Bennet Copplestone

“ Captain Ching, it sticks in my mind that my patience and courtesy towards that stranger will fail me, and that he will get hurt. When I saw him sitting opposite Willatopy in this room, making free with my yacht and my wine, my hand went to my gun. He saw death in my eyes, and wilted."
"It is a job for us, not for you," said Ching deliberately. "Shall we take him out into the Straits—and lose him? Not a man aboard of us would give away the secret. My conscience would not worry me. I would as soon drown that devil as a rat." ”

“ Man, you did not know what perils you called up when you had yourself cast on this Island of Tops. Do not, I implore you, repeat in the hearing of my sailors this preposterous story of Willatopy's Heirship. For the moment they are my servants, but in blood and bone they are the feudal retainers of the Family of Toppys. The little fingers of my sailors are thicker than Willatopy's loins. You have felt the scorpion sting of his fish spear; you have yet to feel the searing shattering blast from the Humming Top's guns. ”

“ I am free to help or to hinder, at my pleasure."
"We are all at Madame Gilbert's pleasure," said Toppys, smiling. "We know, you and I, that Roger Gatepath is two parts flunkey, one quarter fool, and the other quarter unscrupulous lawyer. He cares for nothing except for the connections and profits of his firm. He would lick the new Lord Topsham's tawny feet if he did not fear to lose some handfuls from my golden pile. I do not value the Barony at a rush for myself, but there is in my blood a centuries-old reverence for my Family. ”

“ Madame, a hardy investigator and always frank in her dealings with mankind, tackled Willatopy, the brother of Joy and Cry, and the lover of numberless brown girls whom his blue eyes vanquished at sight.
"My brown girls, they are nothing," declared this easy-mannered Don Juan, "but Joy and Cry are the daughters of my father, the Great White Chief. They are not meat for the scum of Baru. The boys here, what are they but tillers of my garden when they work and whipping blocks for my stick when they don't? I am rich, I do not work. ”

“ Men do not marry widows in the Torres Straits."
"So that is the trouble. I am a widow, and therefore disreputable. Willie, dear, when I think how much you have to learn about the ways of white men and women, my heart fails because of you. You will have a very, very, rotten time in England. Clifford is your white slave, and Marie is, or was, your white mistress. You have made a very bad beginning, and a beginning most unfortunate for you. You think, no doubt, that all white men will be your slaves and all white women will be at your pleasure. ”

“ There is not a finer hut in the islands."
"In England you would have big houses, not huts," said Clifford. "Big houses with many rooms."
"I do not like English houses," said Willatopy. "The walls are iron and roofs are iron. They are painted white and glare in the sun. I have seen them on Thursday Island."
"Those are not real houses, my lord. Your lordship's chief house in Devonshire has red stone walls and a roof of burnt clay tiles. It is a splendid house, hundreds of years old. Green ivy grows upon the walls. There are many servants in the house and in the gardens; white servants." ”

“ A shark must attack its prey belly upwards, and strike from below; if its mouth were in its snout like a crocodile's it would be a much more dangerous foe. The shark rolled over and struck upwards. Willatopy's head vanished, his brown body curled over lazily, and he dived exactly as a dolphin dives. A long swooping flash downwards. The shark broke the surface where Willie's head had been, and Willatopy reappeared where the black fin had been. Shark and boy had changed places, and, if Madame had been nearer, she might have seen the grin spread out on Willatopy's face. ”

“ In a moment more the visitor had caught a line which was deftly thrown to him from the yacht, reeved it through a ringbolt by his bowsprit, hauled his little vessel half round, and sprang, active as a monkey, up the seven feet of freeboard to the Humming Top's rail. His deserted yawl trailed away at the end of the line, and her late skipper and crew, now aboard the Humming Top, strolled forrard grinning capaciously. It could now be seen that though clad in the white Palm Beach trousers, and fine cotton shirt of an Englishman, he was a dark-skinned, frizzy-haired Melanesian. ”

“ You philandered with the pretty pale-skinned Widow Toppys. She responded to your advances. It is of no use for you to shake your head. I know men, men of your susceptible age, and I know widows. I am one myself. Am I not always sweetly responsive to your fascinating middle-aged sex? You aroused the jealousy of Willatopy, and he, a wise and dutiful son—who also appears to understand, widows—put you to rout with his spear. Never again dare you appear on the Island of Willatopy. ”

“ She is just an ordinary widow, not a real lady like I should be if you married me, Willie."
"What is that?" cried Willatopy, starting up. "Madame Gilbert a widow? She told me she had a big handsome husband who loved her very much. She told me so when I said that I would like to marry her. I was a boy then, and had not become Lord Topsham."
"Madame Gilbert is not truthful—like me. She says any old thing which suits her at the moment. Sometimes she tells men that she has a husband, sometimes that she is a widow. She is really a widow, I swear it to you. Her husband was killed in the war." ”

“ Before the slow-witted Skipper could take in this astonishing situation, Alexander Ewing burst through the ring of sailors which had clustered about the door. A rumour had flown through the ship that Madame Gilbert was dead. Alexander burst into her cabin, white and shaking, for he loved her.
The air still reeked with the acrid taste of burnt cordite, and for a moment Alexander could see no more of Madame than a glorious mass of copper tresses on the white pillow beyond Willie's shoulder. He groaned "Is she dead? Is our Madame really dead?" ”

“ Time passed, the sun rose higher and higher in the sky, the launch rolled lazily in the back wash of the Pacific swell, but Willatopy went on oblivious playing his turtle. He could not increase the strain lest the line be torn out of the remora's back. I cannot believe, in spite of Willie's assurances to Madame, that the remora itself really enjoyed the sport. A small fish with a string tied round its tail—and also rove through a hole in its back—and perpetually hauled upon by a heavy check winch, could not have been wholly comfortable. ”

“ We are weak men, but there is nothing sinful in our love for you. Ching here, says little though he thinks a lot; and I say, maybe, more even than I think. But, believe me, Madame, we both of us love you from your bonny red hair to your dainty feet—which twinkle so sweetly over the sand when you come from your bath—and we would lay down our lives to presairve you from har-r-m. Willatopy would not have gone away to England without asking for your leave and bidding you farewell. ”

“ I love you, Marie, but love has nothing to do with making you my wife. I don't want a wife. When the King sends for me he will send for William, Lord Topsham, not for my wife. You and Madame Gilbert are the only white women I have known, close. I want to see other white women, lots of them, before I marry a wife. John says that they will all be my slaves in England, and that I can take my pick among them. ”

“ I was bringing him to England to put him in his place, and yet I am glad that Fate interposed. White blood drags down more than it uplifts. Willatopy in his own island, before the fatal knowledge of his succession reached him, was a simple, gallant, charming boy. Would to God that so he could have remained. But those very qualities, which made him so admirable as a savage youth, dragged him into the pit of degeneracy. ”

“ A spice of adventurous illegality adds zest to an enterprise. But I won't go to the scaffold or the prison for all the mouldy Toppyses who were ever hatched through the centuries. And though I accept nothing but limited liability, I will make a much more fruitful job of my island voyage than you did of yours. The widow will have no attractions for me, and if the Baron of Topsham and Madame Gilbert should become—épris—so much the easier will my task be made. ”

“ He perked up a little, tried to brush the sand from his sleeves and spoke.
"I am John Clifford, managing clerk to Chudleigh, Caves, Caves, and Chudleigh, solicitors, of St. Mary Axe."
"Another lawyer!" cried Madame, and broke into peal after peal of rippling laughter. "Another lawyer! And once again that wonderful perspicuous Willatopy has chased a lawyer to the sea with a fish spear. Willatopy, I forgive you. What a happy world it would be if all men had your instinct for vermin and had from the first adopted your methods of extermination." ”

“ You are an astute woman, Madame Gilbert, and will already have grasped that the Trustees of the settled estates of the Barony of Topsham—of whom I am the legal adviser—are in a position profoundly embarrassing. They don't know what the devil to do, and I don't know what the devil of advice to give. Our strictly legal duty is beyond doubt. We should notify the heir of his succession, and take the necessary steps to have him seised of his ancestral lands and revenues. They are not great although they represent a fair competence, even in these days of exorbitant estate duties. ”

“ I am a judeecious, reflective man. Here we are in an empty ship idling across the world when we could have stuffed the yacht full of high-priced cargo at any damn freights we chose to extort. Ching, my commercial conscience racks me like a raging blister. A cabin load each of drugs or dyestuffs would have made our fortunes in South America, yet here we are with half a dozen cabins empty. The wickedness of it scares me. The Humming Top will come to no good when owners fly like yon in the face of the bountiful freights of a kindly Providence. ”

“ The stern rose and rose until Willatopy, standing upright, and clutching the edge of the thwart with his bare, prehensile toes, towered over Madame's wet head. The surf all around boiled and roared and foamed over the gunwale. Madame low down got the worst of it, and wished that she had left that drenched linen coat in her cabin. The bathing dress was enough for decency, and was meant to be wetted. Down the hill of foaming water they raced faster, much faster, than they had climbed it, and always the line held true. Willatopy was always ready. ”

“ Now that I am an English Lord, and no longer a brown Hula of Bulaa, the girl Marie shall kiss my feet."
"You will never be really a great Lord unless you go to England where all the men and women are white slaves of the Lords who rule them," said John mendaciously. Having decided to go the whole hog, he did not spare decoration upon the beast. "Here you will be always Willatopy, the brown boy. There beyond the wide sea you will be the Right Honourable William Toppys, Twenty-Eighth Baron of Topsham." ”

“ Grant. You are a just man who knows the world. If it had not been John Clifford it would have been some other hedge lawyer. If it had not been Marie, it would have been some other shameless white woman. I have at least done something to protect Willatopy from his lawyer, and I have stopped utterly the intrigue with Marie. In order that Willie may not in his ignorance be plundered, I shall take him now to England, and put him in the legal charge of his own Trustees of Topsham. The Hedge Lawyer shall be shot ashore at Singapore, and left there baffled and marooned. ”

“ I am a grown man and very rich. I would have built a very fine hut for you on my island, and I would have taken one of my girls to be your maiden."
"You are not very old, Willatopy, and it will be better fun for you not to be married just yet. My own fine big husband would not wish me to take another one, not even you."
"No," assented Willatopy, true to the strictly monogamous code of the Straits. "One time, one husband. But it is a great pity. You are very beautiful, and I love you. The Skipper he called me a nigger, Madame, but you do not call me a nigger." ”

“ There had been no starving yelps from the beach, and though she had despatched her steward to look for the little stranger, the man of food had returned with his supplies undevoured. None of the sailors had seen the black-coated intruder, and Madame began to hope that Willatopy, true to his instincts, had completed the despatch of John Clifford, and had consigned his remains to his brother sharks of the bay. Madame, I regret to say, has no respect for the lives of those whom she dislikes. ”

“ I have allowed you two deck officers and two engineers. All fine handsome white men. Yet you must now be googling at a coffee-coloured savage. I won't have it, Marie."
"He is not a savage; he is most intellectual. His English is perfect—much better than mine. And he knows a few words, they are certainly but a few, of our French tongue. He is aristocrat. Is he not a cousin of the rich Sir John Toppys?"
"It is a cousinship which the aristocracy do not usually recognise," observed Madame drily. "Willatopy is in my charge, and I won't have him played with. Especially by an old campaigner like you. ”

“ But Willatopy, with cries of "Liar, liar, liar," fell upon his white slave, and beat him severely. And so John Clifford discovered, very early in his campaign, that the man who would teach the English law of inheritance to a half-caste and fully logical heir, runs a grievous risk of being mangled by his pupil.
"There," said Willatopy, as he picked up the crumpled body of John Clifford by the slack of its breeches, and hammered it on the yawl's deck. "If the yacht is not mine, I cannot be the Lord of Topsham, and you are a liar and a cannibal. Die-cannibal." ”

“ No, on second thoughts we will punish you ourselves. To us is entrusted the high justice, the middle, and the low. We are monarchs of all we survey. We can keel-haul you under the teak fenders of the Humming Top, toast you over a slow fire, or throw you to your brethren the sharks of the sea. We can do any violent thing we please with you. No one [Pg 165] will miss you; no one will inquire after you. We will say that you left the Island—the rest will be silence. Every man and boy in my yacht is my devoted servant; every man, woman, and child on this Island is a slave of Willatopy. ”