike in that climate never fastened upon him. Hemust have been so saturated with alcohol as to defy the lodgment of germs. Iused to imagine them falling to the ground in showers of microscopic cindersas fast as they entered his whiskey-sodden aura. No one loved him, not evengerms, while he loved only whiskey, and still he lived.I was puzzled. I could not understand six thousand natives putting up withthat withered shrimp of a tyrant. It was a miracle that he had not diedsuddenly long since. Unlike the cowardly Melanesians, the people werehigh-stomached and warlike. In the big graveyard, at head and feet of thegraves, were relics of past sanguinary history--blubber-spades, rusty oldbayonets and cutlasses, copper bolts, rudder-irons, harpoons, bomb guns,bricks that could have come from nowhere but a whaler's trying-out furnace,and old brass pieces of the sixteenth century that verified the traditions ofthe early Spanish navigators. Ship after ship had come to grief on Oolong. Notthirty years before, the whaler Blennerdale, running into the lagoon forrepair, had been cut off with all hands. In similar fashion had the crew ofthe Gasket, a sandalwood trader, perished. There was a big French bark, theToulon, becalmed off the atoll, which the islanders boarded after a sharptussle and wrecked in the Lipau Passage, the captain and a handful of sailorsescaping in the longboat. Then there were the Spanish pieces, which told ofthe loss of one of the early explorers. All this, of the vessels named, is amatter of history, and is to be found in the South Pacific Sailing Directory.But that there was other history, unwritten, I was yet to learn. In themeantime I puzzled why six thousand primitive savages let one degenerateScotch despot live.One hot afternoon McAllister and I sat on the veranda looking out over thelagoon, with all its wonder of jeweled colors. At our backs, across thehundred yards of palm-studded sand, the outer surf roared on the reef. It wasdreadfully warm. We were in four degree south latitude and the sun wasdirectly overhead, having crossed the Line a few days before on its journeysouth. There was no wind--not even a catspaw. The season of the southeasttrade was drawing to an early close, and the northwest monsoon had not yetbegun to blow."They can't dance worth a damn," said McAllister.I had happened to mention that the Polynesian dances were superior to thePapuan, and this McAllister had denied, for no other reason than hiscantankerousness. But it was too not to argue, and I said nothing. Besides, Ihad never seen the Oolong people dance."I'll prove it to you," he announced, beckoning to the black New Hanover boy,a labor recruit, who served as cook and general house servant. "Hey, you, boy,you tell 'm one fella king come along me."The boy departed, and back came the prime minister, perturbed, ill at ease,and garrulous with apologetic explanation. In short, the king slept, and wasnot to be disturbed."King he plenty strong fella sleep," was his final sentence.McAllister was in such a rage that the prime minister incontinently fled, toreturn with the king himself. They were a magnificent pair, the kingespecially, who must have been all of six feet three inches in height. Hisfeatures had the eagle-like quality that is so frequently found in those ofthe North American Indian. He had been molded and born to rule. His eyesflashed as he listened, but right meekly he obeyed McAllister's command tofetch a couple of hundred of the best dancers, male and female, in thevillage. And dance they did, for two mortal hours, under that broiling sun.They did not love him for it, and little he cared, in the end dismissing themwith abuse and sneers.The abject servility of those magnificent savages was terrifying. How could itbe? What was the secret of his rule? More and more I puzzled as the days wentby, and though I observed perpetual examples of his undisputed sovereignty,never a clew was there as to how it was.One day I happened to speak of my disappointment in failing to trade for abeautiful pair of orange cowries. The pair was worth five pounds in Sydney ifit was worth a cent. I had offered two hundred sticks of tobacco to the owner,who had held out for three hundred. When I casually mentioned the situation,McAllister immediately sent for the man, took the shells from him, and turnedthem over to me. Fifty sticks were all he permitted me to pay for them. Theman accepted the tobacco and seemed overjoyed at getting off so easily. As forme, I resolved to keep a bridle on my tongue in the future. And still I mulledover the secret of McAllister's power. I even went to the extent of asking himdirectly, but all he did was to cock one eye, look wise, and take anotherdrink.One night I was out fishing in the lagoon with Oti, the man who had beenmulcted of the cowries. Privily, I had made up to him an additional hundredand fifty sticks, and he had come to regard me with a respect that was almostveneration, which was curious, seeing that he was an old man, twice my age atleast."What name you fella kanaka all the same pickaninny?" I began on him. "Thisfella trader he one fella. You fella kanaka plenty fella too much. You fellakanaka just like 'm dog--plenty fright along that fella trader. He no eat you,fella. He no get 'm teeth along him. What name you too much fright?""S'pose plenty fella kanaka kill m?" he asked."He die," I retorted. "You fella kanaka kill 'm plenty fella white man longtime before. What name you fright this fella white man?""Yes, we kill 'm plenty," was his answer. "My word! Any amount! Long timebefore. One time, me young fella too much, one big fella ship he stop outside.Wind he no blow. Plenty fella kanaka we get 'm canoe, plenty fella canoe, wego catch 'm that fella ship. My word--we catch 'm big fella fight. Two, threewhite men shoot like hell. We no fright. We come alongside, we go up side,plenty fella, maybe I think fifty-ten (five hundred). One fella white Mary(woman) belong that fella ship. Never before I see 'm white Mary. Bime byplenty white man finish. One fella skipper he no die. Five fella, six fellawhite man no die. Skipper he sing out. Some fella white man he fight. Somefella white man he lower away boat. After that, all together over the sidethey go. Skipper he sling white Mary down. After that they washee (row) strongfella plenty too much. Father belong me, that time he strong fella. He throw'm one fella spear. That fella spear he go in one side that white Mary. He nostop. My word, he go out other side that fella Mary. She finish. Me nofright. Plenty kanaka too much no fright."Old Oti's pride had been touched, for he suddenly stripped down his lava-lavaand showed me the unmistakable scar of a bullet. Before I could speak, hisline ran out suddenly. He checked it and attempted to haul in, but found thatthe fish had run around a coral branch. Casting a look of reproach at me forhaving beguiled him from his watchfulness, he went over the side, feet first,turning over after he got under and following his line down to bottom. Thewater was ten fathoms. I leaned over and watched the play of his feet, growingdim and dimmer, as they stirred the wan phosphorescence into ghostly fires.Ten fathoms--sixty feet--it was nothing to him, an old man, compared with thevalue of a hook and line. After what seemed five minutes, though it could nothave been more than a minute, I saw him flaming whitely upward. He brokesurface and dropped a ten pound rock cod into the canoe, the line and hookintact, the latter still fast in the fish's mouth."It may be," I said remorselessly. "You no fright long ago. You plenty frightnow along that fella trader.""Yes, plenty fright," he confessed, with an air of dismissing the subject. Forhalf an hour we pulled up our lines and flung them out in silence. Then smallfish-sharks began to bite, and after losing a hook apiece, we hauled in andwaited for the sharks to go their way."I speak you true," Oti broke into speech, "then you savve we fright now."I lighted up my pipe and waited, and the story that Oti told me in atrociousbech-de-mer I here turn into proper English. Otherwise, in spirit and order ofnarrative, the tale is as it fell from Oti's lips."It was after that that we were very proud. We had fought many times with thestrange white men who live upon the sea, and always we had beaten them. A fewof us were killed, but what was that compared with the stores of wealth of athousand thousand kinds that we found on the ships? And then one day, maybetwenty years ago, or twenty-five, there came a schooner right through thepassage and into the lagoon. It was a large schooner with three masts. She hadfive white men and maybe forty boat's crew, black fellows from New Guinea andNew Britain; and she had come to fish beche-de-mer. She lay at anchor acrossthe lagoon from here, at Pauloo, and her boats scattered out everywhere,making camps on the beaches where they cured the beche-de-mer. This made themweak by dividing them, for those who fished here and those on the schooner atPauloo were fifty miles apart, and there were others farther away still."Our king and headmen held council, and I was one in the canoe that paddledall afternoon and all night across the lagoon, bringing word to the people ofPauloo that in the morning we would attack the fishing camps at the one timeand that it was for them to take the schooner. We who brought the word weretired with the paddling, but we took part in the attack. On the schooner weretwo white men, the skipper and the second mate, with half a dozen black boys.The skipper with three boys we caught on shore and killed, but first eight ofus the skipper killed with his two revolvers. We fought close together, yousee, at hand grapples."The noise of our fighting told the mate what was happening, and he put foodand water and a sail in the small dingy, which was so small that it was nomore than twelve feet long. We came down upon the schooner, a thousand men,covering the lagoon with our canoes. Also, we were blowing conch shells,singing war songs, and striking the sides of the canoes with our paddles. Whatchance had one white man and three black boys against us? No chance at all,and the mate knew it."White men are hell. I have watched them much, and I am an old man now, and Iunderstand at last why the white men have taken to themselves all the islandsin the sea. It is because they are hell. Here are you in the canoe with me.You are hardly more than a boy. You are not wise, for each day I tell you manythings you do not know. When I was a little pickaninny, I knew more about fishand the ways of fish than you know now. I am an old man, but I swim down tothe bottom of the lagoon, and you cannot follow me. What are you good for,anyway? I do not know, except to fight. I have never seen you fight, yet Iknow that you are like your brothers and that you will fight like hell. Also,you are a fool, like your brothers. You do not know when you are beaten. Youwill fight until you die, and then it will be too late to know that you arebeaten."Now behold what this mate did. As we came down upon him, covering the sea andblowing our conches, he put off from the schooner in the small boat, alongwith the three black boys, and rowed for the passage. There again he was afool, for no wise man would put out to sea in so small a boat. The sides of itwere not four inches above the water. Twenty canoes went after him, filledwith two hundred young men. We paddled five fathoms while his black boys wererowing one fathom. He had no chance, but he was a fool. He stood up in theboat with a rifle, and he shot many times. He was not a good shot, but as wedrew close many of us were wounded and killed. But still he had no chance."I remember that all the time he was smoking a cigar. When we were forty feetaway and coming fast, he dropped the rifle, lighted a stick of dynamite withthe cigar, and threw it at us. He lighted another and another, and threw themat us very rapidly, many of them. I know now that he must have split the endsof the fuses and stuck in match heads, because they lighted so quickly. Also,the fuses were very short. Sometimes the dynamite sticks went off in the air,but most of them went off in the canoes. And each time they went off in acanoe, that canoe was finished. Of the twenty canoes, the half were smashed topieces. The canoe I was in was so smashed, and likewise the two men who satnext to me. The dynamite fell between them. The other canoes turned and ranaway. Then that mate yelled, Yah! Yah! Yah!' at us. Also he went at us againwith his rifle, so that many were killed through the back as they fled away.And all the time the black boys in the boat went on rowing. You see, I toldyou true, that mate was hell."Nor was that all. Before he left the schooner, he set her on fire, and fixedup all the powder and dynamite so that it would go off at one time. There werehundreds of us on board, trying to put out the fire, heaving up water fromoverside, when the schooner blew up. So that all we had fought for was lost tous, besides many more of us being killed. Sometimes, even now, in my old age,I have bad dreams in which I hear that mate yell, Yah! Yah! Yah!' In a voiceof thunder he yells, Yah! Yah! Yah!' But all those in the fishing camps werekilled."The mate went out of the passage in his little boat, and that was the end ofhim we made sure, for how could so small a boat, with four men in it, live onthe ocean? A month went by, and then, one morning, between two rain squalls, aschooner sailed in through our passage and dropped anchor before the village.The king and the headmen made big talk, and it was agreed that we would takethe schooner in two or three days. In the meantime, as it was our customalways to appear friendly, we went off to her in canoes, bringing strings ofcocoanuts, fowls, and pigs, to trade. But when we were alongside, many canoesof us, the men on board began to shoot us with rifles, and as we paddled awayI saw the mate who had gone to sea in the little boat spring upon the rail anddance and yell, Yah! Yah! Yah!'"That afternoon they landed from the schooner in three small boats filled withwhite men. They went right through the village, shooting every man they saw.Also they shot the fowls and pigs. We who were not killed got away in canoesand paddled out into the lagoon. Looking back, we could see all the houses onfire. Late in the afternoon we saw many canoes coming from Nihi, which is thevillage near the Nihi Passage in the northeast. They were all that were left,and like us their village had been burned by a second schooner that had comethrough Nihi Passage."We stood on in the darkness to the westward for Pauloo, but in the middle ofthe night we heard women wailing and then we ran into a big fleet of canoes.They were all that were left of Pauloo, which likewise was in ashes, for athird schooner had come in through the Pauloo Passage. You see, that mate,with his black boys, had not been drowned. He had made the Solomon Islands,and there told his brothers of what we had done in Oolong. And all hisbrothers had said they would come and punish us, and there they were in thethree schooners, and our three villages were wiped out."And what was there for us to do? In the morning the two schooners fromwindward sailed down upon us in the middle of the lagoon. The trade wind wasblowing fresh, and by scores of canoes they ran us down. And the rifles neverceased talking. We scattered like flying fish before the bonita, and therewere so many of us that we escaped by thousands, this way and that, to theislands on the rim of the atoll."And thereafter the schooners hunted us up and down the lagoon. In thenighttime we slipped past them. But the next day, or in two days or threedays, the schooners would be coming back, hunting us toward the other end ofthe lagoon. And so it went. We no longer counted nor remembered our dead.True, we were many and they were few. But what could we do? I was in one ofthe twenty canoes filled with men who were not afraid to die. We attacked thesmallest schooner. They shot us down in heaps. They threw dynamite into thecanoes, and when the dynamite gave out, they threw hot water down upon us. Andthe rifles never ceased talking. And those whose canoes were smashed were shotas they swam away. And the mate danced up and down upon the cabin top andyelled, "Yah! Yah! Yah!'"Every house on every smallest island was burned. Not a pig nor a fowl wasleft alive. Our wells were defiled with the bodies of the slain, or elseheaped high with coral rock. We were twenty-five thousand on Oolong before thethree schooners came. Today we are five thousand. After the schooners left, wewere but three thousand, as you shall see."At last the three schooners grew tired of chasing us back and forth. So theywent, the three of them, to Nihi, in the northeast. And then they drove ussteadily to the west. Their nine boats were in the water as well. They beat upevery island as they moved along. They drove us, drove us, drove us day byday. And every night the three schooners and the nine boats made a chain ofwatchfulness that stretched across the lagoon from rim to rim, so that wecould not escape back."They could not drive us forever that way, for the lagoon was only so large,and at last all of us that yet lived were driven upon the last sand bank tothe west. Beyond lay the open sea. There were ten thousand of us, and wecovered the sand bank from the lagoon edge to the pounding surf on the otherside. No one could lie down. There was no room. We stood hip to hip andshoulder to shoulder. Two days they kept us there, and the mate would climb upin the rigging to mock us and yell, Yah! Yah! Yah!' till we were well sorrythat we had ever harmed him or his schooner a month before. We had no food,and we stood on our feet two days and nights. The little babies died, and theold and weak died, and the wounded died. And worst of all, we had no water toquench our thirst, and for two days the sun beat down on us, and there was noshade. Many men and women waded out into the ocean and were drowned, the surfcasting their bodies back on the beach. And there came a pest of flies. Somemen swam to the sides of the schooners, but they were shot to the last one.And we that lived were very sorry that in our pride we tried to take theschooner with the three masts that came to fish for beche-de-mer."On the morning of the third day came the skippers of the three schooners andthat mate in a small boat. They carried rifles, all of them, and revolvers,and they made talk. It was only that they were weary of killing us that theyhad stopped, they told us. And we told them that we were sorry, that neveragain would we harm a white man, and in token of our submission we poured sandupon our heads. And all the women and children set up a great wailing forwater, so that for some time no man could make himself heard. Then we weretold our punishment. We must fill the three schooners with copra andbeche-de-mer. And we agreed, for we wanted water, and our hearts were broken,and we knew that we were children at fighting when we fought with white menwho fight like hell. And when all the talk was finished, the mate stood up andmocked us, and yelled, Yah! Yah! Yah!' After that we paddled away in ourcanoes and sought water."And for weeks we toiled at catching beche-de-mer and curing it, in gatheringthe cocoanuts and turning them into copra. By day and night the smoke rose inclouds from all the beaches of all the islands of Oolong as we paid thepenalty of our wrongdoing. For in those days of death it was burned clearly onall our brains that it was very wrong to harm a white man."By and by, the schooners full of copra and beche-de-mer and our trees emptyof cocoanuts, the three skippers and that mate called us all together for abig talk. And they said they were very glad that we had learned our lesson,and we said for the ten-thousandth time that we were sorry and that we wouldnot do it again. Also, we poured sand upon our heads. Then the skippers saidthat it was all very well, but just to show us that they did not forget us,they would send a devil-devil that we would never forget and that we wouldalways remember any time we might feel like harming a white man. After thatthe mate mocked us one more time and yelled, Yah! Yah! Yah!' Then six of ourmen, whom we thought long dead, were put ashore from one of the schooners, andthe schooners hoisted their sails and ran out through the passage for theSolomons."The six men who were put ashore were the first to catch the devil-devil theskippers sent back after us.""A great sickness came," I interrupted, for I recognized the trick. Theschooner had had measles on board, and the six prisoners had been deliberatelyexposed to it."Yes, a great sickness," Oti went on. "It was a powerful devil-devil. Theoldest man had never heard of the like. Those of our priests that yet lived wekilled because they could not overcome the devil-devil. The sickness spread.I have said that there were ten thousand of us that stood hip to hip andshoulder to shoulder on the sandbank. When the sickness left us, there werethree thousand yet alive. Also, having made all our cocoanuts into copra,there was a famine."That fella trader," Oti concluded, "he like 'm that much dirt. He like 'mclam he die kai-kai (meat) he stop, stink 'm any amount. He like 'm one felladog, one sick fella dog plenty fleas stop along him. We no fright along thatfella trader. We fright because he white man. We savve plenty too much no goodkill white man. That one fella sick dog trader he plenty brother stop alonghim, white men like 'm you fight like hell. We no fright that damn trader.Some time he made kanaka plenty cross along him and kanaka want 'm kill m,kanaka he think devil-devil and kanaka he hear that fella mate sing out, Yah!Yah! Yah!' and kanaka no kill m."Oti baited his hook with a piece of squid, which he tore with his teeth fromthe live and squirming monster, and hook and bait sank in white flames to thebottom."Shark walk about he finish," he said. "I think we catch 'm plenty fellafish."His line jerked savagely. He pulled it in rapidly, hand under hand, and landeda big gasping rock cod in the bottom of the canoe."Sun he come up, I make 'm that dam fella trader one present big fella fish,"said Oti.

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