Dashiell Hammett

“ Step by step Jeffol drove Levison across the room and through that door, Ca'bi going in with them. The door closed and Unga, holding me with the blunderbuss, put his back against it.
Dinihari sprang up and dashed toward him. Jokanain caught her from behind and flung her into her corner again. Beyond the door Levison roared out oaths. Ca'bi's voice cackled excitedly in answering oaths, and in orders to her son. Bind (ikat) and naked (telanjang) were the only words I could pick out of the din. Then Levison's voice choked off into silence, and no sound at all came from the sleeping-room. ”

“ Jeffol's number one wife was his only real wife—thus Langworthy. Jeffol almost bolted then, but the necessity of finding a substitute for his anting-anting was strong in him. They compromised. He was to give up his women, go to Bangao for a divorce from his first wife, and then Langworthy would marry him to Dinihari. Meanwhile the girl was turned over to the datto for safe keeping. The datto's wife was a dish-faced shrew who had thus far prevented his taking another wife, so his household was considered a safe harbor for the girl. ”

“ Jeffol's faith in Christianity as a substitute for an anting-anting must have been weakened by this new misfortune, but Langworthy succeeded in holding him, though he had to work night and day to do it. They were together all of the time—Langworthy usually talking, Jeffol sulking.
“Jeffol's up and about,” I told Levison one day. “Better watch your step. He's shifty, and he's got good pirate blood in him.” ”

“ She was a sleek brown woman with the knack of twisting a sarong around her hips so that it became part of her—a trick a woman has with a potato sack or hasn't with Japanese brocade. She was small and trimly fleshed, with proper pride in her flesh. She wasn't exactly beautiful, but if you were alone with her you kept looking at her, and you wished she didn't belong to a man you were afraid of. That was when she was Levison's.
She was Jeffol's first. ”

“ Jeffol was scowling. He said something. Langworthy said something. Jeffol took a step back and his hand went to the ivory hilt of a kris in his belted sarong. He didn't get the kris out. The missionary stepped in and dropped him with a hard left to the belly.
I got up and went away, reminding myself to watch that left hand if Langworthy and I ever tangled. I didn't have to sit through the rest of the performance to know that he had made a convert. There are two things a Moro understands thoroughly and respects without stint—violence and a joke. ”

“ That would make Jeffol a Moro. It doesn't really matter what he was. If he had been a Maya or a Ghurka he would have laid Levison's arm open with a machete or a kukri instead of a kris, but that would have made no difference in the end. Dinihari's race matters as little. She was woman, complaisant woman, of the sort whose no always becomes yes between throat and teeth. You can find her in Nome, in Cape Town, and in Durham, and in skin of any shade; but, since the Tawi Tawis are the lower end of the Sulu Archipelago, she was brown this time. ”

“ Then Langworthy came up the beach, striding stiff-kneed, as a man strides to a fight he counts on winning. He caught up with Jeffol and said something to which the Moro paid no attention. Jeffol didn't raise his head, just went on walking, though he was polite enough ordinarily. Langworthy fell in step beside him and they made a turn up and down the beach, the white man talking away at a great rate. Jeffol, so far as I could see, made no reply at all. ”

“ The hell with him!”
“You're the doctor. Give me a bottle of gin to drink to you with and I'll run along.”
I got the gin.
[Illustration: Levison was a monster in size and appearance. Six and a half feet he stood; there were three hundred pounds of him—not counting the hair, which was an item. He was black hair all over. Below his half-hidden dark eyes, black hair bearded his face in a ten-inch tangle and furred his body like a bear's. The Colt in Jeffol's hand was too large and too steady for even a monster like Levison to jump at. Dinihari was the only one of us who moved.] ”

“ Then I laughed, and Unga and Jeffol. But it wasn't our laughter that beat Levison. We could only have goaded him into killing us. Old Ca'bi turned the trick. The laughter of an old woman is a thing to say prayers against, and Ca'bi was very old. ”

“ Jeffol said, and he unbent a little, because she was a woman to want, and because a Moro loves a violent joke. “But there is much in the book of the Christian (neserani kitab) . There is a tale the missionary (tuan padri) told me of a hairy one named Sansāo, who was strong against his enemies until shorn of his hair. Many other magics (tangkal) are in the book for all occasions.”
SO that damned Langworthy was at the bottom of it!
I never saw him again. That night I left the island in Levison's yawl with the pick of his goods. ”

“ Women were not expensive to keep down there and, although the Moros on that particular island weren't rolling in wealth, nearly all of them could afford a couple of wives, and some were prosperous enough to take on a slave girl or two after they had the four wives their law allowed. ”