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“Who is there?”

There was a moment’s pause, then Manuma showed himself.

“What do you want?”

The chief’s son stood for a moment, sullen and silent, and when he spoke it was with a strangled voice.

“We can’t pay twenty pounds. We haven’t the money.”

“What am I to do?” said Mackintosh.”You heard what Mr Walker said.”

Manuma began to plead, half in Samoan and half in English. It was a sing-song whine, with the quavering intonations of a beggar, and it filled Mackintosh with disgust. It outraged him that the man should let himself be so crushed. He was a pitiful object.

“I can do nothing,” said Mackintosh irritably.”You know that Mr Walker is master here.”

Manuma was silent again. He still stood in the doorway.

“I am sick,” he said at last.”Give me some medicine.”

“What is the matter with you?”

“I do not know. I am sick. I have pains in my body.”

“Don’t stand there,” said Mackintosh sharply.”Come in and let me look at you.”

Manuma entered the little room and stood before the desk.

“I have pains here and here.”

He put his hands to his loins and his face assumed an expression of pain. Suddenly Mackintosh grew conscious that the boy’s eyes were resting on the revolver which he had laid on the desk when Manuma appeared in the doorway. There was a silence between the two which to Mackintosh was endless. He seemed to read the thoughts which were in the Kanaka’s mind. His heart beat violently. And then he felt as though something possessed him so that he acted under the compulsion of a foreign will. Himself did not make the movements of his body, but a power that was strange to him. His throat was suddenly dry, and he put his hand to it mechanically in order to help his speech. He was impelled to avoid Manuma’s eyes.

“Just wait here,” he said, his voice sounded as though someone had seized him by the windpipe, “and I’ll fetch you something from the dispensary.”

He got up. Was it his fancy that he staggered a little? Manuma stood silently, and though he kept his eyes averted, Mackintosh knew that he was looking dully out of the door. It was this other person that possessed him that drove him out of the room, but it was himself that took a handful of muddled papers and threw them on the revolver in order to hide it from view. He went to the dispensary. He got a pill and poured out some blue draught into a small bottle, and then came out into the compound. He did not want to go back into his own bungalow, so he called to Manuma.

“Come here.”

He gave him the drugs and instructions how to take them. He did not know what it was that made it impossible for him to look at the Kanaka. While he was speaking to him he kept his eyes on his shoulder. Manuma took the medicine and slunk out of the gate.

Mackintosh went into the dining-room and turned over once more the old newspapers. But he could not read them. The house was very still. Walker was upstairs in his room asleep, the Chinese cook was busy in the kitchen, the two policemen were out fishing. The silence that seemed to brood over the house was unearthly, and there hammered in Mackintosh’s head the question whether the revolver still lay where he had placed it. He could not bring himself to look. The uncertainty was horrible, but the certainty would be more horrible still. He sweated. At last he could stand the silence no longer, and he made up his mind to go down the road to the trader’s, a man named Jervis, who had a store
about a mile away. He was a half-caste, but even that amount of white blood made him possible to talk to. He wanted to get away from his bungalow, with the desk littered with untidy papers, and underneath them something, or nothing. He walked along the road. As he passed the fine hut of a chief a greeting was called out to him. Then he came to the store. Behind the counter sat the trader’s daughter, a swarthy broad-featured girl in a pink blouse and a white drill skirt. Jervis hoped he would marry her. He had money, and he had told Mackintosh that his daughter’s husband would be well-to-do. She flushed a little when she saw Mackintosh.