Murray Leinster

“ And every village launched its boats, and every boat hunted for Gleason with a panting enthusiasm, and Gleason went into the bluest of blue funks.
He drove his boatmen, whimpering with terror, straight for the shore and apparently for the very stronghold of his enemies. The sensible thing would have been to stand out for the open sea. But one of Henderson’s boat-boys kept Gleason’s panic from being altogether suicide.
All night long the devil-devil drums beat on, and all night long the smoky fires flared in devil-devil houses, and all night long the war-boats hunted tirelessly. ”

“ Gleason had vanished.
But that same gray dawn filtered down through mangrove leaves upon him. One of the houseboys had panted directions for a little streamlet he knew of. It oozed its way sluggishly out between unbroken banks of mangroves, and there was no village beside it. More, when the whaleboat pulled into it the mangroves were found to stretch their branches thirty or forty feet beyond the edge of the mud and to dip their farther ends unpleasantly into the stagnant, stinking stream. The whaleboat had been drawn far in beneath those branches, and its sides bedecked with green. ”

“ But news travels fast in the bush. All that had gone on on Henderson’s island since Gleason’s landing and before, was known for an astonishing distance along the mainland. And with astonishing speed that news was kept up to date. No white man knows how news does travel in the bush, but it goes, and when it is news of a white man unarmed or unnerved or ill there are innumerable bepainted, befrizzed and tattooed young warriors who inspect their weapons and dream high dreams. ”

“ His paddlers were at work again, trying to use their unaccustomed oars silently, when there came through the night a second dull and distant booming. Far ahead this was, and it meant that another village was awake and preparing to scour the surface of the sea in its greater war canoes. Treasure was afloat. A white man’s head, and the white man proven not invulnerable nor over-dangerous. And it seemed to Gleason, sweating suddenly from terror, that he heard yet other drums, more distant still.
All the dark coast began to boom with drums, both before and behind the whaleboat. ”

“ Next day—three days after Henderson went down—there was a tumult down at the store-shed. A houseboy fired off a rifle and fled. A knot of scared figures plunged for the bush and vanished. They’d tried to loot the store.
And when recruited laborers on a Solomon Island plantation try to loot the storehouse, it is then time for any white man who wants to keep his head on his shoulders to take some action. The proper and approved action—though it is strictly unlawful—is to flog every man who may conceivably be suspected of the attempt. ”

“ Henderson had said, “The wicked flee when no man pursueth.” He’d repeated it and re-repeated it until it became a tiresome saw. Henderson was wrong.
Gleason howled with hysterical laughter as he fled like a deer from the men who hunted him earnestly. Even Maehoe had quoted the thing at him. “The wicked flee when no man pursueth.” But they were wrong, now. He was fleeing, all right, but men were pursuing him. The jungle was full of the noise of the chase. Men were pursuing him, all right.... ”

“ And it is a very good idea to knock the others about a bit and generally act as if you are fairly itching for them to try to rush you. And of course, thereafter you must work them until they drop in their tracks—bullying them the while—and make their lives a burden to them for some time to come. Loving kindness is not understood or appreciated by salt water boys who contemplate the ownership of a white man’s head with a yearning wistfulness. ”

“ There is a missionary there, and unregenerate persons have convinced the neighboring tribesmen that the particularly potent devils of the white men will consume the vitals, bit by bit, of any man who harms a hair of his head—of which conviction, however, the missionary is wholly ignorant. Gleason would have been safe with him until a trading schooner came along. ”

“ But Gleason had a chill, which may or may not have been the sort of chill that comes from a blue funk on top of a fever-racked system. Gleason did nothing whatever except go in half a dozen times to see if Henderson was getting over his delirium with prospects of being able to get up. And he stopped Maehoe from giving him quinine. He was just in time.
The thing was that Sunaku had scared Gleason down to the marrow of his soul. A timid man either gets out of the Solomons or he doesn’t last long. Gleason had become timid. ”

“ Gleason was still weak, though growing stronger, and Henderson didn’t see that he was crazy with envy of a man who was safe and prosperous and ought to turn out rich when his newly planted coconut trees came into bearing. ”

“ They reached the shingle beach of the plantation island two hours before dawn. By daybreak the whaleboat was hidden. During the day Gleason saw the still smoking ruins of the house and the store. He did not see where Henderson was buried, of course. Maehoe would have attended to the hiding of that burial place. A white man’s head is a white man’s head, however it be come by, and Maehoe on deserting the plantation would take precautions lest his late master provide a trophy for some devil-devil house ashore. ”

“ The wicked flee when no man pursueth.—Proverbs 28:1. This is the story of Gleason and Maehoe and of Fear, who makes a bad third in any company. Henderson doesn’t really count, because he died of black-water fever some three weeks after Gleason met him. And old Sunaku—he was killed, later, when a British warship shelled his village for trying to cut off a trading schooner—is a very minor character. ”

“ Two days after Henderson developed black-water fever, Gleason’s four paddlers came shivering to the house and begged to be allowed to stay there. They were To Ba’ita boys, and the labor gangs were south Malaita men. ”

“ Gleason fled. He fumbled with the dynamite sticks. They were wet. The dynamite was useless. He flung it aside. He plucked at the revolver shells. Wrong! For Maehoe had the revolver, and was essaying to hold off the pursuing bushboys as a desirous member of the Native Constabulary Force of the Solomon Island Protectorate should do. But Maehoe was dead before the first bushboy appeared. ”