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The Renegade
by
Wilson watched it all with sullen envy. How was it that these brown savages were free, and he barnacled to a slab-sided bark? Was he not a white man, and their superior? Did he not look down at them from the heights of the world’s ruling race, kindly, tolerantly, contemptuously, as one does on children? And yet who had the best of it, by God? Listen to the dip of the paddles; hear the mellow chorus that times the rowers’ strokes; not a care on board, not a face that was not smiling! His white superiority! They might have it! His lonely and toiling life! What fool among them would exchange with him? His wages? Look at them ! They had none and wanted none; and as like as not they were putting to sea without a dollar among the crowd. Civilization–hell! He would give all his share of it for a place in that there boat, to drive a paddle with the rest of them; to be, what he wished to God he had been born, a durned Kanaka!
The whaleboat drew swiftly toward him as though to go beneath the bark on her way to the pass. The paddles leaped to a rousing song and crashed in unison on the slopping gunwales. Dip, swish, bang! and then the accentuated thunder of forty voices, the men’s hoarse and straining, the women’s rich, falsetto, and musical. In the stern the old chief swayed with every rush of the boat, one sinewy hand clinched on the tiller, the other enfolding a little child. In the bow a handsome boy stood erect and graceful, throwing a rifle in the air and dancing to the song of his comrades. Dip, swish, bang! On they came with an increasing roar, the white water splashing under their bow.
Wilson dropped his brush and looked on with open mouth. Great Caesar! he knew that old fellar in the stern. He had smoked pipes with him in the Samoa house by the bridge. And that girl there, who was waving and shaking her hand to him, that was little Fetuao, the daughter, who used to look at him so shyly and laugh when she met his eyes; little Fetuao, that he had given the dominoes to, and that dress from the Dutch firm, and them beads! Fetuao! Wasn’t she pretty as she stood there in the boat calling to him; so slim and straight, with her splendid hair flying in the wind, and her brown bosom open to the sun! Pretty! My God, she was a spanking beauty, that girl!
The boat came to a stop beneath him; the paddles backed, and Wilson, with some embarrassment, received the stare of the whole party below.
“Poor white mans work all time!” exclaimed Fetuao, standing on a thwart to raise her head to the level of his foot.
“Like hell!” said Jack.
“Kanaka more better,” said the girl.
“A damn sight!” agreed Jack.
“Jack,” said Fetuao, “I go home now, and never see you no more. Good-by, Jack!”
She raised her little hand, which the sailor clasped in his big one. Her tender, troubled eyes met his own; her mouth quivered; her fingers tightened on his palm.
“Jack,” she said suddenly, “you come along us, Jack.”
“Do you mean it, puss?” he said eagerly. “Do you mean it?”
“Oh, Jack, you come, too,” she pleaded.
“You come–that’s good!” cried the old chief.
Jack, in a dream, looked above him and met the sour glances of Hansen and Bates, whom the noise had brought to the ship’s rail; then he looked below into the girlish face upraised to his. For better or worse, his resolution was taken. They might keep his chest; they might keep his wages; their stinking ship might sink or swim for all he cared. They were welcome to what Jack Wilson left behind him, for Jack Wilson at last was FREE! He dropped lightly into the boat beside Fetuao, and with one arm around her naked waist he shouted to the natives to shove off.